Sunday 12 April 2015

How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity by Ed Catmull

Ed Cutmell


Most of us have a perception that creative ideas have more significance than people but in this article Ed Catmull who is the president of Pixar and Disney Animation studios. According to him everyone has a very different perspective of creativity which emphasizes more on the initial idea rather than the risk that will come in producing it.

In film making and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different discipline working effectively together to solve a great many inherently unforeseeable problems. According to Catmull its in three parts the first one is to have a project leader who will have the authority for product development secondly to have a culture and processes that will allow the people to open up and discuss their work and lastly is to support each other as peers and eliminate the natural obstacles that is dividing them.


What Is Creativity?

In a movie there are thousands of creative ideas in .They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, and the pacing. But for all this creativity only one person is not responsible every single member of the crew contributes towards one big idea. So there is no particular phase for creativity it should be there on every phase not only on artistic side but technical side too. The leader must combine couple of ideas to find one combined idea that will support story this process is though a bit scary because no one is sure enough that where will they end up. But being scared is not bad because if someone is not scared means that job is not done properly because in this business the customers wants to see something new every time they go to the theater so which means that doing something out of the box is really important. So they encourage unexpected ideas though they don’t know what will be the end result but since their business to come up with something which is not obvious, so it’s all about taking somebody’s vision and take a chance.

So basically in this article the core is that successful organization faces two challenges the first one is to bring new people one a single track but for them it was not a major problem because they were already had an open culture this was been adopted by us so that newcomers less threatening. Several prominent outsiders who have had a big impact on them (in terms of the exciting ideas they introduced and the strong people they attracted) were readily accepted. They include Brad Bird, who directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille; Jim Morris, who headed Industrial Light & Magic for years before joining Pixar as the producer of WALL·E and executive vice president of production; and Richard Hollander, a former executive of the special-effects studio Rhythm & Hues, who is leading an effort to improve our production processes.

The bigger issue for them has been getting young new hires to come up with new ideas and speak up they wanted to change the perspective of people who always assumed that if they are successful doesn’t means they are always right.

So in the end Catmull is searching for the problems in the Pixar’s culture and according to him is that they have a perception that clear values, constant communication, routine postmortems, and the regular injection of outsiders who will challenge the status quo are necessary but not enough to stay on the bar.So for this Catmull comes to the orientation sessions for all new hires, where he talks about the mistakes Pixar has made so people don’t assume that just because the company is successful, everything it does is right.

Link for the article
https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity



Sunday 5 April 2015

Stichology Machine









Well this is a machine which will be used to do hand weaving this idea came into my mind as i love hand woven clothes and i always wished that i can ever make hand weaven clothes myself so hence i came up with the idea of a machine which can make such hand woven clothes with robotics hands so that we can get the same impact of woven clothes as made by hands as they are more durable and comfortable.

They are really protective for children as it is a very traditional trendy type of a cloth that differs from other materials and now it is a fashion trend in new borns or toddlers and moms to be are more interested in buying these clothing and making these  clothesby themselves which gives them a special feel that they are able to make something for their babies.So Stichology machine will give this opportunity that every mom can make their baby's clothes by themselves because it is a very difficult task to make such clothes with hands.

Some of the pictures clearly indicates that how cute hand woven clothes and how stichology will give an opportunity for new moms to make such beautiful clothes for their babies and feel proud.




ReadyToGo PicnicBus





ReadyToGo PicnicBus


Well this idea came into my mind when on 23rd March our family decided for a random picnic as it was a sudden plan we didnt have time for any kind of preparations so we randomly packed our stuff and got ready for it.But as soon as we reached there we realized that there were lot of stuff which we forgot to bring like a shade, picnic chairs, tables,umbrella and because of which we face great difficulties there.

So this was the point where an idea pop up in my mind which was to have a picnic van of my own which would be called as ReadyToGo PicnicVan which would have a lot of amazing stuff though there are already some caravans which offers similar kind of like a built in bedroom,bathroom,kitchen etc.






But this van would be quite different as it would have a portable table and a chair set which can easily be brought out it and set accordingly there will be all the necessary things inluded in it like a music system ,a resting area, a restroom and the best thing a barbeque grill along with the whole kit. so you dont need to book any hut you just have to take that van and thats all you need.
Your whole family can fit in and you can have an amazing trip without worrying about anything except for the fuel.













It can also be used as a startup business as you can rent out these and charges can vary according to the days that van has been used.By doing this you will be able to have your initial investments back quickly and easily.The design of the van would be different it would be really colorful and amazing like the picture below.








Shimpei Takahashi-Play this game to come up with original ideas




This ted talk is by Shimpei Takahashi who is a toy developer and who has a dream of creating new toys that have never been seen before so for that he began to work in a toy company nine years ago where his boss wanted him to give new ideas and he proposed some too but his boss always use to ask him that whether he had the data to prove it would sell, and to think of product development after analyzing market data.

So he uses to analyze the market data before thinking of a product. However, he was unable to think of anything new at that moment. 
As his ideas were unoriginal. He wasn't getting any new ideas and he grew tired of thinking most of us all had similar experiences and felt the same way. As the data was difficult to gather and the one is sick of thinking so instead of thinking for the date he used a game called Shiritori to come up with new ideas.



Now what is Shiritori? Take apple, elephant and trumpet, for example. It's a game where you take turns saying words that start with the last letter of the previous word. It's the same in Japanese and English.  Many random words will come out. We force those words to connect to what we want to think of and form ideas


One will end up with ridiculous ideas which is okay. The key is to keep them flowing. The more ideas one produces, we're sure to come up with some good ones, too. So here is one of the best example for it a brush, Can we make a toothbrush into a toy? We could combine a toothbrush with a guitar and we've got a toy we can play with while brushing our teeth. Kids who don't like to brush their teeth might begin to like it.
Can we make a hat into a toy? How about something like a roulette game, where you try the hat on one by one, and then, when someone puts it on, a scary alien breaks through the top screaming, as the picture below shows how it would look like.
Ideas that didn't come out while you stare at the data will start to come out. The bubble wrap, which is used to pack fragile objects, combined with a toy, made Mugen Pop which is a toy where you can pop the bubbles as much as you like. It was a big hit when it reached stores. Data had nothing to do with its success. Although it's only popping bubbles, it's a great way to kill time, 
 Ideas that didn't come out while you stare at the data will start to come out. The bubble wrap, which is used to pack fragile objects, combined with a toy, made Mugen Pop which is a toy where you can pop the bubbles as much as you like. It was a big hit when it reached stores. Data had nothing to do with its success. Although it's only popping bubbles, it's a great way to kill time.


Can we make a hat into a toy? How about something like a roulette game, where you try the hat on one by one, and then, when someone puts it on, a scary alien breaks through the top screaming, as the picture below shows how it would look like.
Ideas that didn't come out while you stare at the data will start to come out. The bubble wrap, which is used to pack fragile objects, combined with a toy, made Mugen Pop which is a toy where you can pop the bubbles as much as you like. It was a big hit when it reached stores. Data had nothing to do with its success. Although it's only popping bubbles, it's a great way to kill time, 
Anyway, by doing this we continue to come up with useless ideas. we up  with many trivial ideas. If we base our ideas on data analysis and know what we're aiming for, we'll end up trying too hard, and we wont be able to produce new ideas. Even if we know what our aim is, so it's better to think of ideas as freely as if we were throwing darts with our eyes closed. If we do this, we surely will hit somewhere near the center. At least one will. That's the one thing we should choose. If we do so, that idea will be in demand and, moreover, it will be brand new. That is how we should think for our new ideas.
The reason I have chosen this video is that we all face difficulties while coming up with new ideas so by this game we can have so many creative ideas but it doesn't have to be Shiritori; there are many different methods. All we have to do is just choose words at random. We can flip through a dictionary and choose words at random. For example, we could look up two random letters and gather the results or go to the store and connect product names with what we want to think of. 
The point is to gather random words, not information from the category we're thinking for. If we do this, the ingredients for the association of ideas are collected and form connections that will produce many ideas. The greatest advantage to this method is the continuous flow of images. Because we're thinking of one word after another, the image of the previous word is still with us. That image will automatically be related with future words. Unconsciously, a concept will be connected to a brush and a bubble wrap which will be connected to a something. We wouldn't even realize it. We can come up with ideas that we wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

This method is, of course, not just restricted for toys. We can collect ideas for books, apps, events, and many other projects. I hope we all can try this method. There are futures that are born from data. However, using this silly game called Shiritori, we can look forward to the exciting future we will create, a future we couldn't have dreamt of.
Here is the ted talk link:

Saturday 4 April 2015

404,The story of a page not found-Reny Gleeson


This ted talk by Renny Gleeson is about a quick story which is about a 404 page and a lesson that was learned as a result to it. But for that first of all it's important that we should understand that what actually 404 page is?
The 404 page is that. It's that broken experience on the Web. It's effectively the default page when we ask a website for something and it can't find it. And it serves as the 404 page. It's inherently a feeling of being broken when we go through it. Whenever we come across this error we feel really irritated and annoyed according to Renny it's the feeling of a broken relationship.
Well first of all we need to think that from where does the 404 actually comes from basically it's from It's from a family of errors actually - a whole set of relationship errors, as we can see from the picture below what these errors actually suggests.

.

 But these things are everywhere. They're on sites big, they're on sites small. This is a global experience



A 404 page is not what we're looking for. We get that, and it's like a slap in the face. But the interesting part was explored when Renny headed up a technology incubator where there was eight startups sitting around there and they are actually working on what these errors actually are. Until one day Athlete path, which is a website that focuses on services for extreme athletes, found this video. Below is the link for that video.
A 404 page is not what we're looking for. We get that, and it's like a slap in the face. But the interesting part was explored when Renny headed up a technology incubator where there was eight startups sitting around there and they are actually working on what these errors actually are. Until one day Athlete path, which is a website that focuses on services for extreme athletes, found this video. Below is the link for that video

In that video a guy got badly hurt while cycling so basically they took that video and they embedded it in their 404 page and it was like a light bulb went off for everybody in the place. Because they wanted to give the 404 page a feeling that what it actually feels like when a person hit a 404.




So here is the turning point when this 404 page was taken so creatively as below are the examples attached that how different brands use it as an advertising forum like Dailypath  offers inspiration put inspiration on their 404 page. Stayhound, which helps us to find pet sitters through our social network, commiserated with our pet. Coke also used the 404 page. And eventually we learned was that those little things, done right, actually matter, and that well-designed moments can build brands.








The best part was that we can actually hack these ourselves, we can type in an URL and put in a 404 and these will pop. So basically this error page turned out to be an opportunity. So it was a moment when everyone was excited and started thinking that how creatively they can use that opportunity.
The reason for choosing this ted talk was that it was a very creative idea to use the 404 page as an advertising forum as no one would have ever thought so that what a light bulb idea is and its simply amazing as the thing we use to hate at first now attracts us and that frustration turns into happiness.
Link to the Ted talk


David Pogue-10 time saving Tech tips



This ted talk by David Pogue which is about technology, it's about 10 basic things which most of us think we know but in actual we don't know.

So starting from the first one whenever we have to scroll down on the website we use scroll bars for it so instead of doing that use space bars which scrolls down one page so we don't have to use the shift key to scroll back up again mouse and waste your time.

Also on the web, when we're filling in one of these forms like our addresses, most of us know that we can hit the Tab key to jump from box to box to box. But what about the pop-up menu where we put in your state/city? Don't open the pop-up menu. That's a terrible waste of calories. Type the first letter of your state over and over and over. So if you want Karachi, go, K, K, K. If you want Islamabad, go I, I, and you jump right to that thing without even opening the pop-up menu.

Another one when the text is too small what we do is hold down the Control key and hit plus, plus, plus. We make the text larger with each tap. It works on every computer, every web browser, or minus, minus, minus to get smaller again. If you're on the Mac, it might be Command instead.

This one is for most of the Smartphone users when we're typing on our Blackberry, Android, iPhone, don't bother switching layouts to the punctuation layout to hit the period and then a space and then try to capitalize the next letter. Just hit the space bar twice. The phone puts the period, the space, and the capital for you. Go space, space. It is totally amazing.
 
Also when it comes to cell phones, if we want to redial somebody that we've dialed before, all we have to do is hit the call button, and it puts the last phone number into the box for us ,and at that point we can hit call again to actually dial it. So we don't need to go into the recent calls list, so if we're trying to get through to somebody, just hit the call button again.

Another one Google is not just a webpage it's a dictionary as well we just have type the word "define" and then the word you want to know. You don't even have to click anything. There's the definition as you type. It's also a complete FAA database. Type the name of the airline and the flight. It shows you where the flight is, the gate, and the terminal, how long till it lands. We don't need an app for that. It's also a unit and currency conversion. Again, we don't have to click one of the results. Just type it into the box, and there's your answer.

While we're talking about text, when you want to highlight .When we want to highlight a word, we don't have to waste our life dragging across it with the mouse like a newbie what it takes is just a double click the word. We don't delete what we've highlighted. We can just type over it. This is in every program. 
Also when it comes to cell phones, if we want to redial somebody that we've dialed before, all we have to do is hit the call button, and it puts the last phone number into the box for us ,and at that point we can hit call again to actually dial it. So we don't need to go into the recent calls list, so if we're trying to get through to somebody, just hit the call button again.

Another one Google is not just a webpage it's a dictionary as well we just have type the word "define" and then the word you want to know. You don't even have to click anything. There's the definition as you type. It's also a complete FAA database. Type the name of the airline and the flight. It shows you where the flight is, the gate, and the terminal, how long till it lands. We don't need an app for that. It's also a unit and currency conversion. Again, we don't have to click one of the results. Just type it into the box, and there's your answer

Shutter lag is the time between pressing the shutter button and the moment the camera actually snaps. It's extremely frustrating on any camera under 1,000 dollars. As whenever we want to cover a moment we can't which is because the camera needs time to calculate the focus and the exposure, but if we are smart enough to pre-focus with a half-press, leave our finger down, no shutter lag! You get it every time. So now with this trick we have just turned our $50 camera into a $1,000 camera.

The reason behind choosing this ted talk was that for a decade I have been a technology user but still I didn't know majority of these things so didn't want to spent another decade by remaining unaware of such smart tricks so thought of sharing this with everyone as 'knowledge increases by sharing not by saving'-Lyrika. 



Another one Google is not just a webpage it's a dictionary as well we just have type the word "define" and then the word you want to know. You don't even have to click anything. There's the definition as you type. It's also a complete FAA database. Type the name of the airline and the flight. It shows you where the flight is, the gate, and the terminal, how long till it lands. We don't need an app for that. It's also a unit and currency conversion. Again, we don't have to click one of the results. Just type it into the box, and there's your answer.While we're talking about text, when you want to highlight .When we want to highlight a word, we don't have to waste our life dragging across it with the mouse like a newbie what it takes is just a double click the word. We don't delete what we've highlighted. We can just type over it. This is in every program. 
Also when it comes to cell phones, if we want to redial somebody that we've dialed before, all we have to do is hit the call button, and it puts the last phone number into the box for us ,and at that point we can hit call again to actually dial it. So we don't need to go into the recent calls list, so if we're trying to get through to somebody, just hit the call button again.
Another one Google is not just a webpage it's a dictionary as well we just have type the word "define" and then the word you want to know. You don't even have to click anything. There's the definition as you type. It's also a complete FAA database. Type the name of the airline and the flight. It shows you where the flight is, the gate, and the terminal, how long till it lands. We don't need an app for that. It's also a unit and currency conversion. Again, we don't have to click one of the results. Just type it into the box, and there's your answe
The reason behind choosing this ted talk was that for a decade I have been a technology user but still I didn't know majority of these things so didn't want to spent another decade by remaining unaware of such smart tricks so thought of sharing this with everyone as 'knowledge increases by sharing not by saving'-Lyrika. 
Shutter lag is the time between pressing the shutter button and the moment the camera actually snaps. It's extremely frustrating on any camera under 1,000 dollars. As whenever we want to cover a moment we can't which is because the camera needs time to calculate the focus and the exposure, but if we are smart enough to pre-focus with a half-press, leave our finger down, no shutter lag! You get it every time. So now with this trick we have just turned our $50 camera into a $1,000 camera.
The reason behind choosing this ted talk was that for a decade I have been a technology user but still I didn't know majority of these things so didn't want to spent another decade by remaining unaware of such smart tricks so thought of sharing this with everyone as 'knowledge increases by sharing not by saving'-Lyrika.