The Agony of Creation

The creative process can be broken down into steps, followed methodically, and achieve results every time. Occasionally, the creative person has a “eureka” moment when an idea pops fully formed into the mind. Most ideas are born of agony.

Even when you follow the process, you always have moments of self-doubt. Will your audience recognize the value of your concept? Or will you look like a fool? Will you be able to explain how you arrived at your proof so that others can see the brilliance of your solution? The more “out of the box” your thinking, the harder it will be for the people in cubicles to accept.

Sometimes you follow the process, but you just can’t come up with that spark that makes it fun. For any number of reasons, you lack the motivation. You fear the well has finally run dry for good. You consider applying for a cashier’s position at Target. Fear will kill your creativity faster than anything. This is the time to remind yourself that you are talented, you can solve this problem, and go do the things that renew your spirit. Take a look at creativity triggers. Then overwhelm the impasse with quantity.

Then comes the agony of the critique, where you witness your “baby” cut apart, watered down, and compromised for political purposes. Everyone on the committee will want to “contribute” by offering another suggestion that you’ll have to address. The best advice I’ve heard for overcoming the torture of a hundred little revisions is “Do better work.” Proofread, correct any obvious mistakes, look at it from different distances and angles, take a break and look at it again. I try to only present proofs that I am happy with myself. Never present something that you have to apologize for. I do not take criticism personally. I try to use every suggestion as on opportunity to make the project better. 

Is the agony worth it? Do you have the inner confidence to present something that's never been seen before? Are you comfortable with being the one who thinks differently? Everyone has to decide that individually.

How to Be Creative

from the Wall Street Journal article by Jonah Lehrer

Recent research into the creative process reveal some "hacks" for how to achieve that elusive eureka moment. The characteristic that most creative people share is not genetic, but environmental. Creative types hang around with a diverse set of people. They are also curious about many things and pursue their interests with passion. Creative insight occurs when one "connects the dots" between different subjects.

Most innovation comes not from experts, but newcomers to the field. A fresh perspective is not limited by tradition or habit.

The right state of mind also contributes to creative breakthroughs. Being relaxed, having fun, laughing, even getting a little intoxicated, all increase creative problem solving. Daydreaming and that twilight state between sleep and wakefulness are moments ripe for creativity.

Getting outside of your workspace is important. A short trip to the coffee shop or library will increase your creativity. Traveling the world and exposing yourself to other cultures will supercharge your creativity.

Finally, a playful spirit is essential. Having the mind of a child and getting deep pleasure out of your work is extremely conducive to creativity.

Anybody Can Be Creative

From the Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2011:

David Kelley, founder of IDEO and d.school at Stanford, says that to "unlock creative potential," people must become "open to experimentation, more comfortable with ambiguity, and less afraid of failure."

Having a specific problem to solve is the best start. In Kelley's class, students "define the problem themselves through research and direct observation."

The next step is "ideation" or brainstorming and visualization. The third step is prototyping.

Kelley encourages many little experiments and failures along the way, leading to better and better solutions. He found that collaborating with with others who have "radically different points of view" leads to a better learning experience. As his students gain confidence, they become more innovative.

In their book The Innovator's DNA, Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen say the key skill for generating innovative ideas is associating. Some people do this more naturally than others. But everyone can do more associating by "questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting." The more you do, the better you get, and the more confidence you have.

Innovation through Failure

From the Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2011:

"'Failure, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation,' says Judy Estrin of Menlo Park, California. Failures caused by sloppiness or laziness are bad."

But failures resulting from trying a big, risky idea should be rewarded. As long as you learn something from the effort, it was not wasted. When you approach problems too conservatively, you don't have the breakthroughs that set you apart. You're doing the same tried and true things as everybody else.

Accept that having good ideas means having bad ones also.

"All innovative companies tend to be alike in certain ways, Ms. Estrin says. They encourage coworkers to trust each other, comment on each other's work and take criticism in stride. Also, managers encourage intelligent risk-taking, tolerate failure and insist that employees share information openly."

Some personal and environmental characteristics that foster creativity are:

• being last in the family, experiencing moderate family conflict and diverse role models
• being aggressive, egocentric or antisocial makes it easy to ponder ideas in solitude or challenge convention
• being competitive and unwilling to give up easily
• being able to take time off to let ideas incubate
• freedom to take risks and work on a variety of projects at once can spark flexible thinking
• while conflict and diversity trigger divergent thinking, war and anarchy are disruptive to new ideas

Quotes from Steve Jobs on Design

“We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

***

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

“Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. [Wired, February 1996]

***

“For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” [BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998, in a profile that also included the following gem: "Steve clearly has done an incredible job," says former Apple Chief Financial Officer Joseph Graziano. "But the $64,000 question is: Will Apple ever resume growth?"]

***

“This is what customers pay us for–to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s great!’” [Fortune, January 24 2000]

***

“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” [MSNBC and Newsweek interview, Oct. 14, 2006]

How to Fascinate

From the HOW Design Conference keynote by Sally Hogshead:

Everyone is fascinating in their own unique way. There are seven universal triggers (or F factors): passion, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, rebellion, and trust. Mine are passion and mystique. 

My latent F factor is prestige. Gain prestige by owning a realm, staking out your niche, becoming the authority. Create the ultimate [something] even if no one ever buys it.

Build anticipation and excitement to add value. People will pay more for an emotional experience.

Attention span is 9 seconds. That's all you have to captivate.

You always have to sit on the “throne of agony” to reach an epiphany. No agony, no epiphany. So embrace the agony.

More at SallyHogshead.com

How to Build a Better Business

From the HOW Design Conference panel discussion with Peleg Top, Rochelle Selzer, Kevin McConkey, and Shannon Carter

Be prepared for opportunities by constantly upgrading your skills.

Money = Respect. Ask for money, be prepared to walk away if it is not enough. Charge more money to get more respect. Be an investment, not an expense. Be able to show that your work makes money for your clients.

Narrow your market focus. Know what types of people and businesses you want to work with. Look for potential. Build relationships. Make a human connection.

Get the client excited by showing what is possible. Use your own voice and passion. Be real.

Keep in mind that you get paid for thinking, not for producing. You can be a designer without doing the production.

Hire well and wisely. Be a leader, not a manager.