Context & Cognitive and conceptual mapping of imagination

Context

 There are many types of experiences like emotional, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, sensorial, and contextual.  We live in todays world for context.  For example the 4 factors of religion : education, birth death and marriage control us by context.

  Why do we use squares to denote context? Because humans prefer squares in comparison to circles for many reasons:

·      They are rigid

·      They have defined edges and corners

·      Because humans are so used to boxes from the time we were born. Eg: We were born in rooms aka squares

·      We humans prefer defined than flowing like all the natural forms around us

·      We humans created squares 

Squares and lines help us formulate our designs. In design everything is creating an experience. It all has to have an intellectual edge. It has to have an emotional flow an it must be in context. This is a reflective practice. The real form of design is based on assumptions.

Cognitive and conceptual mapping of imagination

  After a discussion we learnt how to use these tools. Any design has a process and to bring out all our ideas is part of this process. We broke down our thoughts into simpler ones to help us understand our own ideas better.   

  Cognitive and conceptual mapping of imagination involves plotting a graph with conceptual elements on the y axis and cognitive elements on the x axis. We then plotted ever single word that came to our minds when we thought about our project (in my case the hovebub). After this connections are made for every word on the graph. The number of connections between the words are listed down and some words turn out to have more connections than the others.  Then the first 5-15 words with the most connections are used to articulate a hypothesis about the design. This hypothesis should be in context to the design.

Eg : with body as my context love, death, appeal, machine and frame were the words with the most connections. The hypothesis – My body is an appealing machine that loves unconditionally but is ultimately framed by death.   

I then made a cognitive map based on all my ideas of the hovebub.

A product must satisfy the main aspects of – Experiences, Context, Intellect and Emotion. The drawing below justifies this balance. 

If you use this tool of  Cognitive and conceptual mapping of imagination and are able to map effectively your idea can be put into effective action.