Just for fun, Nate and I participated in a "character design" workshop last weekend that was led by a toy designer who worked for Hasbro and Mattel. It was geared toward creating a marketable character, either as a vinyl toy, or as accessories or useful objects such as kitchen tools. A good example is "Hello Kitty".
We went on a shopping scavenger hunt, looking for cool materials, textures, and forms - without any pre-conceived notions behind them. Just visual shopping. Then we came back and organized the pics by a set of categories, like a face, or describing a member of the team.
Later, after playing free-association games, we took the images we collected and brain-stormed ideas for characters, toys, and accessories.
I felt invigorated and freed by the scavenger hunt and brainstorm session. It was fun to work with students and come up with ideas out of the blue. The sandwiches were pretty good too!
I ended up with 3 solid ideas for new products, and one of them I may pursue.
We plan on doing some more shopping trips in the future to get ideas, and hopefully there will be more workshops like this in the coming year.
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