Since being taunted by a small preview pack of these cards earlier this year I’ve been looking forward to receiving the full 50-card deck which I pre-ordered back in November.
Since purchasing Michael Michalko’s Thinkpak creative thinking card pack a few months ago I’ve really taken to card decks as a great way to apply random ideas and approaches to a problem or idea rather than follow a linear process.
Recently I undertook to try and catalogue all the knowledge in my book collection with a “knowledge index” – essentially methods, techniques, frameworks etc to help prompt me to consider everything I know in every aspect of my work. Of course it’s simply impossible to run through the entire checklist at every point due to the sheer amount of knowledge against time pressures and working environment constraints so card decks like Mental Notes are a great way to ensure you consider at least some of the insights that psychology has to contribute to design and in an accessible way rather than flipping through a heavy psych or human factors text which can counter-productively affect intense creative design and brainstorming sessions.
Most professional designers won’t find much new in this card deck but these cards are certainly a great prompt to jog your memory and help you access the full body of knowledge in your head and put it to practical use in your everyday work.
// purecaffeine.com: user experience design, social experience design, social media, Gov 2.0, design thinking and service design blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
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I really like the concept of these cards! I like to learn and develop as a designer but i don’t always have time to read Hefty books , and when i do they often steer me away from my original direction but not in an inspiring way. These cards are great, I can imagine using these day to day and mind jogging tools with greta effect, if fact where can i buy!