In this book, Kunitake Saso comes up with a novel way of thinking: hybrid thinking, which is both convincing and useful. He stressed that hybridity is effective to transfer creativity in the virtual world into intellectual productivity in the real world.

hybrid thinking: uses both linear and nonlinear thinking

In this book, Kunitake Saso comes up with a novel way of thinking: hybrid thinking, which is both convincing and useful. He stressed that hybridity is effective to transfer creativity in the virtual world into intellectual productivity in the real world. He asserts that balancing the left brain’s power of logic and the right brain’s power of imagination is significant to hybridity, and he thinks there are three stages of it, quality of input, conceptual leap, and output.

He maintains that there are different ways of hybrid thinking, and I list some of them:

  • hybrid thinking is the hybrid of different axis
  • hybrid thinking is the hybrid of visual and text
  • hybrid thinking is the hybrid of user segments and user needs
  • hybrid thinking is the hybrid of new ideas and familiar world
  • hybrid thinking is the hybrid of novel ideas and the most appealing way

According to Saso, the hybrid of the different axis is significant to innovation. Without this ability, a designer can only consider the situation on one single axis, which means every situation has already been considered by other people. When considering different axis, it’s a totally different picture. I mean, by mixing different axes, we can get a multi-dimensional grid, on which we can find more cross-connections of different axes. For example, considering both the Human axis and the Area axis, it’s possible for a designer to find a new way of life and livelihood of people with different some common features. Every connection could be a new design, and that’s why Saso thinks that the hybrid of the different axis should be emphasized.

He also emphasizes The Back of the Napkin, a hybrid of visual and text. text is boring and hard to understand, while visual is simple and easy to read. Combine these two sides of the note together, there comes up the visual thinking techniques. This point of view is inspiring for me because I’m preparing my group presentation next week. The theme of our group is “the recommender system, pros & cons”, It’s not easy to excogitate a good way of presenting it. So this method could be helpful. Our group decides to do it together this weekend, and by translating the logical structure of the advantages and disadvantages of recommendation systems into visual information, we can find what is important and what is intriguing.

Here, I’ll address my understanding of hybridity in the field of presentation. Nowadays, presentation is more like a combination of text and pictures, but without the inner connection of mind and PowerPoint. That’s why the presentation in JI is more and more boring these years. By illustrate the new ideas in a familiar world, it could be easier to make the audiences to understand the new concept in your presentation. Both “The planet has a fever” and “1000 songs in your pocket” are so easy to understand that nobody will be confused by these concepts. In my condition, to illustrate the concept of the recommender system, I may use “APPs are spying on you” and “Recommend what you like” instead of “Collect your daily browsing records to get your preferences, and then compare them with other users to recommend items you may like”. In this way, I also present novel ideas in the most appealing way, and it’s not a simple illustration of a new concept. In contrast, it’s a conceptual leap which can help a presenter to make his or her presentation more compelling.

Hybridity means not in a single way and balances the left brain and the right brain. It’s not only useful for designers but for presenters and many other jobs that what to convince others.

References

[1] The Non-Designer’s Guide to Des, Saso Kunitake, P33-66