Student guide: From Inspiration to Invention

1. Choose the supplied fictional plaza scenario, a clearly safe source, or a general creative problem. Do not start with a request to reproduce a named work or person’s style.
2. Open the Lab Notebook or the Inspiration Analysis worksheet.
3. Write the feeling, function, audience need, or experience that interests you.
4. Make two lists: general ingredients you may carry forward, and source-specific details you will leave behind.
5. Change at least three dimensions—such as setting, purpose, medium, point of view, palette, structure, audience, or scale.
6. Add at least two ingredients that come from your own purpose, place, audience, or observation.
7. Write a short source-neutral brief. Another person should understand it without hearing the name of a familiar source.
8. Make a small sketch, written scene, storyboard, alt-text description, or optional AI-assisted artifact from that brief.
9. Complete the Creative Recipe and Provenance Card. Record what you know, what you left out, and what still needs review.
10. Download your notebook as Markdown or JSON before leaving if you want to retain it. The notebook does not save or send your notes automatically.

Recovery tips

If your first brief still needs a named source to make sense, return to the general ingredient and change more than one dimension. If you do not know whether you can use an asset, do not upload it. Use the fictional scenario or make a no-tool version instead. If a tool refuses a request, do not disguise the same request; write a different, legitimate goal or stop.

---

Source: labs/from-inspiration-to-invention/companions/student-step-by-step.md