Creative acts for curious people : how to think, create, and lead in unconventional ways

Includes index.

The Assignments: Find Your Path -- Blind Contour Bookend - How to Talk to Strangers - The Derive - Handle with Care - Immersion for Insight - Shadowing - Fundamentals - A Seeing Exercise - Talkers & Listeners - The Wordless Conversation - Favorite Warm-Up Sequence - Interview Essentials - Party Park Parkway - Maturity, Muscle, Variety - Empathy in Motion - What's in Your Fridge? - Expert Eyes -- The Journey from Not Knowing to Knowing - Learning How You Learn - Identify, Acknowledge, Challenge - Practicing Metaphors - Direct Your Curiosity - Remember That Time - The Monsoon Challenge - ABC Sketching - Reflections & Revelations - The Girl on a Chair - How We Are - The Secret Handshake - Map the Design Space - Rock Paper Scissors Tournament - First Date, Worst Date - The Solution Already Exists - How Are You Doing, Really? -- Widening Your Lens - Fresh Eyes Sketching - Unpacking Exercises - Frame & Concept - Making Morning Coffee - Five Chairs - The Hundred-Foot Journey Map - Everyone Designs - Protobot - Experts/Assumptions - Stakeholder Mapping - The Banana Challenge - Micro-Mindfulness Exercises - A Day in the Life -- The Feeling of Learning - Tether - Solutions Tic-Tac-Toe - A Briefcase Viewpoint - Instant Replay - Tell Your Granddad - Distribution Prototyping - When to Change Your Mind - Embodied Prototyping - The Test of Silence - How to Give Feedback - What? So What? Now What? - High Fidelity, Low Resolution -- Productive Struggle - I Like, I Wish - What Went Down - Your Inner Ethicist - The Futures Wheel - Units of Energy Critique - More Brave People - Build a Bot - Designing Tools for Teams - This Assignment Is a Surprise - The Final Final - Personal Project - Learning Journey Maps -- Putting It All Together - The Haircut - The Ramen Project - Family Evening Experience - Thirty-Million-Word Gap - Organ Donation Experience - Stanford Service Corps - Post-Disaster Finance - Taking Responsibility - Scope Your Own Challenge - I Used to Think & Now I Think -- Creative Acts: Behind the Scenes -- The Haircut: A Design Challenge.

"In an era of ambiguous, messy problems--as well as extraordinary opportunities for positive change--it's vital to have both an inquisitive mind and the ability to act with intention. Creative Acts for Curious People is filled with ways to build those skills with resilience, care, and confidence. At Stanford University's world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka "the d.school," students and faculty, experts and seekers bring together diverse perspectives to tackle ambitious projects; this book contains the experiences designed to help them do it. A provocative and highly visual companion, it's a definitive resource for people who aim to draw on their curiosity and creativity in the face of uncertainty. Teeming with ideas about discovery, learning, and leading the way through unknown creative territory, Creative Acts for Curious People includes memorable stories and more than eighty innovative exercises. Curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, after being honed in the classrooms of the d.school, these exercises originated in some of the world's most inventive and unconventional minds, including those of d.school and IDEO founder David M. Kelley, ReadyMade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik G. Pferdt, and many more. To bring fresh approaches to any challenge-world changing or close to home-you can draw on exercises such as Expert Eyes to hone observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers to foster understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams to build creative leadership. The activities are at once lighthearted, surprising, tough, and impactful-and reveal how the hidden dynamics of design can drive more vibrant ways of making, feeling, exploring, experimenting, and collaborating at work and in life. This book will help you develop the behaviors and deepen the mindsets that can turn your curiosity into ideas, and your ideas into action." --