Project 52

You are invited to participate in Project 52 - 2015

What is a Project 52? Starting at midnight on Jan 1, 2015, a weekly theme will be published on this blog (which will then roll over to the Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Insight-and-Innovation-Course/530970987018824 ). You will have 7 days to develop and post a creative response to the posted theme, and post your response on the Facebook page.

At the end of the 7 days, a new post will appear for the next week.

The goal is to get your creative juices flowing. A creative response can be any medium, any form you prefer. The only rule is that you create the thing you post during that week. That is - read the theme, then take a picture, draw a picture, paint something, write a poem, write an essay, write a story, make a sculpture, whatever you want - just do it that week, and post the result on the facebook page for your fellow 52'ers to see.

It would be nice if you also gave some love to your fellow 52'ers.

That's it - easy, right?

OK - get ready - first theme will show up at 12 AM on January 1, 2015!

IDEO Fanboy

I admit, it seems every day I become more of an IDEO fanboy.

I just finished reading Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, and it just makes me want to drop everything and move out to California and offer to sweep the floors if that's how I could get in.

The book is copyrighted from 2001, so many of the products and companies Kelley talks about are dated, but the book really has some timeless elements. Tim Brown's Change by Design (2009) was my first book by an IDEO team member. I'd probably recommend that book over Kelley's, but both are excellent.

Kelley's book reads a bit like a compilation of articles from Fastcompany Design, which is to say, it's an easy read with a bunch of tidbits, but the tidbits hang together more by their physical collocation than a strong narrative structure. Nevertheless, the tidbits are very, very cool.

Kelley opens with IDEO's basic five-step method (p.6):

1) Understand
2) Observe
3) Visualize
4) Evaluate and refine
5) Implement

Simple prescription, not easy to implement. One of the things I really like about IDEO's approach is the observe step. They have a strongly ethnographic approach: they really try to engage with the producers and users, asking questions and trying to see things that everyone has taken for granted, usually because of myopia.

The other step that I think is particularly unique to IDEO's approach is the drive to immediately start prototyping - to even use prototyping as part of the "understand" step. They even prototype for services by building mock-up environments where the services are rendered. The thing I am learning from my reading on creativity is the importance of doing, rather than planning. The act of doing tends create insights that simply trying to visualize or mentally model simply does not - at least not for most people.

He says:

Just as writer's block happens when writer's stop writing, so, too, does innovation grind to a halt when prototypes stop being built. When the muse fails you, don't mope at your desk. Make something. (p. 114)

Kelley has some other nice quotes about prototyping:

Prototyping doesn't just solve straightforward problems. Call it serendipity or even luck, but once you start drawing or making things, you open up new possibilities of discovery. (p.108)

Doodling, drawing, modeling. Sketch ideas and make things, and you're likely to encourage accidental discoveries. At the most fundamental level, what we're talking about is play, about exploring borders. (p. 109)

We believe in that great old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Only at IDEO, we've found that a good prototype is worth a thousand pictures. (p. 112) 

One of the important parts of prototyping is to help make sure you haven't gone of the rails from the client's perspective:

We pitch presentations in stages, show the rough sketch, the cheap foam model, and use them to right the course before it's too late. (113)

All this talk about inspiration from prototyping reminds me of how Austin Kleon really pushes this idea in his book Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative - it's important to do things. He quotes John Cleese - “We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.” The idea of prototyping, of developing by doing, seems quite central to successful innovators.

The book is definitely worth a read, even if some of the specific products are now history (he talks a lot about now defunct Palm devices, for example). The process guidance is timeless.

fashion and intellectual property

Interesting point from this TED talk - fashion is not allowed to copyright/patent. They can only use trademarks. The arguments in software, music, and publishing is that we need intellectual property to encourage creativity - because without intellectual property there would be no economic incentives to create. And yet the fashion industry is extremely creative and economically successful.

http://youtu.be/zL2FOrx41N0

Project 52 for 2015 - lowering our standards

Some of the previous participants in the 30 Day Creativity Challenge have expressed interest in pursuing a Project 52.

I have participated in Project 52's on Flickr where the project consists of a weekly theme that photographers then try to capture with an image each week for a year. For this Project 52, any medium will be allowed, not just photography. So you can write a poem, write an essay, record a video, sing a song, write a reflection, or of course, take a picture, so long as what you submit ties in somehow to the theme for the week.

One thing I did not push, but I think is important, is that whatever you submit should be a new creation that week.

So if you submit a picture by itself, then the picture should be something you made that week. If you submit a poem, it should be something you wrote that week. The point is to get you making and responding. A Project 52 is not a scavenger hunt. Now that said, if the theme makes you think of a poem you once read, or a picture you took years ago, that's fine. You can integrate that into a reflection or essay. But the older thing you are using should be a starting point, not the central point. You should be adding to it in some meaningful way. An old picture might spark a story about how things were and how they are today, for example. An old poem might spark a reflection about how you thought about it back then, and how you think about it now, or how it changed who you are. The point is, the portion that is recycled should not be the primary focus of the submission.

The goal of a project like this is to get your creative juices flowing. You'll have a whole week to work on an idea - so there is time to reflect and make something that challenges you.

Since we are going to leave the medium open, I would especially encourage you try things you don't think you are good at. Can't draw? Perfect - drawing it is! Can't write poetry? Time for some sonnets.

For some of you who are perfectionists, the idea of putting something out there that isn't perfect is horrifying, but it is truly the only way to grow. The poet William Stafford used to write a poem every day as soon as he woke up in the morning. An interviewer once asked him, "What if you aren't very good that day?" His response was simply, "I lower my standards."

So I invite you to try a Project 52 that will take you outside your comfort zone this year. Perhaps just doing this will be outside your comfort zone. You will be the judge of where that zone is for you. But if you take this on, and you truly try to experiment with things you are uncomfortable with, you will be a better person by the end. And after all, what else is there to life?

So get ready to lower your standards in the new year. First post will go live New Years eve.

Another Challenge Complete!

Yay! We made it through our 30 Day Creativity Challenge.

Now what? We've got to keep those juices flowing.