Title: What Marshmallows and Spaghetti Can Teach Your Design Team
Context: If you can’t learn about design from marshmallows and spaghetti, how else exactly are you to be expected to learn about design?
Synopsis: Design – good, workable design – happens most effectively when there are no limitations on the imagination being invested by the participants, when team symbiosis trumps organizational structure and when failure is embraced as an expected and reasonable part of the overall process. This must be why kindergarten students are better at this type of stuff than MBAs. Education and exploration are not always the same thing. The unknown should be embraced as an opportunity to fill the gaps in our knowledge base rather than a cause for concern. Design is in and of itself the quest for these unknowns and the indefatigable pursuit of their solutions. Even if that unknown is “how high can you build a freestanding structure with marshmallows and spaghetti?”
Best Bit: “Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand.”
via zurb.com
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