Tag creativity

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Design Synthesis and Creative Thinking

Aug 6, ’09 12:10 PM

Jon Kolko – Design Synthesis from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Definitely worth a watch.

I found this just after I moved to NYC as I was traipsing about the design-related portion of the internet, and found it plainly fascinating. I’m trying to use it to help me frame “What I Do” so that I might explain it better to others. I’ve always had a difficult time (a) understanding exactly what the process is that I follow, mentally and (b) trying to explain that to others. Currently, my job is less about process than it is about output (yay!), but I can envision a time when that might not be the case and/or I’d like to help some junior people step up their game. It’d make good blog fodder at the very least.

If you don’t have 20 minutes to watch the video, here’s a brief overview. Mr. Kolko, if you’re out there reading this, and I’m wrong, please help me out:

  • People don’t typically understand their creative processes, or don’t follow a process at all. But most “expert” designers do follow a mental process known as Design Synthesis.
  • Design Synthesis is an “abductive sensemaking process of manipulating, organizing, pruning and filtering data in an effort to produce information and knowledge.”
  • Call your output whatever you like, but if you’re taking insight from research and combining it with your personal experience/taste to produce a deliverable, this is what you’re doing.
  • There are some tremendously structured methods for doing this, including Insight Combination and Reframing, but they all involve abductive reasoning, which seems akin to formalized guessing.

These concepts are fairly self-evident and sometimes purely mental, but if you’re like me, you’re always looking for ways to introduce rigor into your personal creativity. By practicing Insight Combination (following the steps, doing the work, etc.), I imagine I could become a bit more consistent in my work product.

I suppose the thing I found most interesting was the idea of “abductive reasoning“, whereby our minds take two seemingly disparate experiences/data points and attempt to form a logical connection, in this case with the goal of creating an idea. This is pretty commonplace within the creative industries, as we’re constantly pushing ourselves (and being pushed) to innovate upon a previous campaign/effort/site/ad/whatever. Deductive reasoning would tell us to do only that which was successful previously, or only those things that have been successful for similar products marketed to similar consumers.

I hope to write a bit more on this topic. Any thoughts on this? Do you guys out there use formal creative processes, or do you just let it happen? I’m curious.

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Richness and Remixing – Comcast “Dream Big”

Mar 8, ’09 4:39 PM

Two points.

One: There’s a lot to like here. And today, you need a lot to like to be even liked a little.

When you get down to it, with the shifting ways that people consume information, successful ads are really just successful bits of incredibly interesting film. The Comcast work here does focus on the features and benefits of a product, but it does so with such richness that you kinda want to watch them over and over. It’s what makes “Trucks” and “Gorilla” and even the LeBron Pool ad so nice to watch that you’re excited when they come on as a break from your programming. Not that I ever saw “Trucks” and “Gorilla” in the shows I watch, but I sure would have been thrilled if I did. There are so many things out there that are diverting my attention; if you’re a brand and you want a slice of that pie, give me something filled with beautiful details that I can keep noticing every time I watch.

Here are the :30s from the campaign.

Two: When in doubt, re-mix.

They say that creativity is the ability to bring together disparate sources of information/inspiration and create something new from those parts. Just like chefs all use the same/similar tools and basic raw materials, and all musicians use the same set of notes, we work from a palette of what we experience. And what better colors to paint with than those you know to be popular with people? These ads are clearly a mix of the The Sims and Juno, as mentioned in the post I grabbed these videos from, but the important thing is that both are already popular icons of our culture.

Juno is a natural. And more people can sing along to tunes that are already a bit out of, well, tune.

And the Sims thing…starting with Will Wright’s first version of SimCity in 1989, it’s a franchise that’s now over 20 years old. The remixes of that look are everywhere. As a side note, I highly recommend opening all of those links. Very cool stuff.

That’s all. Have a good week.

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Narrative Suspense and Your Boring Site

Mar 3, ’09 8:02 AM

Yesterday I was reading a profile in the New Yorker about Ian McEwan. He’s the author of Atonement, among other works, and one of the key features of the profile was his discussion of narrative suspense and how to create it.

Narrative suspense is the thing that makes you turn pages, and while it may be gimmicky—see Brown, Dan—it does work. In some ways, it’s the most effective way to create an interesting story. And (most) people don’t dig on boring stories.

“McEwan said that one of his goals was to ‘incite a naked hunger in readers.’ He discussed is technique reluctantly, as if he were a chemist guarding a newly filed patent. ‘Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.’ McEwan is a connoisseur of dread, performing the literary equivalent of turning on the tub faucet and leaving the room; the flood is foreseeable, but it still shocks when the water rushes over the edge…at moments of peak intensity, McEwan slows time down—a form of torture that readers enjoy despite themselves.”

If authors can use narrative suspense to make pages turn, we can use it to get people to do things on the web.

Now, I know it’s a bit salesy to think about “getting people to do things”, but it can’t always be sunshine and roses. We’re in the business of persuasion, and most people that see a site aren’t persuaded to do anything. And they leave in search of something cooler.

So when you’re thinking about a form, a series of forms or a goal funnel (anything that someone has to complete to get a result), instead of scheming out a process that someone “must complete”, build a narrative.

Now, I’m not sure about withholding important information, but surprise people with little gifts along the way that help complete the story.

Another gem from the profile of McEwan:

“On our walk, McEwan twice cited Henry James’s dictum that the only obligation of a novel ‘is that it be interesting.’ Later, McEwan declared that he finds ‘most novels incredibly boring. It’s amazing how the form endures. Not being boring is quite a challenge.’”

Hm. I feel like I find myself saying that a lot. Your first job in this industry, no matter what, is to make things that are interesting. Nothing groundbreaking, I know, but perhaps a little reminder to all of us in the web world, where we tend to get caught up in a lot of documentation and process.

Dan Zalewski, “The Background Hum” New Yorker, February 23, 2009, p. 48

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On Stickiness

Jul 31, ’07 9:23 AM

As ad-folk, we’re always trying to come up with ways to make things sticky. We want viral videos to gain traction. We want people to stick around on our site and read our content. And we want to come up with radical ideas that become public sensations. With Made to Stick on shelves, and “Stickiness” running rampant through the heads of business-folk, it’s interesting to consider what makes things sticky in real life. Tape is sticky. Glass is not. Why?

Apparently it’s viscoelasticity:

Viscoelasticity describes materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing plastic deformation. Viscous materials, like honey, resist shear flow and strain linearly with time when a stress is applied. Elastic materials strain instantaneously when stretched and just as quickly return to their original state once the stress is removed. Viscoelastic materials have elements of both of these properties and, as such, exhibit time dependent strain. [WIKIPEDIA]

Basically, it’s the capability of a material to flow and stretch. As I learned today in Tierney Lab on NYT.com, the flowing (viscosity) aspect allows the sticky material to get traction on the surface it’s sticking to, and the stretching (elasticity) makes it hold on tight and resist forces in the opposite direction. You can measure stickiness by measuring the stiffness of a material. A material needs to have enough stiffness to resist breaking. For instance, water flows but doesn’t have the stiffness to be sticky.

Stiffness is measured by a unit called a pascal (named after the French scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who also has a computer programming language named after him). Aluminum has a stiffness of order 100 billion pascal. Rubber is 1 million to 10 million pascal. A sticky material — one that is “viscoelastic” — has a stiffness of less than 300,000 pascal. Above that, a material loses its tackiness. [NYT/Tierney Lab]

I have no idea what the Heaths have written in “Made to Stick“, but I’ve found if you’re looking to understand complex concepts like “stickiness of ideas”, it’s a good idea to check out how things work in the physical, natural world.

Using that analysis… if you want to make something sticky:

  1. Make it flexible. We all should know how to do this one. Allow real people to play with and help you improve your idea. If they have a good suggestion, use it to make a change.
  2. Make sure it can flow. If a material can’t get its molecules into the nooks and crannies of another material, it can’t grab hold. Your idea (whatever it is, product, service, activity, whatever) should be able to get pretty deep into specific crevasses in people’s lives.
  3. Make sure it has enough internal strength to provide resistance. That is, the brand should have a strong foundation, built upon understanding of customers, research, high product quality, etc.
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