Product Review — 75 Tools for Creative Thinking

A short review of a set of 75 facilitation techniques/ideas on cards.

75 Tools for Creative Thinking

Authors — Sara Cordoba Rubino, Wimer Hazenberg, Menno Huisman

Pages/cards — 75 cards + a really small booklet

Publisher — Bispublishers

The version that I have — 7th printing, 2022

Disclaimer:

I’ve bought the product myself.

Views presented in this review are subjective.

I review the product “as is” — I focus on what I see, read, touch, etc.

As this is a short review I’ll just focus on points that I see as most important.

I facilitate meetings and events from time to time and I’m interested in different approaches to group process, tools that can be helpful, etc. I’ve bought this product out of curiosity one day. There’s also an application on Google Play , although I have only used it for some minutes, not really got deeper into it.

So that being said — let’s have a look at the things at hand.

Overview

This is a set consisting of 75 cards with techniques and a short & small booklet with instructions on how to use cards, summary of every technique, ideas on technique combinations.

When it comes to cards they are rather solid, printed on thick paper, big enough to be usable and fit textual descriptions.

Cards are divided into 5 categories:

• Get Started (12 cards) — define the problem, set a context
• Check Around (16 cards)— gather information
• Break it Down (10 cards) — organize information
• Break Free (23 cards) — generate ideas
• Evaluate & Select (14 cards) — as the name suggests

Some of those techniques can be used in different categories, but I do understand limitations of the product format.

When it comes to techniques assortment on cards, I’d say it’s more about quantity, with occasional quality.

Techniques that you can find in this box set are in my opinion variations of brainstorming, mapping and creativity techniques with a focus on generating a high quantity of ideas. So nothing new or innovative — you can find similar techniques around the Internet. There is nothing wrong in such a thing though — a handy set of basic & advanced techniques can be helpful at times.

Minor gripes

I had problems with understanding some of techniques from the set — like Special Moments, Three Loops or Consequence Triangles. I have no idea how to use them based on the description given. Possibly it’s an unclear wording issue stemming from a rather limited space on cards.

There was also one technique which confused me a bit. It’s called Question Script and the description says “to quickly test a set of ideas before selecting one”. Time allocation is shown as +/- 180 minutes. So is it relatively “quickly” or is it ~3 hours?

I have found the font size too small, I have difficulty to focus on a wall text printed in such a small font. It’s slightly better in the Android application. But decide by yourself — take a look at the picture.

Summary

I think that this product can be helpful for beginning facilitators, people who work with other people like educators and in general people who want to use different techniques.

Experienced facilitators may consider spending those ~22 $ (as of 2023) to potentially learn something new from this set of 75 techniques. Full Android application costs ~6 $ where I live.

But hey, you can be smart with this one — download the Android application, there are 2 techniques per category available for free.

Read them, see whether you like the style and decide for yourself.

Thanks for reading,

MJ