I’m the type of person that is be perfectly comfortable alone with my thoughts, but I prefer to always be tinkering with something or watching something interesting, typically people (probably my favourite past-time). So on commutes into Toronto I listen to or watch podcasts. Geekbeat.tv or TED talks being the most popular and per normal with TED, I came across something that truly piqued my interest. Makey Makey. Being able to marry a computer with pretty much anything that is conductive (bananas being a favourite) is awesome. The coolness of it is a huge draw, but I think it is the creativity, sense of play and stance on the world that it brings to life is the true interest for me.
To best explain what Makey Makey is, watch the video in this post and check out their website or watch Jay Silver’s TED talk, but I’ll give a quick summation. Makey Makey is a circuit board that connects via USB to your computer and subsequently uses alligator clips to connect pretty much anything to your computer. You can then use that something to make sounds, music, take pictures / video, etc. or turn that something into a game controller, mouse, slide presentation controller, etc. It is a totally new way to interact with the world. But that’s just the beginning of what is so great about Makey Makey.
Makey Makey hits the design-thinking nail squarely on the head and will push you to flex your design muscles. As a designer, you must have an open stance or a view of the world that nothing is absolute and can be moulded and interpreted an infinite number of ways and you accept this. My mental model of a Starbucks coffee is that it is made with care and tastes great. Your mental model of a Starbucks coffee may be that its overpriced sludge. Makey Makey is all about looking at bananas, Play Doh, whatever and seeing that it is not as it seems and can become something else. If you watched the video, you know what I’m talking about. Designers also have creative confidence, meaning they are not afraid to share their creative ideas with the world and let themselves go to play in the world. Consider a 6 year old that puts a blanket around their neck and instantly becomes a super hero that can fly and fight evil villains with their super powers, then goes on to play out this scene on the playground with their friends. That is the epitome of creative confidence. As I mentioned in a previous post, we lose this confidence over the course of our lives, and Makey Makey is a giant step to getting that confidence back. If the multitude of YouTube videos is any sign, it’s definitely working. In my mind, there is no doubt that Makey Makey is something that we can all easily pick up and use and move closer to being the best designers that we can.
I’d love to hear what you think about Makey Makey and ways to become better designers.
Filed under: Creativity, play
