The McDonald’s Theory of Creativity An Article by Jon Bell jonbell.medium.com I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s. An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic! It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones. The surprising effectiveness of writing and rewriting creativityideasrepair
Levels of Scale Scale refers to how we perceive the size of an element or space relative to other forms around it. All things – a tea cup, a building, language, entire eco-systems – consist of smaller components. It is the relationship of the smaller elements which determines the character and degree of life of the whole. Objects which contain a high degree of life tend to contain a beautiful range of scales within, which exist at a series of well-marked intervals and have clearly recognizable jumps between them. To have good levels of scale, it is extremely important that the jumps between different scales of centers not be too great or too small. Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order The scale of resolution determines what is seen