A very simple Oblique Strategies shuffler with my custom deck of cards, remixed to promote lateral thinking in my field of work: cybersecurity. A number of cards are pulled from software and tech writers, which are cited inline.
Need to unstick yourself? It's available here: https://oblique.tweedge.net/
Please feel free to submit new card ideas as issues or PRs - ideally with a little context, or something to link back to! Though please be warned that this is my personal copy, and I won't take all suggestions - fork and deploy your own! :)
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's earliest decks included this instruction:
These cards evolved from our separate observations on the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated.
They can be used as a pack (a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case, the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.
- No built in refresh - if you're stuck and need direction, take what the cards give you and try to run with it, or pivot off what you got to find a new direction and start. Don't get stuck refreshing for the "right" card. There is no "right" card. If you're a little frustrated, it's working.
- These oblique strategies are less oblique; few might even verge on prescriptive. Tech and art do have strong parallels, but my creative strategies for expression versus problem-solving are different. If you are in a place where you need something more abstract, the original shuffler with Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's original deck is included.
Obviously, Brian Eni and Peter Schmidt for coming up with the concept. Need a physical copy of the original Oblique Strategies? Support the original creators!
Code:
- The design and source code for this site is forked oblique-tab by wookiehangover, then reduced to the bare minimum.
oblique-tabdepends on the oblique-strategies Node module by ceejbot, which I've cloned directly to this repository and tweaked to be browser-only.
Reading material + relevant ideas + initial cards: