In design, creativity is secondary
When talking about design, creativity is always mentioned as the essential skill. What creativity is and how you obtain it is seldom explained and just taken for granted that you as a designer have lots of it. For me it’s hard to understand why creativity is talked about as the most desired skill, because when working as a designer creativity is secondary.
When addressing a design challenge there are three main phases that must be stepped through before a successful solution can be achieved. These phases have all the same purpose. First you gather information to understand your target group; then you use that information to formulate a solution; and finally you verify that the solution is as good as you think it is. Omitting any of these steps will drastically increase the risk of failure (resulting in loss of time, resources and energy).
Creativity is mostly used in the second phase — when formulating a solution. But the creative aspect is still not the primary part. When actively searching for ideas and solutions, thinking outside the box and other meaningless expressions, you encounter parts where you realise that you lack information to wholly understand that part and its possible solutions and this is the primary reason for the creative second phase — you realise what you don’t know by being creative. Learning is the primary objective in this as well as in the other two phases.
Learning by creating is a must-have mindset in design. Being too focused on creativity will increase the risk that your end-result, even though new and previously unthought of, will be totally useless. The internet abounds with examples of over-creative sites with unique solutions but little user-value — a sad waste of creative energy. When aiming for a successful solution, learning is fundamental and creativity will only take you so far. The creative designer who already knows what’s best for the users won’t contribute much to make people’s lives better.
Learning is the key
Learning about your users is the key to a successful solution, and you should take every opportunity getting to know them better. All your decisions and arguments should be based on your knowledge of the users and this should also be valid for your team members and stakeholders. An argument not based on this knowledge is to be considered invalid. I have been involved in too many projects where management has tried to insert functions/requirements sideways arguing from their superior rank. They too should argue for the user value of these items and validated with researched user knowledge.
In each step of your design process the goal is to maximize learning. When you realise that you are not learning anything new, proceed to the next step. Do not linger and believe you will learn more if you give it some more time. If you, for example, are researching your target group and realise that for every new interview you don’t learn as much as you did previously, that’s a sign you should move on. You don’t have to exhaust every step. In the design loop, you will return to this specific step in the near future with new knowledge, but you’re done for now.
Learning takes time. If you want to achieve a deeper sense of understanding, you have to spend some time to reflect and analyse. Going too fast will make you miss these fundamental insights into your users’ behaviours which will affect the level of impact you will achieve. Too many rush forward too fast in their projects and start anew without spending enough time to reflect on lessons learned — learning little and repeating mistakes.
Learning by failing
So, learning is the key to a successful solution and learning is needed throughout the whole project. Keeping that in mind will yield higher impacts, make you reach your goals, and give you a higher sense of doing the right thing right. To maximize your learning there is one event that you should welcome and cherish when it does happen — failure.
Failure, which some people dread and avoid at all costs, is essential to learning. When you fail you learn the most. It means taking a step backwards, regrouping and then restarting in a new direction. To some, this is a personal disaster and makes people feel like a loser. It’s sorry to see when this happens as this is actually a great opportunity to make the end result better, which is the important thing. Some people quickly pull themselves together but other broods and worry about their performance and status. This is where good leaders should set an example and show that this is not a bad thing and instead encourage learning and personal growth.
To be honest, I don’t like failures either. It’s like an unexpected pothole in the road which leaves you a bit shocked, disoriented and scared (and humiliated because you failed to see it when you should have). But failure is a natural part of human nature and these days I see it as an asset when it does happen. I don’t have any problem telling my co-workers or superiors that I have failed, telling them that this will only make the end-result better and that’s what counts.
When interviewing people to employ, I always ask if they sometime have failed. Even if it’s someone’s first job I would be surprised if they haven’t failed during their education so for me a no is suspicious. If you’ve been an active practitioner for a couple of years, there have been failures and omitting to say so will show me that you have an immature and unsound attitude towards failure and I will hesitate to recommend you for employment.
Myself, I have failed lots of times, sometimes miserably so. In one project I introduced personas as a method of user involvement and as a design tool. It failed to a point where not only the method was ridiculed but also me. I learned a lot from that experience and nowadays, personas is one of my strongest tools.
Accepting and learning from failures is to take the master stance. Constantly dreading failures will make your life worrisome and stressful — non-optimal for a designer. As learning is the primary skill for a designer, your modus operandi should be adapted to prioritize this foregoing your ego, status and appearance and you will be better suited to make this world a better place to live in.
