The “six thinking hats” feedback system, developed in the 1980s by psychologist Edward de Bono as an extension of his ideas on parallel thinking, is a way of giving structured feedback in one of six “personas”. By playing one of the six roles, and being forced to provide feedback of a certain type against one’s natural instincts, the feedback process should, theoretically at least, be much more productive and less adversarial.

Today’s workshop saw us present our creative self-portrait elements to each other in small groups, with other members of the group each assuming one of four hats:

Yellow – optimistic, positive, something that works well
Red – immediate gut reaction, emotion
Black – something that doesn’t work
Green – alternatives, new ideas

I’m not particularly happy with what I put together for my creative self-portrait, so presenting it to a group and having to talk about or justify my pieces of media was daunting. But, thanks in part to the hat system – which ensures you receive positive comments as well as negative ones – it ended up being an enjoyable exercise.

One finding that I’ll take away from the process is that too many of the pieces I chose actually say the same things about me, and I could instead have used those pieces as an opportunity to explore other facets of my personality.

As the yellow hat, responsible for giving positive or optimistic feedback, I was able to let my group-mates know how much their self-portraits impressed me (which is true – they were all great). Doling out good vibes is a fun thing to do.

I really valued this exercise as one of the things I want to achieve in this program is to learn to give and receive better feedback. Structured feedback like the six thinking hats offers an abstracted way to provide honest, constructive feedback while separating the feedback system from the creative process.