Adding a restriction to your problem space can be really helpful

Techcrunch has an interesting story about White Cane Label, an on-line clothing shop designed specifically for blind shoppers. The shop's website, which should open in the Autumn, will use sound and text to help shoppers find their way around. I think this is a really interesting idea. Adding these kinds of restrictions to a problem can often force one to thing very differently. For example, when we started developing the multimedia creativity course, we wanted it to be easy to translate. This meant that the slides couldn't have any words on them. Every concept had to be explained through pictures. Initially we thought this would be very difficult, but once we started work we gradually found that by limiting ourselves to cartoon images, we could actually explain the core ideas far more simply. Next time you are faced with a problem, try placing some extra barriers around it to see if it helps you break free.