1.25.11

(1) Read and be prepared to discuss:
Twyla Tharp, “An A in Failure,” The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), pp. 210-229. 
Henry Petroski, “Design as Revision,” in To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, pp. 75-84.
How to Give and Receive Criticism
(2) Blog:
What do Petroski and Tharp have to say about the importance of revision? 
What are some of the criteria by which Petroski and Tharp each define failure, and what role does failure play in revision?

Revision is important according to Tharp because it is a way of editing in private before exposing your mistakes/idea to the outer world. Revision is important according to Petroski because it is the successive elimination of faults and errors that creates a successful final product.
Tharp defines failure as a cleansing tool, an aid to push oneself further; a failure is ground zero, allowing one to shoot only upward. After a failure, there comes revision, therefore failure precedes, causes, and/or inspires revision. Petroski defines failure and states that failure as something not perceived as failure usually by most people; failure helps revision because preceding failures help create good revisions.

1.18.11

Dodds and Smith define fixation as a block that impedes someone while she or he is problem solving.

Gerber recommends throwing away previously generated ideas when the ideas do not seem to be developing successfully (when), to make way for more successful ideas (why).

My reaction to the idea of throwing away some parts of my team's project ideas is completely accepting; I can't claim that all of our ideas are good, so some of them definitely need to be disposed of.

I think Johnson's thesis of ideas being the result of several "hunches" is credible, because one person cannot think of every aspect of everything. However, that does not necessarily mean that having a group of people work together to make ideas will produce even a single good idea. Though my group has been brainstorming since before break, we have not come up with one truly sustainable idea. However, that may change soon. Hopefully.