Purpose

Apples is a creative exercise used to show how important it is to see things from new perspectives as well as to create a quantity of ideas. The exercise challenges the boundaries of our already established perception and forces us to think in new ways and adopt new perspectives. This exercise could be held in groups or individually. 99% of all ideas are not unique. To find the unique 1%, new perspectives and ideas must be found.
Use the method when you would like to start a creative session or when you are stuck in idea generation processes.

Instructions

This exercise could be held in groups or individually. Basically each group or individual are given the instructions to draw as many pictures of an apple as possible on the blank paper, in complete silence. They are given a time limit of 10 -15 minutes. There are several different variations of the method.
If you want to be able to see the development of the group or the individual you could draw as many squares as possible on the paper beforehand and instruct the participants to start by drawing the first picture from the top to the bottom.

Do:

  • Challenge your perceptions.

Don’t:

  • Don’t speak when doing the exercise.

Facilitator’s role

The facilitator gives the instructions to the participants and make sure that they follow the rules. It is important that the facilitator don’t help the participants in any way.

Follow-up questions

  • Why did you think we did this?
  • What learnings do you take with you from this exercise?
  • How was it?
  • Do you want to change something before next session?
  • Did you feel that this was valuable for our project? In what way?