Creative Minds Never Stop
Parallels between artistic hobbies and design work
By Holly King and Keesa Robinson
Many designers pursue hobbies and interests outside of work that are creative or artistic in nature. Does creative work carried out in one part of life spill over and influence creative work in another part of life? Can our hobbies and work complement each other? As IBM Hybrid Cloud UX designers following IBM Design practices who are also involved with creative pursuits outside of work, we explored this topic and would like to share our reflections.
Dance and design
Keesa Robinson
Imagination and creativity have always captured my attention. Seeing things from a new perspective or admiring new art in any form always excites me. As a UX designer based in the IBM Bay Area Design Studio in Foster City, California, one of my favorite aspects of my job is exploring ideas. Particularly, I love creating and witnessing the intersection of art with psychology, software, history, business, and sociology. Outside of work, I enjoy salsa dancing, and I’ve found that this hobby has many parallels to how I practice creativity at work. Whether I’m designing a new use case or brainstorming styling for our dance team, each art form encourages me to become a better artist by reinforcing similar creative processes and themes.
On first thought, one wouldn’t necessarily associate technology with dance or vice versa. However, I’ve realized over time how many similarities there actually are. In design, our users are our north star who guide the direction of the design. Similarly, in choreography and social dancing, the ultimate guide is the music. What the user/music dictates holds a lot of power in how the designers/dancers react to that information. If we continue to break it down, design systems or style guides provide visual consistency and organization so the designs and experiences are cohesive. In the dance world, the fundamentals and rhythm provide structure to the piece, and without it, it’s so much harder to explore new directions.
For example, while we have a choreographer come up with most of the choreography, we are given creative freedom to adjust it to our skill level and style as a team. When we start experimenting, a lot of the changes we come up with are slight variations of fundamental movements from the piece. If we haven’t mastered those movements, it would be more difficult to get started and keep the original feeling of the choreography. This experimentation parallels the exploration I do when designing a new interaction or scenario. While “blue sky” ideation in software design is important, another aspect of design is taking what we currently have and being creative on how to close the gap to get to our ideal design.
Salsa dancing is unique in that it’s a melting pot. In today’s salsa dance scene, I see influences from many genres of dance, including afro-cuban, ballet, ballroom, jazz, contemporary and even hip-hop. Without a solid foundation of the basic movements from a few of these genres (mainly afro-cuban and ballet), you may lack technique and you may lose the culture and original intention of the movement. Understanding where the movement or design originated provides a “rule” that then can be explored and may be even broken, given the appropriate circumstances. Recognizing the similarities between my two worlds has deepened my understanding of how to be creative. I’ve learned that it’s a delicate balance between following what’s expected and pushing the boundaries once you’ve mastered the fundamentals.
Dance has also helped me understand how to build an environment that encourages creativity. My dance team has an amazing connection and team energy. From these close relationships, we have established trust, understanding, and security. From my experience, these qualities are absolutely necessary to create an environment where people feel competent, comfortable and confident to form new approaches and stand out from the crowd. Some of the best ideas come from pure silliness and randomness. Striving to create a similar environment, our design team in the Bay Area Design Studio has fostered close relationships through team lunches, field trips to San Francisco to attend Creative Mornings talks and friendly competition in Beat Saber, for example. As a result, we’ve established an accepting and relaxed environment where any and all ideas are open for discussion.
Creativity not only keeps things interesting, it also pushes us and those around us to think outside the box. I am forever grateful for that one day I decided to give salsa dancing lessons a try when I had very little dance experience. I am also grateful to have found two passions that continue to push my creative limits and encourage me to be a better overall artist.
Jewelry and design
Holly King
I have many artistic interests outside of work. If there is an artsy/crafty endeavor out there, chances are that I have tried it at some point — drawing, painting, scrap-booking, photography, sewing, quilting, crocheting, embroidery, soap and candle making, designing (and trying to make) furniture… I’ve even dabbled in basket weaving! My biggest obstacle to succeeding at hobbies is learning to limit what I focus on. There’s just not enough time to be serious about more than a few different pursuits.
My varied artworks have taught me a lot about creativity and how to work well with different materials. I am fairly new to a formal design role in my professional life and am still learning. As I developed my UI design skills, I noticed parallels in how I was working in the digital world and how I was working on different types of art.
One of my current spotlight hobbies is making earrings, which involves assembling various components in unique combinations. Chandeliers are the most complex earrings I make and sometimes figuring out a new or different design pattern can be like working on a puzzle. Before I started my role as a UX designer, I would typically make new earrings by picking some beads and beginning the assembly. This method sometimes led to earrings that didn’t really work. Beads would hit each other awkwardly or the earrings would hang strangely because some of the pieces were too big for the base chandelier.
When I was introduced to the UX design process and the concept of low to hi-fi iterations about three years ago, I saw that creating mock-ups and testing them early helped designers make sure they were on the right track before they got too far with a polished version. I thought about how this same process could be used in the way I made earrings. Creating mock-ups without actually assembling would probably save me time and from wasting materials. Since that realization, I’ve changed the way I work on my earrings. Instead of jumping straight to the construction phase, I take time to design loose layouts and “mock up” what I think might work.
I’ll usually begin by arranging all of my materials around a central open work space and then start to create draft designs by laying out beads. I’ll often lay out several similar versions or iterations of the same design to see which one works the best. Once I have a few different options roughed out, I’ll build one earring to see if it looks good, hangs right, is a good length (and doesn’t weigh 10 pounds), and then make the mate. Just like working through low fidelity iterations of a UI design before creating the hi-fi version, this method has helped me weed out less successful designs by getting a preview of them before I put everything together.
Another overlap between UI design and jewelry making is user testing. I test many of my own creations, like wearing the earrings I make or sporting a different crochet scarf every day in December. After going through the process of user testing and validation for UI designs, I realized I should be doing more and pushing further. Now I try to get my earrings in other’s hands (or better yet, in their ears) to get feedback from outside of my perspective. I give some away in exchange for detailed reviews and when friends or acquaintances purchase from me online or at shows, I ask for specifics about how happy they are with their experience. One friend told me that she loved the earrings but because they were on the heavier side, it would have been nice if they’d come with backs to keep them from slipping out of her ear lobes. I promptly purchased some clear backs and now include a set with all of my earrings.
Seeing how my new skills as a UX designer impacted my old skills as a Jacky-of-all-trades artist and crafter helped me to rethink some of my artistic workflows. I also started to pay more attention to how being an artist influences the way I work on UI designs. I’ve been able to save time, increase creativity, and most importantly, improve the experience people have with the things I make and design.
Overlapping creativity benefits both worlds
Though our hobbies are quite different, in talking about them with each other, we realized there was quite a bit of overlap with how we worked as designers in a software environment. Having more than one way to practice design processes has helped us hone our crafts and develop new skills in both our day jobs and in our hobbies. It has deepened our overall understanding and practice of design and helped us to recognize that you can find creativity and inspiration in unexpected places.
Special thanks to our IBM colleagues Tom Waterton and Sasha Kerbel for their help with this article.
Keesa Robinson and Holly King are UX designers at IBM. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
