Methods of thinking, curiosity and insight.
The Bauhaus took the idea of exploring the design thought process seriously for the first time. It was such a revolutionary school of thinking. They began to look at materials, tools, nature, colour and the relationships between them all. They also did regular exercise classes to enhance their thinking.
Design thinking started off linear, but as design is such a on-linear process it makes sense that people started to describe deign thinking in different and more complex ways.
The Double Diamond
This idea divides the design thought process into four sections: Discover define, develop and deliver.
You start of small and then look wide for ideas before refining them down, developing the chosen idea back out again and finishing on a single finished product/idea.
6 Thinking Hats is another interesting way of thinking. Everyone in the group has to put on a metaphorical hat so they are unified in thinking about projects from one angle all together. It also allows a project to be looked at from all sides and evaluated.
Daniel Kahneman’s ideas about fast and slow thinking are also very interesting. The idea that our fast thinking happens without our control is something that I think needs to be taken into account for every design. You have to appeal to this fast thinking and let the automatic reaction be a good one that sparks emotion, then if you appeal to the slow thinking you will keep the viewer engaged for longer as they look deeper to discover the meaning of the work. I think if you don’t grab them by designing for fast thinking you don’t get the chance to appeal to their slow thinking?
Ian Mc Gilcrest’s ideas about the Divided Brain was the part of this lecture that interested me the most. He spoke about how each side of the brain had different purposes but that they needed to work together to be creative. The left side of the brain is fixed and focused on understanding while the right side deals with ideas that are never full graspable.
Both sides are important but the world has come to value the left side much higher than the right side.
‘the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant’
Einstein
But we have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift of the right brain.
This brings about a lot of questions:
As a designer can we nurture the intuitive mind? Maybe this draws into Kahnermans ideas of fast thinking, is the intuitive mind something we have less control over and reacts to things without our control?
Can we create design that appeals to the intuitive mind and moves away from the rational mind? What would this look like? Maybe it would be more childish and free?
Why has society developed like this? Are we simply out of practise in using our right brains?
Possibly this is why people struggle to grasp and care about big ideas outside of their own lives such as poverty and climate change?
Maybe the focus on our left more rational brain has reduced peoples capacity for empathy?
RSA Animate – The Power of Outrospection – Roman Krznaric
Outrospection creates empathy and empathy makes us more creative.
Its not just affective empathy (a mirrored emotional response) by cognitive empathy (stepping into someone else’s world) that is important.
Empathy breaks down preconceptions that surround people.
Empathy can also be a collective force. When you inspire enough people through empathetic techniques they are more keen to act on something.
Thats why the idea of an empathy museum seems like such a good one, if you put people in a situation where they can feel what its like to be someone else it effects them so much more. If you have to work in a sweatshop before you can buy a cheap t-shirt it would completely change your opinion on that simple action.
Empathy is so important in idea generation as you need to be aware of what other people want and need and how they will respond to what you’ve created.
Design that is experiential and conversational is much more likely to spark empathy in the viewer.
Krsznaric claims that slavery was abolished because campaigners played to peoples empathy, trying to help people understand what its like to be enslaved sparked them to care and do something about it. This therefore is the way he also believes we can help change issues in today society such as climate change. Empathetic design therefore is so vital for social, political and economic transformation. (Krzaric 2012)
Humans are emotional, and react effortlessly to emotional queues, so taking emotion into account when designing is so important. Reaching people on an emotional level is only possible with empathetic thinking.
“We embrace the empathy principle by living and experiencing our users’ pain points and state of mind strictly from their perspective […] If applied correctly, we experience the world around us in the proper light. We lead ourselves (and others who join us in this journey) into a state of alertness that cuts thru bias—conscious or unconscious—that could otherwise impact our ability to be receptive toward creative solutions and possibilities.”
(Turnali 2016)
For example, many people tried to design safer cook stoves for countries where women used dangerous 3 stone cook stoves. Their designs failed because they didn’t speak to the people they were designing for. Starting with the women who used the cook stoves, empathising with their lives and what mattered to them was how someone finally managed to create an alternative to three stone cooking that these women actually wanted to use. (Criado Perez 2019)
The more I look into empathy as a way of thinking I am sure of its integral importance in design thinking and for creating moving and powerful design. I think however, it is a way of thinking that needs to become part of our lives and integral to how we design but it is not necessarily a way of generating ideas. The ideas need to be generated, but then thought about with empathy.
Pointless Creativity
I was also interested in the ideas mentioned in Regular Practise’s intro to the challenge this week. Bruno Munari’s useless machines show a pointless creativity that I think is brilliant. He was creating for the sake of creating, as if he is exercising his ‘creativity muscle‘. Just like Thomas Heatherwick and his team playing around with clay.
It makes me think that maybe we are getting in our own way a lot of the time, the stressed and desperate search for ideas and inspiration is stopping creativity in its tracks. When you grab a ball of clay, or a stack of coloured pens and start enjoying yourself without any pressure, creating for the fun of creating, you allow your creative ideas to take hold and come forwards without your overthinking or worry or maybe your rational left brain getting in the way?
Thinking about trying to create this much more freeing approach to design bought me towards the idea of getting into a ‘State of Flow”.
State of flow
A ‘trance-like altered state of total absorption and effortless concentration’ (Robb 2019)
Getting into a state of flow is another way of thinking to help generate creative ideas. I looked outside of graphic design thinking to explore this idea further and read a book about how flow can help with sports, focusing especially on freestyle surfers and snowboarders and these are creative sports.
“Every time we have a creative insight and share it with the world, we come up against some very primal terrors: fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of social ridicule”
(Kotler 2014:144)
Therefore coming up with creative ideas takes risks and therefore produces dopamine.
Dopamine stimulates emotion and increases motivation, it also tightens focus and makes it easier to enter a state of flow.
“the flow state itself acts like a force multiplier for creativity […] as a result we are more receptive to novel experiences (the building blocks of new ideas) and much less inhibited (thus more likely to present those new ideas to the world)”
(Kotler 2014:145)
So creativity triggers flow and then flow enhances creativity, it is a building effect gaining momentum as it goes along. All you need to do to get it going is to do something creative, whatever that might be and without worry of what its like to help push towards that state of flow that should bring even more creativity and ideas along with it.
Jim Sutherland also talks about this in his lecture. He walks around taking creative photos at the start of a project and scribbles ideas down in his notebook. These creative actions spark the beginning of his creative process and the flow.
“scribbling in a sketchbook as a way of generating ideas and starting your brain going”
(Sutherland 2020)
He likes to use his hands and make his ideas with scraps of paper, this connection of idea with creative act seems to add momentum to his idea creation process and allows for the natural progression of his thoughts.
He is also not worried about drawing silly ideas, in fact he seems to enjoy that the most. He does projects for fun, eliminating the worry of the clients opinion and therefore allowing him to be even more creative and free.
He searches for ideas away from the computer. Gets out walking, reading books, drawing and photographing. Moving his headspace to one of more childish creativity allows brilliant work to be created. He also talks about getting into a state of flow with his work and trying to put joy into it in the hope of getting joy out in the end.
Why think about this at all?
The idea of thinking about thinking is honestly new to me, and probably to a lot of others too.
The School of Life talks about ‘Exercising the Mind’. We happily train our bodies, and our minds in an academic sense, but we won’t train our minds to be better in relationships, to be more resilient, less anxious etc, the “no less important challenges of Relationships, Careers, Children, Friends, Meaning, Loving and Dying.”
Essentially the things that are the most important to us and likely to be the difference between living happily or unhappily. (De Botton)
The same applies to design thinking, we need to think about how we are thinking and be willing to exercise our thinking if we ever want to progress and improve. Just like in any other area of life.
My Drawing
State of Flow (Creativity triggers flow and then flow enhances creativity)
The main things I want to show in my line drawing are the momentum the flow state can produce, how its sparked by one creative act, the fear that can be involved and the childlike and joyful nature that helps it to progress.
To create my workshop project this week I decided to use the technique I was going to draw to create my drawing of it. I jumped straight into my sketchbook scribbling down the first things that came to mind, writing down any words that came into my head and letting myself be influenced and swept up in the flow of idea generation. I didn’t dismiss any idea however strange but drew it anyway.
Through this process I came to the idea of a slinky. The Childs game where you set a coiled spring going off the top step and it makes its way down to the bottom of the stairs alone. I felt like this perfectly summed up the process. The slinky is childlike and joyful.
The joyful act of creativity and freedom is setting the slinky off on its first step, something you have to physically do. Its movements are filled with risk, crossing the unknown as it arches off the stability of the step its on. However as it travels it picks up momentum, the steps are getting bigger and so is the idea as the state of flow has been reached.
Final Design
I have kept my drawing simple and hand drawn. This is because I think you need to start simply and off the computer to allow this process to happen, its the scribbles on a piece of paper that can get this idea generation process going so I wanted to show it like that, as a page in a sketchbook.
Reflection
Thinking about how we think has been a very enlightening experience. I’ve never really stopped to think about they way I think and if I could try thinking in different ways. The thought processes explored in this weeks lecture and reading opened up a lot of ideas for me. Many of them looked like interesting ways of coming up with ideas. I think that maybe everyone needs a slightly different way of thinking that works best for them and for the work they hope to produce.
I’ve explored the idea of empathy this week and think its such an important way of thinking when it comes to graphic design. I love that at the bauhaus they used exercise classes to generate creative thought, it seems clearing your mind, leaving your computer screen and getting your blood pumping is a great way to allow your innate creativity to flow. This is also partly why going for a walk is such a great yet simple way to generate ideas.
Many artists create ‘useless machines’ as Munari called them to being creative for the sake of it. Being natural, childlike and free with your creativity might just be when the best ideas are made? It is hard to step away from fears of what other people might think and the constant internal voice questioning if you are good enough, but if you can do that and let your internal creativity take the wheel, maybe thats when truly brilliant creative ideas are born?
Two ideas I loved from the ideas wall this week were Mina’s and Ingrid’s. They are both completely different. I think the array of different approaches to this weeks challenge really shows how many different ways of thinking their are out there, and how each person needs to choose one (or more than one) that fits with their personality and the product they are trying to create.
References
KOTLER, Steven. 2014. The Rise of Super Man- Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. London: Quercus.
ROBB, Alice. 2019. “The ‘flow state’: Where creative work thrives’. BBC 5 February [online]. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190204-how-to-find-your-flow-state-to-be-peak-creative [accessed 21 October 2020]
KRZNARIC, Roman 2012. ‘RSA Animate – The Power of Outrospection’. RSA [online].Available at: https://www.thersa.org/video/animates/2012/12/rsa-animate—the-power-of-outrospection. [Accessed 19 October 2020]
TURNALI, Kaan. 2016. ‘Empathy, Design Thinking, And An Obsession With Customer-Centric Innovation’. Forbes [online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/01/17/empathy-design-thinking-and-an-obsession-with-customer-centric-innovation/#1f185f914285. [Accessed 20 October 2020]
SUTHERLAND, Jim. 2020. ‘Sutherl&Falmouth’ [online lecture]. Falmouth University. Available at: https://fast.wistia.net/embed/channel/442tfhl7jj?wchannelid=442tfhl7jj&wmediaid=jvzecgrru1 [accessed 20 October 2020]
CRIADO PEREZ, Caroline. 2019. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. London: Vintage.
DE BOTTON, Alain. 2020. ‘On Exercising the Mind’. The School of Life [online]. Available at: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/exercise-for-the-mind/. [accessed 19/10/20]
MC GILCREST, Ian. 2011. “RSA Animate – The Divided Brain.” The RSA [online]. Available at: https://www.thersa.org/video/animates/2011/10/rsa-animate—the-divided-brain [accessed 10 Dec 2020].
Lizzie Wa Design 
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