Suggested Uses of Old Cars as Equipment for a Children's Playground

      Free Association

  • Take the tires and roll them along the ground.

  • Get on the roof and use the car as a slide.

  • Take the seats out and use them as a bed to rest between activities

  • Teenagers could take the engine apart and try to put it back together.

  • Cut the body of the car up to make a 3-D puzzle.

  • Make a garden by planting flowers inside.

  • Use the tires to crawl through as an obstacle course.

  • Make into sculpture.

  • Take off the doors and use as a goal for hockey.

You will notice that in every free association phase of a brainstorming exercise the ideas are generated very rapidly at first but after a while very few additional ideas are generated.  To restart the flow of ideas one can use the techniques of Vertical Thinking (Osborn) and Lateral Thinking (DeBono).  In vertical thinking you build on the ideas already generated.  For example, choose one of the ideas and ask some of the questions from Osborn's check list.  For example, how could I make it bigger or smaller? How could I rearrange the idea or substitute for part of the idea.  A complete checklist is shown below.

 

 

 

Osborn's Checklist for Adding New Ideas

Adapt?.... How can This (product, idea, plan, etc.) be used as is? What are other uses it could be adapted to?
Modify?.... Change the meaning, material, color, shape, odor, etc.?
Magnify?.... Add new ingredient? Make longer, stronger, thicker, higher, etc.?
Minify?.... Split up? Take something out? Make lighter, lower, shorter, etc.?
Substitute?..... Who else, where else or what else? Other ingredient, amterial, or approacj?
Rearrange?.... Interchange parts? Other patterns, layouts? Transpose cause and effect? Change positives to negatives? Reverse roles? Turn it backwards or upside down? Sort?
Combine?.... Combine parts, units, ideas? Blend? Compromise? Combine from different categories?

Rearrannge

 

 

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