Your Camera Phone as a Creativity Tool

You might not think of it that way, but you have a powerful tool for sparking creativity at your finger tips and always within reach.

Your mobile phone.

More specifically, the camera on your mobile phone.

No longer a grainy back-up to more traditional cameras, these days the resolution rivals the best digital cameras and they require toting around a separate device. The additional ability to edit, upload, and share images that you’ve captured adds to the creative tools in your mobile phone’s arsenal.

Here are a few ideas for using your phone’s camera to capture and inspire your own personal creativity:

Don’t lose your napkin notes
While I personally think few things are as creatively satisfying as scribbling down notes on the back of a napkin (or the front of the napkin for that matter) the problem comes when you shove those napkin notes in your pocket. The become torn or worn, and that’s if you didn’t forget to take them out of your pockets before you washed your pants — which destroys them entirely.  Take a moment to snap a photo with your camera of each napkin note and you’ll have a digital back-up in addition to your physical scribblings.

Don’t let your Whiteboard ideas get erased
Whiteboards are a wonderful way to work out ideas and project process, but they provide a finite amount of space to capture ever-expanding concepts. Capturing your whiteboard images on your mobile camera provides you an archive copy of your creativity and is a required steps before you erase anything from the board.

Inspirational images
We are visual animals. We see thousands of images a day and they connect us to a million ideas and emotions. Snap a photo to remind you of a concept or collect sparks from which to build your next idea. Animal, vegetable or mineral — you never know what big idea might be inspired by the smallest photo.

Record the broken thing
One of the major reasons we create new ways to do things is because the old way is broken. Use the video camera in your phone to document the current process. Add your narration to indicate areas in which you feel your ideas for improvement could be added.

Market research
If you’re developing a product, snap pictures of competition, the display shelves in stores, examples of advertising, and of customers buying and using the product.

Pitch practice
Once you have an idea ready for the world, you usually have to pitch it to someone with the ability to put it into action. Use the video camera to practice your pitch out loud. Watching the recording will help you improve your physical presence and your ability to answer objections.

These suggestions are just the beginning… just a few ideas to get you started. They don’t even address all the things you can do with images and video once they are in the album itself and all the myriad ways you can distribute and share the inspiration and ideas you captured.