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Lucy Rogers

COLUMN SPARK

here do ideas

come from?

My most fun

projects have come

from other people:

“Can you hack

my robot dinosaurs?” “Can you make

the end of my concertina fall off?” “Can

you make seven inch high dressmakers

mannequins?” And so on...

Engineers are not exactly renowned for

their social skills. I am not keen on social

situations, personally. However, I make a

special effort to talk to people who work in

completely different areas to ones I have

any experience of.

My intro line goes something like:

“Hello, I am Lucy.

I make fun, one-

off things that

solve problems.”

And then I listen.

I had not been

to any kind of

theme park for

over twenty years

when I was asked

by the owner of

one to hack his

robot dinosaurs.

My musical skills stalled, aged ten, when

I gave up playing the recorder, but a

musician in a comedy band wanted help

with a prop. I own a total of two frocks, and

a dressmaker asked for help to market her

bespoke products.

I would never have guessed that these

were problems anyone had. And yet I find

there are quirky problems everywhere.

Problems that people have been searching

for a solution to for years. The sort of

problems I love.

Ideas bounce off ideas. I look at what

others are making. But I also listen to

what stories are being told, what is

happening in the news, what people are

talking about:

“I want my shoes to massage my feet

when I have walked a long way” resulted

in a sentiment analysis massage pillow.

“I used an e-cig to make smoke

for a laser gun” resulted in desktop

fire crackers.

Some ideas are happy coincidences

• the fartometer I made started out as
  a carbon dioxide sensor. Until... the cat
  farted near it.
  If I am having trouble finding
  inspiration, I use tools such as
  inventotron-3000.
  com. I am
  looking forward
  to making the
  time to construct
  a bicycle that
  squirts a laminar
  flow water jet,
  infused with
  rainbow LEDs
  from the front
  basket to the
  back pannier.
  To help overcome creative blocks, I
  find ‘Oblique Strategies’, by Brian Eno
  and Peter Schmidt, useful. These offer
  challenging constraints and encourage
  lateral thinking.
  Some projects are worth doing. Others
  not so much. Tools such as catwigs.org
  can help you decide if your project is as
  useful as antibiotics, as a garage door
  remote, or indeed, as a cat wig.
  Where’s your next idea going to
  come from?

Finding ideas

Great projects start as great ideas, where do yours come from?

W

Lucy Rogers

@DrLucyRogers

Lucy is a maker, an engineer,

and a problem solver. She is

adept at bringing ideas to life.

She is one of the cheerleaders

for the maker industry and is

Maker-In-Chief for the Guild of

Makers: guildofmakers.org

I had not been to a

theme park for over

20 years when I was

asked by the owner

of one to hack his

robot dinosaurs