This habit of drawing engaged one of his most important analyticaltools: analogy. Drawing from nature in detail forces the artist to understandboth underlying structure and surface detail, and this close examination ledLeonardo to make surprising connections, noting the resemblances betweenthe curls of hair and the movement of water, a sprouting seed and thevessels around the human heart, ropes and levers and tendons and bones.These connections would prove distracting – ‘lateral thinking at apathological level’, as Kemp puts it – but the result was that ‘he couldalways see further possibilities’.

Po is also an interjection, considered as an alternative to yes or no. Indicating that you need to know more before answering an expression of an idea or thought. Imagine it as a word that means: "I think I know what you mean, but can you say it in another way so I may more fully understand you".

A provocation is a statement that we know is wrong or impossible but used to create new ideas.

Critics have characterized lateral thinking as a pseudo-scientific concept, arguing de Bono's core ideas have never been rigorously tested or corroborated.[4]

The term was first used in 1967 by Maltese psychologist Edward de Bono in his book The Use of Lateral Thinking.

Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious.

Blogging, I want to argue, is a seasoned technology that is ripe for lateral thinking.

I think it was also Robin Sloan who recently directed my attention to this Wikipedia page on the late Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi, who promoted what he called “Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology”: finding new and unexpected uses for technologies that have been around for a while and therefore (a) have clear patterns of use that you can rely on even when deviating from them, and (b) have decreased in price.

Some key themes arise from the two NNG reports on iPad usability: App designers should ensure perceived affordances / discoverability There is a lack of consistency between apps, lots of ‘wacky’ interaction methods. Designers should draw upon existing conventions (either OS or web) or users won’t know what to do. These are practical interaction design observations, but from a particular perspective, that of perceptual psychology. These conclusions are arrived at through a linear, rather than lateral process. By giving weight to building upon existing convention, because they are familiar to the user, there is a danger that genuinely new ideas (and the kind of ambition called for by Victor Bret) within tablet design will be suppressed. Kay’s vision of the Dynabook came from lateral thinking, and thinking about how children learn. Shouldn’t the items that we design for this device be generated in the same way?