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Sometimes you get stuck in a creative rut,
and it takes a li’l nudge to get out of the rut, jus’ sayin‘

This deck of cards on professional playing-card stock offers 70 insights into design, creativity, and software.

These insights prompt you to adopt new perspectives, identify dissonance, look for structure, and explore different approaches.

Drawn from Mary Shaw’s decades of experience in software design and engineering, they provide thoughtful guidance to overcome creative blocks and discover fresh perspectives.

Insightful nudges for creativity and design

Each card has an insight on the front, which is elaborated on the back with more detail and an attribution.

Nudges include observations about the nature of the world and advice on what to do in practice.

Nudges offer advice on design, engineering, systems & society, research, abstraction & specification, and education.

They draw heavily on software system design but apply to a wide spectrum of design and educational settings.



 Question authority; rethink assumptions - Experts generate alternatives. [Experts 16] “sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop and think of it.” [Edward Bear, bumping down the stairs, Pooh 26] [Timothy Leary, maybe Socrates] key =#16


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an image display of six cards with the front and back text

Useful in many settings

These creativity nudges capture some of the insights that I offer in technical discussions to remind people to take a fresh point of view, identify dissonance, look for structure, and more. They capture what should be common sense about creativity and design, especially in software, but often isn’t recognized as such.

You can use the cards for personal stimulation or to help structure group discussions. There's probably a game to be had as well,

More details available

The explanations on the backs of the cards contain citations to the sources that influenced my understanding of the nudges. In many cases I recall the events that triggered the insight behind the nudge, and these nudges cite the source. In other cases, more recent research has resonated strongly with the nudge, and these are also cited. Sometimes, though, the nudges express opinions that formed gradually over time, so there some stuff I just figured out.

The full bibliography that translates those citations to full references is available.

A booklet with the references and images of all the cards is also available.