There’s a fascinating conversation over on the Adaptive Path website between Henning Fischer and Chris Conley from Gravity Tank. The dialogue focuses on the challenges around fostering creative culture within an organisation.
In the same way that Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk highlights prevailing attitudes to creativity in education, Fisher and Conely seem uniquely placed to reveal similar patterns within ‘design’.
I particularly like Henning Fischer’s reference to ‘creative stagnation’ at Motorola:
“Does survivorship bias contribute to creative stagnation? To me there seems to be an almost reactionary thing going on. Organizations will break new ground, and then do almost everything they can to stop and consolidate that position and maximize returns. Motorola did that with the Razr and look where it got them. Before long, the organization realizes that it needs to recapture its creative voice and so begins the endless back and forth between breaking into new territory and holding your hard earned ground.”
When asked what personal qualities make a good interaction designer, Larry Tesler highlighted humility:
“Enough confidence to believe you can solve any design problem and enough humility to understand that most of your ideas are probably bad. Enough humility to listen to ideas from other people that may be better than your own and enough confidence to understand that going with other people’s ideas does not diminish your value as a designer.”
Larry Tesler, Vice President of the User Experience and Design group, Yahoo in Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction.
Unlike some of my my esteemed colleagues, I must confess to being a relative novice when it comes to public speaking. Which makes it all the more awe-inspiring when I get to watch a great talk.
Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘Yes, design can make you happy’ fits the bill perfectly. Sagmeister delivers an eloquent, funny and inspiring account in to how and why design should inspire happiness as opposed to just representing it. Highly recommended viewing.
As I said, I’m a novice orator at best but I’d like that to change. So in advance of my ascent on world superstardom I’m starting to collect some hints and tips. Anyway, this is what I learnt from Stefan. No doubt, these contravene all that makes up that blissful state of Presentation Zen, but it’s a start:
- Being provocative is as effective – perhaps even more so – than presenting big solutions.
- Tell your own stories – personal experience is the simplest means of encouraging empathy.
- Trim the fat. A few simple, accessible ideas are memorable.
- There’s no need to explain everything. In fact if you do, you risk patronising your audience. Let people experience some of the the joy that you did when you worked all these things out.
- Make people laugh. They’ll like you and your presentation .
- Fifteen minute presentations encourage you to be smart with your content. Anything longer inevitably results in some people losing focus. If you can’t tell people what they want in this time, you shouldn’t be presenting anyway.
Ever since Jordan recommended the Metropolitan World Atlas, I’ve been on the look out for a copy. My search was eventually rewarded on a recent trip to - rather unexpectedly - The Architecture Centre in Bristol.
The design is far from perfect: There’s some really quite awful typography in the opening pages; Likewise, much of the data is disappointingly out of date, despite being published in 2005. But as an exercise in information composition, this book remains a truly wonderful accomplishment.
Its success resides in the author’s ability to present complicated datasets in both elegant and meaningful ways. In my opinion, Arjen van Susteren gets very close to what Mr Tufte would describe as Graphical Excellence:
“Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. Graphical displays should
- show the data
- induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about the methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
- avoid distorting what the data have to say
- present many numbers in a small space
- make large data sets coherent
- encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
- reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
- serves a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
- be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.
Graphics reveal data…”
Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information
Complex information, such as price lists and timetables, cannot be designed on a preconceived grid. The page arrangement has to stem from the content and structure of the information itself. First you have to find the shortest and the longest elements, and then ignore them; if your layout accommodates the extremes you will end up making allowances for a few isolated exceptions. The thing to do is make the bulk of the matter fit, then go back to the exceptions and work with them one by one. If there are only a few long lines in an otherwise short listing, it should be considered an opportunity to flex your creative muscles: design them or rewrite.
Eric Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger, Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works
On the success of the iMac:
“They would not have succeeded in this endeavour had they not failed along the way. If you team succeeds all the time, then fire them. They’re not trying hard enough and being too conservative. You have to reward mistakes, just not stupidity.”
Bill Buxton (Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research),
Sketching and Experience Design, BostonCHI, November 2006.
Dubberly Design communicate complex topics using their own take on concept mapping. There’s some beautiful examples of information design here which seems to fit nicely with their approach to producing ‘delightful’ software.