How seempli Ignites Creativity To Support Ideation And Innovation

How would you describe seempli in a few words?

seempli is a platform for developing and applying creativity skills. It includes thousands of playful open-ended creative challenges. When played with on a daily basis, seempli will improve your ability to see things differently, make unexpected connections, and come up with new ideas based on the things you observe around you.

What inspired you to create the platform? How did it all start?

I am originally an urban photographer. Most of my work is based on capturing things that other people pass by and ignore. I always try to bring them to life, imagine the story behind them, and even use them to provoke emotions. For me, this ability to see things differently – to take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary – is the essence of creativity. Any act of creativity – in technology, art, science, and even everyday problem-solving – is based on our ability to observe and imagine. While we are all born with a mind wired to do just that, most of us don’t use these abilities often enough, and like any skill, the less we use it, the harder it gets to get results when we eventually need them.

When I started to work on seempli I wanted to create a fun game-like platform that anyone can use on a daily basis as a trigger to observe the world, imagine, and see things differently. I started a pilot with a few friends, and it didn’t take long for us to realize the amazing effect this daily exercise had. People who never thought of themselves as creative actually came up with dozens of creative insights every day based only on things they saw around them and their imagination. Since then, our mission is to help anyone realize their creative potential and apply it to any challenge and opportunity in their lives.

Creativity is an essential part when it comes to building startups and new ventures. Where does seempli come in? What are some of the processes you apply?

We designed seempli around two working modes and we believe both of them are essential. The first is a daily practice which fits in seamlessly into your daily routine. The goal of this mode is to sharpen your creative observation and imagination skills constantly. Just like going to the gym to keep in physical shape, the seempli creativity gym is designed to keep you in creative shape using thousands of fun open-ended creative challenges.

The second mode is using the platform as part of your ideation and problem-solving processes. We designed dozens of fun and effective workflows (we call seempli Gears) based on the seempli building blocks, that you can apply in ideation, brainstorming, and problem-solving. So whether you are trying to design a new product, feature, or service, or you need a creative solution to a concrete problem that will turn it into an opportunity, the seempli Platform can help you come up with surprising creative ideas.

You mention that you “turn creativity into a habit as natural as breathing”. How does this work exactly?

Each creative challenge in seempli starts with an invitation to observe the world around you and look at it differently. The vast majority of the challenges can be done in your “dead-time”: when you are commuting, or walking in the street, or standing in line, or even during your lunch break. When you work with seempli on a daily basis, sometimes even throughout the day, you get numerous chances to look around you, see things you usually ignore and imagine or create something based on them. In a sense, that’s what all of us did as children naturally. seempli is just re-igniting these capabilities we all had.

People who are working with seempli literally start to see the world differently. When you get into the habit, nothing looks the same, and you realize everything around you has a potential to be part of something new and different. It is like going to the gym on a regular basis. The benefit is that you get in shape and build your muscles. With seempli, you get in creative shape and sharpen your senses and your imagination.

Can you give our readers an example of an activity they can do right now?

Absolutely. The following activity is one of the basic challenges in seempli, yet it is extremely powerful. It starts with the Smiley seempli Seed. The instructions are very simple: look around you wherever you are and find things (not people) that look like they are smiling. Try not to think about what this means and what you can find. Instead, just memorize the word “Smiley” and look around you mindfully throughout the day. Whenever you see something smiling, take a picture of it so you can reflect on your creative insights later. Don’t settle for one insight. Just keep looking for smiling things wherever you go.

By the end of the day, chances are you will have quite a few pictures of smiling things. You will probably feel surrounded by smiles. You won’t be able to stop seeing them. Try to reflect back on your day and you will notice that you have observed things around you more than you normally do. You rediscovered things which were there all the time, and you turned them into something different with nothing more than your imagination.

This is a very simple exercise, but it really captures the essence playing and working with seempli. It’s 100% fun and the impact on your mind is immediate. The more you play, the more natural it becomes to observe and imagine. And that is the essence of being creative.

Are you using seempli internally? How does that affect the viewpoints of the team?

That’s a great question. Apart from practicing our creativity on a daily basis with seempli, we have been using seempli and its core concepts, from day one. Every part of the platform was initially conceived by observing things around us, seeing them differently, and using them as raw materials for something new. All the challenges are being created that way.

Even the name seempli was the result of the same workflow. Before I came up with it, I struggled with finding a name for the platform for some time. But then I took the seempli approach, and just walked down the street and observed the world mindfully. After a couple of hours, I saw some things that were immediately rearranged in my mind to form the name.

Whenever we face a challenge, whether it is coming up with an idea for a new workshop or a new part of the platform or some new marketing approach, we use seempli for ideation. Naturally, not all ideas are applied or even can be applied. But that is the nature of the ideation process. We just want to have as many (and diverse) creative ideas as possible on the table before we start analyzing them and choosing the best ones to try.

The question has been brought up whether technology (smartphones, tablets, etc.) is hindering our capacity to imagine things. What’s your take on this?

I don’t want to create a false impression, so I will say upfront: I love technology, I love gadgets, and I think that generally speaking the options we have today for creating, communicating, and learning are better than in any other time in history. Unfortunately, many people are not using the potential of technology and instead are drawn to less productive and creative usages.

One of my goals in creating seempli was to encourage people to look less at their smartphone screen and more at the world around them. We want people to experience more because we know that experiencing the world is the key to changing it.

Some of our users took this chance and turned seempli into an opportunity to play with friends and family. People are observing things together, imagining, capturing insights (yes, using their smartphones) and sharing them. So we encourage them to use the same technology for being more imaginative as well as connecting to each other on a new level.

So, it all depends on the mix of things you do with the technology you have. If you use your smartphone or tablet to read books, play intelligent games, and challenge yourself creatively – they can be wonderful additions to your creative toolbox.

What’s next for seempli?

We are adding new building blocks to the seempli platform on a weekly basis. Our collection of Seeds, Prisms, Boosters, and Gears – from which all creative challenges and workflows are made – is constantly growing.

On top of that, we are always thinking about new types of building blocks and new ways to apply seempli to real-world challenges. We just recently added a new type of Prisms which creates even more surprising gameplay. Our creativity gym is continually evolving so you can work with seempli for years and never do the same challenge twice (although even if you do come across the same challenge you are always bound to find new insights because both the world and your mind are always changing).

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

My one advice is always to keep looking around you for raw materials for new ideas. Regardless of the domain of your startup, inspiration can be found practically anywhere. The best ideas in any domain you can think of were born from unexpected connections and associations.

Too often we are drawn into a specific problem, or get hooked up on a predefined path, and the result is that we can easily miss great opportunities. I try to collect building blocks all the time and continuously try to create new things (or solutions) out of them.

One specific application of this is observing your users and trying to see things from their perspective. This is the key to building a product that really provides value and enhancing it with an excellent user experience.

 

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