Abstract
We designed a puzzle to stimulate bisociative thinking. This puzzle is an educational tool to challenge children’s creativity using Koestler’s theory of bisociation, which means combining two dissimilar concepts that are not related to produce an unfamiliar and unconventional idea. We explored the possibility of mental imagery formation of a particular creature with physical-ontological puzzle components that rather being ambiguous are in the familiar form of head, body, and support. The absurdity of the puzzle components, e.g. head-body-like components, head-tail-like components, and fin-tail-horn-wing-like components, would reportedly encourage users to generate unexpected imaginary figures that activate imaginative storytelling skills: e.g. ‘A finned BIRD crawling in the ocean’, ‘A winged SNAKE swimming in the sky’, and ‘A footed FISH flying on land’. The puzzle combinations were observed qualitatively through storytelling (A: Animal; B: Body; C: Capability; D: Domain). The reports show that ambiguous figure combinations have the potential to create rich storytelling.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to Research Center for Cultural Product and Environment (PPPBL-LPPM ITB) for the Research Excellence Grant (RU 2015). The Association for Advancement of Small Business (PROSPECT Program-PUPUK) and all of the members involved in this research.
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Junaidy, D.W., Nagai, Y., Isdianto, B., Mori, S. (2019). A Concept-Synthesizing Construction Set for Bisociative Thinking. In: Chakrabarti, A. (eds) Research into Design for a Connected World. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 135. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5977-4_7
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