1. The Klondike Space Creative Process In Product Design

2. Form a team of 5 to 6 members

3. The Klondike Game Here’s is Klondike* and you know that the mother lode is somewhere around *Klondike is located on the outskirts of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada

4. Game Rules The board is Klondike and you are looking for the mother lode (the main vein of gold ore) The mother lode is denoted by By overturning a piece, you dig up and sieve a small patch of land The pieces may be empty or may have one of these dot patterns: Dot patterns denote the amount of gold trace found in that piece, more dots, more gold Increase in gold trace may imply higher probability of the mother lode being around, but not necessarily reflects the actual distance from it

5. How to Win You have $150 to begin with Overturning a piece adjacent to your last move costs you $1 Overturning a piece NOT next to your current location costs you $6 The team who has found the mother lode with the least amount of time and money is the winner If this is your last move

6. Resources Record Sheet Cross out the resources used for mining each piece of land: 1 unit for adjacent piece and 6 units for the others 1111111666 1111111666 1111111666 1111111666 1111111666 1111111666

7. Before You Begin Each team elects a leader The leader choose 1 assistants The duty of leader and assistants  Make sure that the players do not overturn the board  Record the spending  Observe how the players search for gold You have 15 minutes

8. Discussion What had happened What strategies employed

9. Winning Strategies

10. Strategies previous groups employed Digging randomly Blanket search (spiral, zigzag, etc.) ‘Minesweeper’ style boundary expanding search Resource cost equivalent sampling

11. Klondike and Homing Search Before any gold was found, the search was random (and thus a ‘Klondike search’) As soon as promising clues are found - e.g. finding traces of gold - the method of searching shifts to that of Homing. The presence of gold traces in a riverbed is an example of how the local terrain provides homing clues (local gradient) to help point the prospector to the mother lode

12. “The process of innovation is, virtually by definition, filled with uncertainty; it is a journey of exploration into a strange land.” Ken Arrow Nobel Prize–winning economist

13. The Terrain Klondike Space is an analogy used by David Perkins to describe the creative activities A person searching for solution to a problem believes that an optimal solution is ‘out there’, but has no idea where the solution lays The gradient of the local terrain is a measure of how close the current solution to the optimal solution is in terms of performance

14. Rarity Problem Flatland, no guidance provided by local contours, i.e. no solution at sight

15. Plateau Problem Terrain flats out after a series of optimisation, progress stalled

16. Isolation Problem Immense difficulties that cannot be circumvented

17. Oasis Problem Terrain points to a sub-optimal solution

18. Discussion Can you think of a situation similar to each of the 4 scenarios?

19. Creative Obstacles Problems  Rarity problem  Plateau problem  Isolation problem  Oasis problem The system that can search a Klondike Space and overcome the above 4 problems is said to be CREATIVE

20. "If you don't know where you are going, then any path will take you there." - Lewis Carroll

21. Further references There are some interesting books written or edited by David Perkins on creativity in our library:  T49.5.I6 1992 Inventive minds* T49.5.I6 1992  BF441.P46 2000 Archimedes' bathtub BF441.P46 2000  LB1590.3.P47 1986 Knowledge as design LB1590.3.P47 1986 Discussions on Klondike and homing in the context of TRIZ  http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2002/02/b/index.htm http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2002/02/b/index.htm * A full description on Klondike space can be found in the “The Topography of Invention” chapter of the book “Inventive Minds”