Thinking Hats

You need to use the 'Thinking Hat' concept to evaluate your Quilt Book. Here is a guide to what the hats mean. Some of the questions are about the quilt making process. Some of them need to be adapted or thought about so that you can make them relevant.

Hat	Explanation	De Bono says to think of…	Key Questions
White Hat	·         focuses directly on the available information ·         facts ·         neutral information  ·         NOT argument or making suggestions	Blank paper Computer printout	1. What information do we have? 2. What information is missing? 3. How do we get the information we need? eg How do we find the area of the material?
Red hat	·         emotions ·         feeling ·         hunches  ·         intuition  ·         likes and dislikes	Fire and warmth	1.  What do you like about the idea? 2.  How do you feel about this? 3.  What don’t you like about this?
Black Hat	·         most used of all the hats  ·         concerned with truth and reality  ·         hat of critical thinking ·         prevents us from making mistakes	Stern judge	1.  Will it work? 2.  Does it fit? 3.  What are the dangers and the problems of sewing and measuring and calculating?
Yellow Hat	·         benefits of an idea ·         yellow hat is full of hope- logical hat so the reason behind the hope must be given ·         seeks to find and show the benefits	Sunshine and optimism	1.  What are the benefits? ie What do we hope to learn from this? 2.  Why should it work?
Green Hat	·         ‘active’ hat ·         used for creative thinking  ·         concerned with proposals, suggestions, new ideas, new alternatives, new solutions and inventions  ·         emphasis is on ‘newness’	Grass, trees, vegetation and growth	Key questions should focus on: 1.  Exploration of the ideas 2.  Proposals and suggestions 3.  Alternatives 4.  New ideas 5.  Provocations eg What was my design? How did I make it different to other people's ideas?
Blue Hat	·         overview  ·         the process control ·         above the thinking’ looking down on the thinking  ·         thinking about thinking!	Blue Sky (above everything) Conductor of an orchestra	What sort of thinking is needed? ie How do we solve our problems? Where are we now? What is the next step? Where have we been?