Making is Thinking

Design Thinking is just Good Thinking

2010-01-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Vanessa Miemis on her blog Emergent by Design has a nice summary of Design Thinking in her post titled What Is Design Thinking, but ultimately misses a key point. Design thinking is actually just GOOD thinking...which means asking the right questions instead of jumping to solutions. Good thinking is not limited to the world of design, but is, however, rare in the world generally.

Dan Roberts, in a comment on her blog, links to a video of Patrick Whitney explaining what design thinking is. And it is indeed a good summary of how to ask the right questions in order to innovate. But it is not really about design thinking but rather about Good Thinking.

Contrary to what Dan suggests, most of the good engineers and business strategists (certainly the ones that I have worked with) think this way in their own domains. After all, innovation does occur elsewhere other than design. If you forget for a moment that Patrick is talking about design thinking and ask what he is really diagramming in his video, he is saying that to get innovation you have to use abstraction to enlarge the domain of your inquiry about the nature of the problem. Well, interestingly enough, this is what every clever and innovative person who has ever had a good idea (particularly world transforming one) does.

What Patrick is actually saying in that video is that good thinking is about asking the right questions...not about jumping to solutions. And I suspect that if you look at how good MBAs and Engineers are trained, they will be taught to ask the right questions to identify possibilities because that mitigates risk.

So in the end analysis, there is no such thing as Design thinking...there is only GOOD thinking. Unfortunately, most people are pretty rubbish at thinking...and so most of the decisions that people make are pretty average and not particularly innovative. But blame that on the education system, not the lack of "design thinking".

But of course, the entire debate about "design thinking" is about trying to assess whether or not this "new" way of thinking can help businesses innovate and make the world a better place....

So, as for whether or not we can design better futures with "design/good thinking:...well, I do believe we can design better solutions to the problems we have and understand now (which have logical extensions/impacts into the future). But if one really understands how complex systems work, every thing we (and everyone else) does has an impact on how our future will play out...and not always in the ways that we can anticipate (because we are not omniscient). The design process, while good at coming up with innovative solutions to problems we can identify now, is not so good at anticipating the future.

Part of the reason that businesses (and societies) prefer to respond to the present rather than design a better future is because actually the latter is largely impossible. What they tend to do is make plans and contingencies in order to be prepared to respond to an unpredictable future where any number of things can happen.

Like all complex systems, the future is the result of the cumulative decisions of all the components in that system acting freely. To reduce them to a deterministic future (e.g. designing the future) is to destroy the very structure of that complexity and eliminate emergence as a fundamental, organic and evolutionary phenomenon...and I would argue, is ultimately futile. From an application of resources point of view (e.g. return on investment relative to the likelyhood of achieving a successful outcome), it is often better to respond intelligently to the present than to invest too much into trying to control or anticipate the future.

A good example of this phenomenon how the world community is currently approaching the issues of global warming. Because the system is so complex, the investment so significant and the outcomes of any given set of solutions so unpredictable, that most governments/businesses/people are not willing to do anything until it becomes a crisis. But this is not just a problem with societies, governments or businesses....this is a fundamental human trait. Very few of us are proactive about all the things we should be doing to ensure we are successful and live longer and happier lives...we only tend to react when a problem presents itself or there is a crisis. Unfortunately, all the good thinking and good designs for how things "should" or "could" be can't change this.

Having said that, designing our own futures (or rather trying to influence the future that we would like to live in) is also a fundamental part of our psyche (and our attempts at improving our individual and collective survival)...so we will always want to design better futures. But those of us who create these solutions need also to accept that there will always be a tension between what any individual or group imagines "should be" and what actually happens. After all, the future is not our decision alone...it is the result of the often unintended consequences of our collective (and individual) attempts to influence it for our own interests colliding with all those unintentional actions and random events that make up the complex system we exist in.

So the best we can do is to just be open, inquisitive, adaptive, rigourous and thorough in both our thinking and our actions, enjoy ourselves...and hope for the best.

Designers need to get perspective and get real

2009-11-22T15:27:00.001-08:00

A rather long missive in response to an article by Emily Campbell at the RSA which takes on the rather questionable notion of design as a great social resource for improving the world beyond "making stuff" (e.g. co-creation, social innovation, design thinking, etc.): http://designandsociety.rsablogs.org.uk/2009/11/20/oh-social-schmocial-beyond-co-design

.....

I think designers (myself included) make the mistake of believing that creativity and creative problem-solving (e.g. the ability to make the world a better place through the practice of thoughtful and applied creativity) are somehow limited to those people trained and practiced in design (e.g. designers). A simple walk through the british museum or watching a random sample of videos from TED reveals that creativity, creative problem solving and making, in genera, have been in existence far longer than the formal notion of design...and certainly more productive.

The reality is that in a world where design has become a commodity, designers (and indeed the entire creative enterprise from art to music and design) is struggling with a massive identity crisis. If anyone can design, anyone can make (music, art or whatever), then what really is the value of a designer...or, indeed, a so-called "creative" practitioner? We no longer hold our once vaulted position (in modernism) as arbitors of the aesthetic good and the great...as the guardians and architects of the utopian future that would leave behind the dark days of war, poverty and social inequality that mar our industrial history.

And in spite of (or perhaps because of) the popularity of "design" that makes Ikea a more fitting (and successful) inheritor of modernist ideals than Vitsoe, designers' ability to create objects (or spaces) of beauty seems, in a world of climate change and impending global crisis, to be not only frivolous but irresponsible. No wonder design has gone "sustainable", "green" or "social". How else to shore up our failing position as individuals with something unique and important to offer the world?...because that is where it all begins, if we look hard enough. How could we possibly face a future where we are not as special as design school and history has made us believe we are?

So what is wrong, then, with co-design, design-thinking, social design, or, in the broadest sense, sharing our "tools" with those less fortunate than ourselves to help them fulfill our modernist destiny as benign saviours of the world? Well, the problem is that, while I don't disagree that there are some tools that designers have developed (even talents and skills unique to those people who choose to enter creative professions generally) that can be shared...we should be cautious in believing that outside our practice and training we have terribly much to offer.

Lateral thinking, pattern synthesis, intuition, insight (and many other skills we trade on) are not unique to design. However, manipulating the particular visual, audial or spatial patterns and languages that comes with a combination of talent, study and practice (along with understanding the history of the dialogue between designers and other creative fields) are. But these are certainly not the skills needed to help communities improve their lives.

Sure, we could invent new solutions to old (or new) problems that utilise our knowledge of particular materials or patterns (like a drinking straw that filters water for use in poor communities without access to clean water). But the vast majority of designers became designers to make pretty or clever things...and even if they had grander ambitions, the things and the people that are praised and rewarded (in school and in society) are those that often produce things of little more than aesthetic merit. Few design schools or practices send designers out into the world to learn how to work and help communities lacking resources or opportunities. Scientists, economists, social workers, doctors, engineers and many other professions do...but design has always, if we are honest, served those who could afford the unique and special...because it rewards our collective need as designers to be special and talented.

How many designers would become designers if they knew that what they were going to do with their skills was work in impoverished communities building better schools or building better latrines. And how would they make a living doing that in any case? Who would pay for all of that good will and effort? And who would create all the new stuff that capitalism needs to operate? And who would come up with the advertisements to sell it all?

The reality is that, not only are designers ill-equipped for solving social problems, they would, in most cases, much prefer to do something that has a concrete output that they can step back and look at and say with pride "I did that...and aren't I talented!"...and to have the world say yes by giving them an award or paying them a hefty fee.

Design is a profession that is on the back foot. Like art, architecture and every other creative profession that was once based in craft, apprenticeship and talent...a world of mass production has simultaneously made us central to the consumer capitalist machine, but equally implicated in its grievous sin of wanton and empty consumption. What was once about making things that resonated with meaning has been reduced to making things that grab attention and sell.

No wonder the design world is now trying to find a new footing in something more valuable and honourable. But at the end of the day, there is little that design has to teach other professions that already have their own creative processes...or even people who, like the kid in africa who built his own windmill for his village out of spare parts or the women who decorate their mud huts with intricate patterns, do not suffer from the need to be clever or interesting, but rather have direct access to their own creative power and resourcefulness.

Its time that designers faced up to the reality of who they are and what they are really capable of...and more importantly...accept that the modernist delusion of grandeur no longer applies and rejoin the masses of humanity that are diversely creative and productive in ways that the western notion of design training could never even get close to. What other profession has the audacity to think that it is somehow so important that EVERY other profession has something to learn from it? Its an arrogance born of both ignorance and (perhaps well deserved) insecurity.

If as a designer, you want to genuinely help others (and the world)...then do so...but not under the false assumption that you have something that they do not...that you are somehow set apart and special. You are not. You will just be one of many creative and passionate people joining in to make something happen. And if you approach it that way, then you will at least have a chance do doing something important because you will engage people as equals.

If, on the other hand, you want to make cool and clever stuff that gets you (and your work) noticed, then just do it and accept that what you do is, ultimately, landfill and meaningless. But at least you can bask in the short term glory of your own self-agrandisement, even if when you die it will likely mean nothing to you or anyone after you.

Design, like art, architecture and music (in the modernist sense) has followed Nietzsche's god into the grave. But in that death is a great freedom. In the words of Chrissy Hynde: "Welcome to the human race..."

Logic occludes Intuition

2009-03-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

some thoughts on the back of a workshop with other "creative" professionals....

I am consistently amazed at how many people use mind-mapping and other reductivist techniques for solving problems. Perhaps, for a certain class of problem these approaches work. But I find that for small problems, breaking the problem down is un-neccessary...and for more complex ones, breaking it down only limits the ability to see the solution. Of course, when given a complex problem to solve, it is reasonable to want to immediately start breaking it down into its constituent parts in order to understand it. This has the effect of reducing the apparent complexity, thus making it seem simpler to solve. But while understanding the various parts of a problem is essential to understanding the scope of the problem overall, the solution to a problem is not always deducible from detailed and reductivist analysis of this sort. And it has the side effect of overwhelming you with information. Its kind of like trying to understand why you love someone by reducing them down to their constituent atoms and looking for what makes them who they are. Its just not gonna work out. You have to be able to see bigger patterns...to work more holistically and synthetically when trying to understand and solve complex problems.

In fact, in my experience, if the problem is a wicked one, where the complexity of dependencies means that solving one part of the problem can actually create new problems, taking a reductivist approach can actually make things worse! In these cases, reductivist thinking is misleading because, though you can break the problem down, it gives you a false sense of security that each of the sub components are discrete and solvable on their own, when this is not, in fact, true. The reality is that when faced with big, hairy, complext problems, you have to think laterally...often proceeding through leaps of intuition and inspiration...analogy and metaphore...in order to outline the shape of a solution first. Then logic can be used to refine and develop it. This is what I see many people failing to do. They just don't trust their intuition or instincts...and feel they have to justify ideas logically before they can give them enough credence to actually explore them. But this just leads to mediocre or failed solutions.

The reason that logic is not particularly good at creative problem-solving, invention or innovation is that that in most cases (at least in western society), logic occludes intuition. Intuition, far from being some irrational response to be controlled or suppressed, is actually an incredibly powerful tool for solving complex problems. This is because intuition throws up potential avenues of exploration which are not logically derivable in the first instance. Intuition derives from unconscious experience and memory (see my post on creative process and cognition). It represents the things we have observed but not formally and consciously processed about the world (i.e. we have not yet turned it into active knowledge). Logic, on the other hand, derives from what we know we know (not what we don't know we know). And yet, it is what we don't know we know (but have experienced or observed) that allows us to innovate and to invent. And it is also often from things which appear (logically, at least) to be unrelated that we find inspiration.

In reality, it is how science and invention have always actually proceeded (see The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Against Method) . Most scientists make leaps of intuition to form a hypothesis and then use logic to reduce it to its component parts so that they can apply intellectual and experimental rigour to disprove thier own intuition. Note that I say "disprove"...this is essential because if you set out to prove your intuition, then your natural bias and desire to protect your idea means you only look for the things that validate it. If, on the other hand, you look for things that invalidate the idea and can't find them, then it is more likely to be true.

So to solve any complex problem, a system of synthetic thinking, combined with the rigour of logic, is required. Its not good enough to just break the problem down. Equally its not good enough to just intuit an answer. You have to do both.

Insight to Innovation II: The Power of Cross-Channel Ethnography

2009-03-20T02:06:00.000-07:00

From the South Pacific to the Living Room

When Bronislaw Malinowski decided to study the habits and culture of the natives of the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific during his exile in the First World War, little could he have imagined that the techniques he developed to learn about other cultures would be used to revolutionise the marketing and sales of consumer goods and services. However, this is exactly what is happening.

Ethnography, once confined to academic research departments has, over the last 20-30 years, become a widely used and powerful research technique for companies seeking to improve how they market and sell to customers. They have even turned the lens on themselves to improve how they manage their own businesses.

More recently, the desire to provide compelling multi-channel customer experiences that lure customers away from competitors has become the holy grail for many retailers. However, there is a noticeable gap between the precision with which research is used to understand customer behaviour offline and how it is applied in the design of online stores.

This gap is closing, however. As online retailing enters the mainstream, multi-channel retailers are investing more to improve the quality and effectiveness of their online stores. They are also looking for ways to build customer loyalty in a world where technology is making customers more and more promiscuous. Cross-channel ethnography is one of the tools retailers are turning to for insight.

The trouble with websites…

"Well, I can't really tell what the phone looks like from the picture…", said Katie, a participant in a recent usability study for one of the UK's leading mobile operators. "I would go to a shop at this point, before I make a decision".

From a research point of view, this is not surprising behaviour. It has long been understood that customers move fluidly and frequently between online and offline channels a number of times before finally committing to a purchase, especially for high value, feature-rich or lifestyle items. What is surprising, however, is how few retailers actually use customer insights like these to increase sales across both channels. The reality is, more often than not the website and shop are treated as separate businesses, competing for the same customers.

Armed with printouts from multiple providers about the cost of various phones and call plans, Katie later went to that same mobile operator's high street store hoping to buy her new phone. In the store, she was frustrated to learn that the phone she wanted was only available for free (on her chosen plan), if purchased on the website. The shop assistant tried to explain that the website and the store were different businesses and that he was not able to honour what was advertised on the website. As a result, Katie walked down the street to another shop and got a better deal from someone else.

The bottom line is that customers cannot often get a real sense of a product online. In spite of increasingly sophisticated tools for inspecting products (zooming and rotating photos, or seeing the product in different colours, etc.) most people only feel confident about making a purchase once they have had a chance to see and hold the item for real. In addition, in the high street, customers may feel more compelled to purchase because it is less convenient to come back, whereas online they know they can return easily. The problem is that they often don't.

Hindsight vs insight

Unfortunately for this particular mobile operator, these insights came too late. The structure of the business was not likely to change anytime soon. Not recognising the intimate relationship between on and offline shopping behaviour and structuring the business accordingly, meant losing Katie and many other customers like her to competitors.

The irony is, that the use of customer research (in particular ethnography) to understand and influence buying behaviour is probably most thoroughly developed in the bricks-and-mortar retailing industry. However, these same approaches are not often used to design and build online stores, much less getting the two channels to work together.

As online retailing has gained market-share in recent years, customer research has become more commonplace, though often only in the form of focus groups, usability testing or accessibility studies. However, these types of studies rarely identify genuine opportunities for innovation. This is because all of these techniques either focus on optimising the present based on historical best practice or seek out user’s opinions about things which they know and care little about. People are notoriously bad at identifying their own latent unmet needs, particularly where technology is concerned.

The best way to understand customer motivations and draw out insights that can have tangible impact on the bottom line, is to observe customers through the entire purchasing lifecycle; from learning about products, deciding on which ones to buy and ultimately buying and using them. This means using various ethnographic research techniques, from short context studies through to more in-depth longitudinal studies (which occur over a much longer timeframe), to observe customers in the different contexts in which decisions occur, physically, emotionally and socially.

For instance, we know that customers use the internet to shop around and gather information about their available choices before purchasing. In a recent
Study by Comscore and Google, users visited websites 22 times before making a purchase, with the "winning" site being visited 2.5 times on average. As we saw with Katie in our earlier example, similar patterns of behaviour can be observed across different channels, with customers often finding products online, visiting a store to see the products up close before purchasing, often online. Learning to capitalise on this behaviour can have a huge impact on customer experience and ultimately sales.

It’s the little things that count

When a leading educational toy company, decided to overhaul its web presence, they decided to use a customer-centric design approach that combined insights from studies of on and offline customer behaviour. The company knew that they had a winning format with their high street stores. Play areas which allowed kids try out the products (and even let mum do some shopping) were popular with customers, as were the helpful staff and the educational nature of the products. While the online presence provided the facility for customers to purchase all of the same products from the comfort of their own home, it simply wasn't generating the desired sales figures.

In order to understand why the online experience was not living up to the in-store experience, lab-based usability research with the website was combined with short, in-store ethnographic "probes" to observe un-moderated customer shopping behaviour. For the online research, new and existing customers were brought into a lab where they were interviewed and asked to use the website to find products they would be interested in buying. Then, over a three-day period, customers at several stores were observed while they shopped and then interviewed after they had completed their purchases. Staff, too, were observed and interviewed.

The online research indicated that a key barrier to purchase was the customer's lack of confidence in whether they had found the right product. Faced with this uncertainty, the vast majority of customers interviewed indicated that they would go into a high street store to ask for advice. However, the real insight came from observing how customers interacted with the shop assistants once they came into the shop.

"I would like to find something that will help my son develop his creative skills." said Jane, a first-time mother, to one of the shop assistants. "He is two and very active, so I am worried he won't focus on one thing for long. What would you suggest?" The assistant promptly showed Jane a number of different options and, after some discussion and comparison, Jane eventually chose a water-based "magic" drawing mat.

This simple transaction between Jane and the shop assistant revealed something very important about the shopping experience, particularly for this brand of educational toys. Far more than the ability to easily browse or search for products online, what customers needed was assurance that the toy they were buying was going to help their child develop in some important way. It was about being a good parent.

In-store, this problem was solved both by the availability of advice from the shop assistants and through the age and developmental information printed on the packaging. However, this information, which is fundamental to the brand's value proposition, was not being used on the website to help customers find and compare products to buy - yet it was essential if they were to feel confident about their purchase decisions.

The new site was then redesigned with additional age-based navigation, age and development stage search filters, product-level development information and customer reviews. The company also introduced a policy that allowed customers to reserve a product online and then come and pick it up in store, for those who wanted to have a look at it before buying. Simply by changing the website to support customers like Jane, the company was able to increase online sales by 33% in 12 months, with individual customers viewing 21% more toys and spending 19% more per visit.

The future is personal

With online retail sales in the UK growing at a dizzying 40-50% year-on-year (and now accounting for approximately 15% of total retail sales, according to a recent study by CapGemini and the Interactive Media in Retail Group), this is a lesson that many retailers should learn from.

As the internet evolves and becomes more mainstream, it is fundamentally changing how customers interact with businesses both on and offline. At the same time, customers are becoming ever more sophisticated in their buying behaviour and use of technology. As a result, it is important for retailers to continuously engage customers to understand what really matters to them and identify those factors that have a tangible differentiating impact on the customer experience.

In this ever more personalised and competitive environment, cross-channel ethnographic research with customers is an essential tool for any online retailer who wants to continuously leverage the changing behaviour and expectations of their customer base. If the insights gained from this research are then used to enable customers to move seamlessly between online and offline channels to achieve their goals, companies will reap the benefits in sales, customer satisfaction and ultimately, loyalty.

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This article first published in Internet Retailing Magazine, April 2008

Insight to Innovation

2009-03-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

A User-Centred approach to consistently creating breakthrough ideas

People do surprising things. That is the first thing you come to realise when you start designing with users in mind. What each of us takes for granted is that if you are one of the people lined up to solve a problem or design a solution, you probably already know too much to genuinely see things from a user’s perspective.

Of course being an expert is ideal if you want to get hired for your expertise, but it can be an impairment if you genuinely want to design products and services that are intuitive and a joy to use. In reality, it’s not expertise that is the problem...it’s the assumptions that come along with expertise. It’s these assumptions about what we “know” people do that lead most designers to create user experiences that fail in some fundamental way. This is because once we understand something, it becomes difficult to imagine not understanding it. As a result, expert designers, no matter how skilled, are always at risk of designing for themselves.

If you have ever stared at something you have written and not been able to spot a spelling error, you know what it’s like to be too close to something. It is this knowledge of the world seen through our own eyes that undermines our ability to design for others effectively. Unfortunately, this same phenomenon can also hinder innovation, for exactly the same reasons.

Of course, it takes skill and talent (and even expertise) to create great user experiences. But it also requires the rigour to continuously question and challenge your assumptions about what the right solution is. And that is where a research-based design process comes in: User-Centred Design.

By combining talent, skill and expertise with a process that continuously challenges your understanding of what works, you can significantly improve the quality of the experiences you create for people, particularly where interfaces with technology are concerned. Given the negative effect that poor user experience has on users’ perceptions of your products or brand, that is genuinely good news.

To design truly great user experiences, you need to get inside people’s heads. You need to understand how they see the world and the things that motivate them. To do this you have to talk to people. You have to go where they go, do what they do and observe them in the context of trying to complete tasks that your product or service is meant to support. It is only through direct observation that we gain the kinds of insights needed to not only design empathetically but to innovate as well.
That is not to say that people tell you what they want. They don’t. But it’s not what they tell you that is important. That is the shortcoming of focus groups. It’s the difference between what they say they do and what they actually do that matters. And it’s in discovering these latent, unspoken needs that innovation emerges.

Of course, if you ask someone whether they want a particular innovation, they are unlikely to give you a decisive answer. How many people would have told you they wanted a mobile phone 20 years ago? But if you simulate the kind of experience they will have with this new product or service and let them experience it first hand, then you can get genuine feedback that allows you to improve existing interfaces and experiment safely with radical innovations that would otherwise be too risky to try. And this is where the magic begins.

By rigorously following a User-Centered Design process, you can identify opportunities for innovation and then evaluate possible solutions in order to take risks that your competition wouldn’t dare to. By involving users continuously throughout the design process, you gain insights that lead to breakthrough ideas which can ultimately be tested with users to ensure you create delightful and intuitive experiences.

But don’t just take my word for it. Look around you at the products and services you love. When you look behind the scenes, you will find that customer insight, prototyping and evaluation, done formally or infomally, is behind most of them.

Take the Apple iPhone, for example. Far from the mystique of genius-centred design that Apple likes to promote, the iPhone was prototyped and evaluated nearly 100 times before it was launched...and these were just the working prototypes. There were innumerable other prototypes that preceded those, from sketches and foam models to clickable screen prototypes. Each of these were evaluated, some with experts, some with users, to assess how well they worked and if they had the "wow" factor that would lead to a breakthrough product. And Apple is not the only example. Google, Nokia, Amazon, Starbuck and hosts of other companies who deliver quality customer or user experiences rely on prototyping and evaluation as well as ethnographic or contextual research with potential customers to consistently get it right.

Of course, User-Centred Design is not a substitute for talent. The iPhone would not have been the success that it was without an immense amount of talent, craftmanship and attendance to detail of Ives and his team. But as interactive products become more complex and serve ever broader or even specialised audiences, talent and expertise cease to be enough. What is needed is a process which provides consistent and reliable insight into what could be as well as what works and what doesn't.

This is what makes User-Centred Design so powerful. Because of its insistence on observation and understanding of real user needs, behaviours and attitudes, User-Centred Design, especially in the hands of a multi-disciplinary and talented design team, consistently leads to breakthrough ideas about what is possible which can then, through iterative prototyping and evaluation of those ideas, enable design teams to quickly weed out the ideas that don't work, and refine the ones that do into a final product or service that both works and is delightful to use.

At the end of the day, as designers our responsibility is to create products and services which improve the lives of the individuals that we are designing for, not just demonstrate our own cleverness or talent. True talent and cleverness is the ability to genuinely understand and respond to the people and the world around us to create products and services which are naturally transformative. By this I mean products and services which make a tangible difference to individuals' lives in a way which, while they never could have imagined it themselves, feels both natural and intuitive.

In my experience in nearly 25 years of design practice, 15 of which has been about designing interactive products, the only way to do this consistently is to involve people in the process of design...to listen, observe and ultimately have empathy with them. User-Centred Design, by bringing users into the design process, creates the opportunities for designers to practice these essential skills and be able to intuit (and ultimately evaluate) solutions that help make the world a better place.

Thoughts on Creativity

2008-12-12T04:10:00.000-08:00

On Creative Process and Cognition

For years I have been observing and thinking about how and why we make...and the cognitive processes that underly them. This blog is called making is thinking because the two together are intimately linked...and I am convinced that creativity is one of the fundamental aspects of being human and something which is true for all of us...whether we are designers or not. The question for me, though, is how we harness what is an essential part of our biology to consistently "make" the world around us in ways that are more than just about ego. Much of this blog will be focussed on topics that explore the nature of creativity and demystifying it, both for myself and for others. My hope is that through understanding of creativity's role in who we are, that we can all tap into it and engage in thoughtful and focussed play...with each other and the world around us.

Biological Foundations for Creativity
In Photography there is a term called depth of field which describes how light passing through smaller or larger lens apertures affects how in-focus objects at different distances from the lens appear on the picture plane. When there is a large aperture, only things at the focal length of the lens appear in focus and everything else is out of focus. Where there is small aperture, everything is in focus.

There is a similar effect at work in the perceptual & cognitive functions of the brain that are a result of how our brains identify (and focus on) things which differentiate themselves from that which is already known in the perceptual and cognitive fields. When we first look at something, our brain actively scans the perceptual field for things that it recognises and things it does not. Recognition is determined by things which appear to fit a known (experienced) pattern. Things which are not recognised (ie do not fit a known pattern, or appear to be a new variant of a known pattern) quickly come under scrutiny in order to make sense of them. If we look at something which shows little change (or which we know very well) for a long time, it is pushed below the threshold of our conscious and largely becomes invisible. This can be experienced directly if you paint your bedroom a bright new colour, at first you will always notice it, but over time it begins to be taken for granted. Similarly, when you stare into a snowstorm, at some point you become blind, not because it is bright but because there is so little differentiation possible that the brains cognitive functions with respect to vision simply shut down because they are no longer necessary…the brain has come to understand all it can about what it perceives.

The reason this happens is because the brain is trying to optimise its response to the environment and only process what is new (or apparently new). This enables the brain to quickly understand and map out an environment and then respond quickly to any changes because it only has to consciously process new information (changes to the environment). In order for this to happen, the brain codifies information into patterns (i.e. gives meaning to them) and determines an automated response to that pattern. This means that the conscious part of our brains can focus on identifying and codifying new patterns and not have to always process every stimulus to the perceptual apparatus. This is a highly effective mechanism for survival because it enables us to carry forward experiences from the past, anticipate what may happen in the future and react more effectively.

The effect of this process is that there is a "waterline of visibility" and a "horizon of knowing". Below the waterline of visibility lie the things we know but have ceased to observe as well as the things we have yet to observe (and therefore are yet to know or understand). Above the waterline of visibility lie the things we are presently observing. When something rises from below the waterline into view, we either respond with curiosity, surprise or fear depending on both what we are doing and how different the thing appears from things we know. Things which are unknown (or at least un-recognised) lie on the other side of the "horizon of knowing". As a result of not knowing or recognising something which comes into view, we immediately focus on that thing to the exclusion of other things and begin a process of scrutiny and pattern synthesis that finishes only when the thing is made sense of and passes into the realm of the known (i.e. crosses the "horizon of knowing" to become something understood), whereby it sinks yet again below the waterline of visibility and becomes part of our unconscious model of the world.

This process in our brains with respect to knowledge is similar in effect to changing the depth of field on a camera. In one instance we see everything within the field of vision, and the next we see only the thing we are focused on understanding. The drive to understand is so strongly encoded in our cognitive system that it takes a great deal of effort not to focus on something that makes itself present to us. This is because it triggers an adrenal fear response which prepares us for taking immediate action should the thing observed prove to be dangerous to us. Thus, the unknown causes us to become afraid or anxious. However, if we are able to quickly identify that the thing matches (or is similar to) a known pattern, the anxiety is removed and we cease to focus with such exclusivity on it and begin to see the larger perceptual field again. Conversely, when we are placed in a situation in which we are certain of everything around us, we enter a state of bliss associated with a lowered fear response. This is often the state associated with meditation or with the warm embrace of a loved one.

You can observe how the mind focuses and de-focuses in response to uncertainty by imagining the following scenario: You are in a familiar environment (say sitting under a favourite tree in a favourite park reading a book) and an unexpected change to that environment (say the sound of a voice behind you) causes you to become startled. Your body tenses and prepares for action and you turn around and focus intently on the source of the unexpected change. If it turns out to be familiar (your friend walking up to say hello), you relax and de-focus. If, on the other hand, it turns out to be something unfamiliar (a stranger addressing you and walking toward you), you remain on guard and begin scrutinising the situation to identify what you should do next. The process of scrutinising is one of attempting to quickly match the current set of events to a previously learned pattern in order to more successfully negotiate an outcome which results in your safety. The failure to find a matching pattern will trigger a fight or flight response and a rush of adrenaline. This response can emerge as anger, aggression, defensive posturing, cowering or flight, but your brain will use that fear as a way of marking a failure of the pattern recognition response. This means that the event becomes "significant" in memory so that it can be processed and understood after the event in order to ensure that a similar situation does not occur in the future. This is why people spend lots of time "reviewing the video tapes" of their lives after an upsetting event to understand what happened and try and find a pattern in it.

Education vs Training
The ability to exert control over that fear response is what discipline, training and experience provide. Training is not the same as education, however. Education provides us with the codified knowledge (patterns) of others without direct experience of the circumstances that generated those patterns. Training recreates the circumstances of those patterns so that we can generate them ourselves with guidance from someone more experienced. The rapid acquisition of patterns through direct experience enables us to understand and more effectively negotiate the uncertainties of the world around us. While education provides the patterns for us to reference, it fails to provide the circumstances to use (and therefore understand) those patterns. As a result, in spite of what we may have read or learned, we often fail to apply that knowledge effectively the first time. This is why most educational programs also have experience-based learning periods where students can learn by direct experience.

The fundamental operations by which we understand and encode what we perceive (learn) are differentiation and synthesis. These are also the fundamental processes of creativity. They are what enable us to both understand the world give meaning to it. When we apply differentiation and synthesis to our own storehouse of patterns (experience) we then begin to generate patterns from patterns (second and third-order patterns or derivative knowledge). This allows us to see relationships across patterns and link together different experiences to then anticipate responses to things we have yet to experience (like inventing a tool). This is creativity.

So far from being a specialist activity of a few lucky (or odd) individuals...creativity is, then, the result of the most basic functional activities of the brain. It is born out of that implicit anxiety response to an unknown environmental circumstance which leads us generate patterned responses to that environment. The goal, then, of this process is to create meaning, to understand the world and the things we perceive in order to better negotiate uncertainty and to survive.

Anxiety and Motivation
This is why creativity (and being consistently creative) is hard. Most of us, if given the choice, would rather feel bliss than anxiety. However, to be creative you have to be willing and able to negotiate uncertainty and trust that you will succeed. This is tantamount to being able to take on something which emotionally feels like danger and risk and know that you can survive. While this may sound somewhat over-exaggerated, the reality is that the adrenal fear response triggered in our brain when we are placed in a situation of uncertain intellectual outcome is the same as when we are physically at risk. This is why people suffer from stage fright and test anxiety.

For many people the adrenal response associated with the process of not knowing (which leads to creative thinking) is uncomfortable and so they seek out environments where things are more known, knowable and safe (e.g. less risky).

And yet, there are people for whom the dive into the uncertain, and the need to understand it are necessary and not optional. They are drawn, by whatever combination of reasons in their formative years, to seek out that adrenal response to not knowing. They seek out environments which are "riskier" because it is challenging and enables them to have a sense of satisfaction (and perhaps profound relief) from overcoming the fear of the unknown. Often they view the world as something to be understood and expressed in outward form, or as something to be taken apart and remade to suit a particular vision. In these people there is a drive to not simply be, but to create.

As a result of this drive, the people who continually seek out this challenge tend to be more well-equipped to deal with diverse adverse situations because they have a broader and richer set of patterns to draw upon which they can use to interpret and respond to the world. They also tend to be the people who are seen as more creative, though they are not necessarily in "creative" professions. The need for challenge which is present in creative individuals, is evident in all walks of life...and, regardless of the particular application of creativity, the ability to deal constructively with fear of the unknown is the hallmark of successful creative thinkers.

The Myth of "the artist"
What becomes clear then is that creativity is nothing special (in spite of its celebrated status in the world)...though some are more talented that others (for reasons I will talk about later). Creativity is, in the end analysis, not only a fundamentally human process...it is a fundamentally necessary process for our survival. It is what our brains do when we interpret the world around us and give meaning to things (e.g. create patterns).

So while the underlying process is not particularly special, talent...and ultimately, skill are. Talent is likely the result of a combination of factors both biological and environmental. Each individual due to their particular circumstances, inherits and develops a bias of skill strengths (or talents) which are ultimately reinforced or supressed by their upbringing and socialisation. While there is little we can do about our raw talent...we can, however, augment our raw talent by developing skill.

Skill is about being able to harness the creative process in order to generate new ideas, invent new things or solve problems. True skill, like talent, is both special and difficult...especially in creativity. This is because learning to observe the underlying cognitive processes that enable us to survive and honing them in order to be more facile at both generating first order-patterns (from direct experience) and second-order patterns (intuition) is not easy. It is what people in "creative" professions do, though usually not consciously. A designer, writer, engineer or entrepreneur simply take what they know from experience (first-order patterns) and generate ideas (second-order patterns) and give them form. Learning to do this consistently is about becoming a skilled creative practitioner.

This is, of course easier said than done. There is being "creative" (raw unbridled talent and instinct) and then there is the consistent application of creative process toward a specific end whose success can be measured. This latter form of creativity requires sophisticated second-order pattern synthesis and rigourous observation, analysis and validation/measurement techniques. As with any skill, this level of sophistication can only be achieved through training, disciplined practice and experience. And as one becomes more practiced and experienced, one is becomes more facile expedient and effective in one's ability to create. This is why individuals who have mastered a particular field (eg Einstein, Michealangelo, Goethe, Nietzsche, Strauss, LeCorbusier) appear to work a kind of magic and draw things out of thin air. However, what they are actually doing is drawing on a vast library of detailed 2nd, 3rd and 4th-order patterns to generate even more patterns. That they are successful in doing this is a result both their experience and the rigour with which they interrogate what they observe and what they make.

Patterns are the result of explicit and implicit observation and represent efficient codifications of experience and knowledge. They are what the mind uses to rapidly assess a new and unexpected situation in order to identify a shortlist of appropriate responses in an infinitude of possible responses. The generation and manipulation of patterns is what allows us to anticipate things we have yet to experience and are the foundation of invention. By asserting an understanding of something (an idea) and giving that idea a form that can be placed in the world for others to observe (a story, a work of art, a solution to a problem), we create meaning and enable understanding of both the world and ourselves in relation to that world. It is through creative acts of will that the inner world of perception and understanding is made visible in the outer world. It is how we communicate with both ourselves and with others.

The Craft of Meaning
So fundamentally, creativity is about making visible the invisible, about making tangible the intangible, about making known the yet-to-be-known and creating meaning (and order) out of chaos. It is what enables us to give form to the dreams, musings, fantasies and horrors of the unconscious. The output of creativity reminds us of who we are and shows us who we can be. It is how invent the tools that enable us to adapt our environment to suit us as well as adapt to that environment. It is what it means to be human. And as people's capacity for negotiating uncertainty and risk varies, so to does the quality (or success) of creative output. The ability to measure the quality of creative output is largely determined by the degree of utility it has beyond meeting the needs of the person creating it.

In the case of a story, work of art or music, the utility is its ability to successful conjure up feelings and images in many different people. Whether good feelings or bad, ugly or beautiful, these things effectively communicate some aspect of the inner world of their creator that makes tangible (or resonates with) the inner world of the viewer.

In the case of a tool or designed object, the utility is defined as the degree to which it meets the specific needs for which it was made. Sometimes that utility is purely functional (as in the design of a cam in an engine). In other cases function and aesthetic are equally important (as with a car or a fine pair of shoes). And in still other cases, aesthetics are more important than function (as with a decorative chandelier).

In all cases, craft (the skill with which the thing is made as compared to others like it) is also used as an assessment of quality or success of creative output. Something being well made is seen as something that reflects upon the care and attention given to it by the creator. This reflects both the skill (facility) and passion of the maker and so is seen as being more valuable because it represents the amount of care they have invested in making it "right". Being well made, particularly in the case of things which have a functional purpose, is also seen as a measure of their degree of reliability, stability and safety.

Vitruvius, the Roman architect and writer of the "Ten Books on Architecture" summed up these measures as "Utilitas, Firmitas, & Venustas" (Firmness, Commodity and Delight). Firmness was the ability for the thing in question to be sound in principle, structure or form such that it was reliable, Commodity was the value attributed to its use, and Delight was the ability for the thing to conjure up a sense of joy in its existence. In his mind, in order for a work of architecture (or any creative endeavour) to be successful, it was not sufficient to simply be one or the other. It had to meet all three of these criteria. This is made possible through Rigour and Experience. Rigour and Experience are the underpinnings of successful creative work.

The origin of Intuition
Experience can either be explicit (I learn something by going to school or reading a book) or implicit (I experience it directly whether I wanted to or not). Experience encompasses both success and failure. While success is nice to enjoy, without failure, there is no desire evolve an idea (or pattern of response to an environment) and to improve it. Repeatedly succeeding (especially if that success is achieved after one or more failed attempts) not only improves the chances of success for a creative endeavour but also builds confidence in one's ability to successfully negotiate uncertainty and risk. Confidence is the essential ingredient of trust. And trust in oneself is what enables one to be rigourous. This is why failure is such a good (but difficult) teacher.

The true value of experience is that it enables intuition. Intuition is simply the unconscious bringing together of information (synthesising a second-order pattern from two or more first-order patterns) in order to generate an insight. Intuition is also a fundamental cognitive operation. It occurs when we process things we have already observed but perhaps not fully acknowledged (ie they lie below the waterline of consciousness). We cannot be intuitive about things we have never experienced, but we can be intuitive about things we have never consciously thought about. This is because all conscious pattern-generation deals with primary data and secondary data that describes the nature of a particular environment in order to derive a pattern.

For instance, primary data about recognising rain is that the sky is grey and there are droplets of water falling from the sky. Secondary data may be what it was like just before the rain fell or the smell of the air after the rain. These are things that are part of the scenery but which may or may not be necessary to identify in order to identify the primary pattern. However, they are things which are nonetheless encoded in the pattern and become part of what we know about the world. So when we then smell something that smells like the air after a rainstorm, it triggers a recognition of something familiar (even if we don't process it as rain).

The use of secondary pattern data enables us to discover things about the world that appear to us to be based on nothing more than "a feeling". In fact, this "feeling" is simply a derivation from experiences we have ceased to remember directly. The strength of one's intuition is directly related to the sophistication of one's observational skills or sensitivity to the more subtle aspects of an environment.

Innovation or Invention?
There are two fundamental forms of creative thinking: Rational and Intuitive. Most of what is colloquially termed "creative" is based on Intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is often the source of invention while Rational thinking is the often the means for innovation. This is because Intuitive thinking is indirect and open. It allows for (and encourages) random associations in the generation of ideas. Rational thinking, however, excludes all derivations that can not be derived linearly according to a codified set of (logical) rules based on observed "facts" using either induction (deducing general principles from particular facts) or deduction (deducing particular facts from general principles).

Intuition works by making leaps of faith based on often disconnected pieces of information. Often in intuitive thinking, things just "feel" right. This is because they emerge out of a process of (sometimes random) association that is based on lived experience of the world using primary and secondary pattern data. In a logical process, all knowledge is derived above the waterline of consciousness. In an intuitive process, knowledge is derived below the waterline of consciousness and emerges into consciousness only at the point when it appears relevant. It is a by-product of conscious observation and thinking…of lived experience. As a result, intuition becomes more accurate with the amount experience one has.

Beyond Talent - the rigour of practice
However, whether through a rational or intuitive process, all successful creative outcomes (whether strategy, writing, problems-solving, design or art) can only be achieved through the application of rigour. The creation of a pattern (ie the codification of experience into knowledge) is an assertion of the will…of the ego (whether the ego of a single individual or the collective egos of a group). To assert that something is true or right or good is fundamentally about taking a risk that you might be wrong (the social consequences being that you appear stupid, are laughed at or are rejected by your social group - something which we are all socialised to fear). Trusting yourself to know what you know (as well as what you don't) and to recognise when you have got it wrong in order to make adjustments is what confidence and experience provide. Rigour is fundamentally about observation and critique. It is about always questioning what you see, what you know, what you believe in order to either invalidate, validate or evolve it.

To be rigourous is to accept the limitations of (but not doubt) ones own assertions and to validate them externally. It is about being assertive yet open and flexible to change. It is about being able to let go of an idea knowing that another will come along. To be rigourous is to never assume you know (but believing you can) while asserting what you do know in order to externalise it and make it visible. By making it visible we are then able to interrogate it more effectively and create a space that enables others to interrogate it as well (the value of design crits). Interrogation is what allows us to see the gaps between what we think we know and reality in order to adjust our position, idea or pattern and evolve our understanding.

Rigour is the essential differentiating factor between great creative work and average (or shoddy) creative work. Rigourous creative activity is marked by process (which ensures you have the tools and techniques to generate ideas even when you lack the experience), discipline, persistence and courage. A rigourous thought (or creative) process passes through a sequence of stages beginning with the identification of an idea to be explored (whether through intuition or logic), observation (detailed examination of the idea and its context), analysis (differentiating between the what is essential for understanding and what is peripheral), synthesis (the establishment of the idea in form and representation of all likely possible forms of the idea), and validation (testing the idea in context to see how well it performs).

The validation stage is where an idea is refined, accepted (proven) or thrown out. If it is accepted then no further work is needed to perfect the idea. If it is not accepted then (depending on the degree of failure of the idea in context) it is either modified (via further observation, analysis and synthesis) or abandoned (and a new idea must be identified).

This process repeats in a series of iterations that feed in the knowledge from the previous round of thinking until the idea converges on a "right" answer. Seen over time, this appears like a cone shaped spiral where the idea is rather loose and ill-defined at the large end of the spiral and each successive loop gets closer and closer to a final solution. Often, the process of discovery that this iterative process describes opens up new territories of knowledge that can undermine the trajectory of the original idea. This then means that the original idea is shown to be inadequate. There is then a need to generate a new set of possible ideas to explore (whether through an Intuitive or Rational process). This then results in an opening out of the spiral as new ideas have to be incorporated to accommodate the new knowledge. Then the iterative refinement process proceeds as before.

This process of generating ideas and refining them down through a series of iterative Observation/Analysis/Synthesis/Validation loops is repeated until a satisfactory outcome is found. This is the creative process. It is fraught with uncertainty at every stage. Often it can appear to be leading nowhere. Other times the answers seem to come straight away. It is the ability to persist and to trust the process (and oneself) that ensures a successful outcome. And it is the ability to continually question the process and the outcomes (even if it "feels" right or there appear to be no other options) that defines rigour. All of this demands trust and courage, not to mention keen observation, analysis and synthesis skills.

Embracing Uncertainty
When one enters the tunnel of uncertainty that is the creative process, one has to be prepared to stumble and fail and to continue feeling around in the dark until something comes to light. In the anxiety that one feels when faced with a great deal of uncertainty, one also has to resist "jumping to form"(going for the most obvious or easiest solution). Rigour entails withholding the satisfaction (and release from a state of anxiousness) that comes from having an answer until all possible solutions have been identified and eliminated. Sometimes this means focusing on something in order to understand it more thoroughly. Other times it means taking in everything and focusing on nothing in particular in order to observe larger (more subtle) patterns. In all cases, one relies heavily on one's experience and the tools, techniques and methods of the process to overcome creative block and continue to make progress.

For many people, this process, while they may do it, is not visible to them. It is like walking. They have done it so long they don’t even know that they do it or how they do and (like walking) if they focus on how they do it, it suddenly becomes difficult. However, to be rigourous is to make visible your own process in order to be able to refine or redefine it and to create new tools to help you along. Making it visible also means you are codifying your own process into patterns (knowledge) which can be shared. This means you are more able to communicate those patterns to others in order to both share with them and to learn from them.

The making of a great talent
So what determines how good someone is at the creative process?

There are many creative people who get by simply on talent alone (without apparently applying rigour to their work). This is often called creativity...but in-fact is quite a basic form of creativity.

Some would say that talent is more critical…or even luck. But in fact, talent is just the sum total of experience and natural facility...and luck is just about the factors that lie outside ones control that either promote or hinder the success of an idea. To some extent, the appearance of luck can be mitigated by experience...but only insofar as one is able to consistently position oneself in the right place at the right time.

Facility is the result of fundamental biases (strengths) we are born with (both physically and mentally) combined with the particular experiences of our lives that reinforce those natural strengths. If one is lucky enough to be given experience in an area that one is naturally strong in, it will be said that that person has facility, or talent. Talent can be developed however…through training. Thus, anyone can, with enough practice, become talented at something (though those with less natural facility will always have to work harder than those with it).

Tune in, turn on & respond
But at the end of the day...creativity is about our relationship with the world...and we engage the world through a the reciprocal process of making (or asserting things into the world) and seeing how the world responds (assessing) and then thinking about a way to improve or tune the response to what we want as a result. This is the essential feedback loop between thinking and making...and it is the basis for all thought and creativity...and ultimately the underpinning of craft (or quality). Without making there can be no thinking...and without thinking there can be no making.

And yet, people often stop themselves from engaging in this most essential process because they are afraid of the uncertainty of it...they do not know what to make or think about. But a painting is not thought through before it is painted...a painting is thought through AS it is painted. And it begins with a mark...any mark. The same is true with writing or music or any other type of creative activity. One cannot wait to begin only when one knows what one is doing. One has to simply start...somewhere...and respond. Each action leads to the next...and as the work progresses...it begins to define what it needs to be as much as what it is because you come to know more about what you are trying to achieve by doing it. This is not to say that you cannot begin with an idea...but rather to say that the idea of a starting point should not be confused with the ending. Begin at the beginning...but let the end unfold through the feedback of making and thinking.

Hello World

2008-12-12T04:01:00.000-08:00

hello world...