Handout
- Greeting Cards Handout
Time
45 minutes (requires prior preparation)Related Activities
- Brain Purge [82]
- Museum Madness [86]
- Altered States [91]
- Brainsketching [94]
Procedure
- Give out copies of the Greeting Cards Handout and answer any questions the
members may have. - Provide each group with the materials needed to create greeting cards.
- Instruct group members to look through the catalogs and magazines and cut out
about ten pictures that look interesting. - Tell the group members to paste the pictures onto sheets of paper folded in half
and write catchy text. Indicate that the most effective cards use humor for tradi-
tional themes such as belated birthday, divorce, friendship, or get well. - After all the cards are constructed, reveal the problem to the participants.
- Direct the group members use the text, pictures, and themes of the cards as stim-
uli for ideas. - Have them write down their ideas on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note), and place
them on flip charts for evaluation.
Debrief/Discussion
This is an excellent exercise to allow participants to express their creativity, to create a cli-
mate conducive to creative ideas, and to generate ideas. It obviously is a “hands on” exer-
cise that can keep participants engaged in a fun activity and generate some ideas as well.
As with many group idea generation activities, this activity also can provide a team-
building function due to the type of interactions required.
Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:- What was most helpful about this exercise?
- What was most challenging?
- What can we apply?
Brainwriting with Unrelated Stimuli 373
12 VG 355-388 10/6/04 1:30 PM Page 373