How Creativity Influences Design

Most of this book is about the people you’re designing for. But this chapter is especially for you, the designer. It explains the latest research on creativity and the brain, so you can apply that research to your work and use it to improve your creativity and product design.

What if 100 people went to a fashion show? Would everyone say that the clothing designers are creative? Or what if they saw a graffiti artist’s work on a wall—would they say that the artist is creative? What about people who design technology? Are they creative?

There are many possible definitions of creativity. We probably won’t agree entirely on the definition or on the results. However, here’s a definition I’ve put together that I find descriptive and useful:

Creativity is the process of generating new ideas, possibilities, or alternatives that result in outcomes that are original and of value.

Here’s why I like this definition:

• Process—The word “process” is in the definition. So, creativity isn’t a trait that some people have and other people don’t. There’s actually a creative process that you can follow.

• Outcomes—Just doing the process isn’t necessarily being creative. If you follow a creative process, and by doing so you end up with something, that’s an outcome. Being creative means that you have something when you’re done.

• Original—The definition includes the word “original.” Being creative isn’t just copying what somebody else did. When you’re creative, you end up with something unique.

• Value—When you’re creative, the outcome is of value to someone. It doesn’t have to be of value to everyone, but it has to be of value to someone.

Even with this definition, we may not necessarily agree on who’s creative and who’s not. But the definition gives us a place to start talking about creativity, and a way to evaluate whether or not a particular activity is creative.

1. Some people are “naturally” creative and other people aren’t.

It’s true that some people spend more time in creative activity than others. But brain science is clear about the fact that there are creative brain states that can be turned on by some fairly simple actions. This means that everyone can learn how to be more creative.

2. Creativity means creating “works of art.”

Being creativity doesn’t equate only with creating fine art, such as painting a landscape or writing a symphony. There are many ways to be creative, and creating works of art is just one way. Creativity includes many things, for example, cooking, programming, interface design, and problem solving.

3. Some people are left-brained (analytical) and others are right-brained (creative).

My PhD research was on the right and left halves of the brain, so I can get pretty involved in a conversation about the subject. The human brain has two hemispheres: the left and the right. It’s a common misconception that the left side of the brain is all about being logical and analytical and rational, and the right side of the brain is all about being intuitive and creative. That description is not accurate.

Here’s a summary of what’s true and what’s myth:

• There are definitely two sides to the brain—the left and the right—and it’s true that there are some brain structures on one side that aren’t on the other. For instance, the ability to speak and to understand language is on the left, and some spatial awareness is on the right. However, it’s simplistic to say that when you listen to music, you’re listening to it only with the right side of your brain. Even people who don’t play an instrument show activity on both sides of the brain when listening to music. (Although those who play an instrument show more activity in more areas of the brain than those who don’t.) It’s simplistic to say that the right side is the creative side.

• The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right halves of the brain. Information (nerve impulses) passes through the corpus callosum very quickly. So even if something started on one side of the brain, it doesn’t stay there very long.

• When people say “I’m a left-brained person” or “I’m a right-brained person,” they’re actually not referring to sides of the brain. They’re referring to styles of thinking, learning, or processing information. There are different ways to process information, but they don’t correspond to specific halves of the brain.

Hopefully this debunks some of the myths. So if these aren’t true, what is true about brain science and creativity?

The rest of this chapter describes the research on the brain and creativity as well as the implications for what you can do to stimulate creativity in yourself and others.

Research on the brain and creativity tells us that the first step in creativity is to focus intensely. Whether you’re trying to solve a problem at work or create a new musical masterpiece, being creative starts with focus.

Instead of thinking about particular structures in the brain, neuroscientists, following Menon and Bressler’s lead, are now looking at how different parts of the brain are networked together, what each particular network does, and even how the networks interact. These brain networks are a critical part of understanding the neuroscience of creativity.

You can get so caught up in the problem you’re trying to solve, or the creative idea you want to come up with, that you focus immediately on the solution. But before you focus on the solution, you have to ask the right question. If you don’t start with the right question, then your executive attention network will be focusing on the wrong issue.

Here’s an example from one of my clients, an online clothing retailer. “We have these videos that show some of our most popular apparel items,” the client told me. “How can we get people to watch more videos at our website? If people watch the videos, they’re more likely to buy the product, and so we want to know how we can change the product page so that the videos display right away and automatically.”

That’s an example of not asking the right question. If we didn’t stop and ask, “Is that the right question?” we might have come up with a creative solution like having the videos start as soon as the customer gets to the product page. But is that the best, most creative solution?

There are several other questions that might be better to concentrate on, for example:

“Why aren’t people watching the videos?”

or

“Are there other design changes we could make that would increase sales?”

When you’re trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea, make sure you’re asking the right question. Don’t assume that the question at hand is the best or right one. Give the executive attention network the best question to concentrate on.

The default network engages when you’re not doing anything in particular. You could say that it’s your brain activity when your brain is at rest, but the truth is that there’s a lot of brain activity when the default network is operating.

Randy Buckner, a neuroscientist at Harvard, first wrote about the default network in a 2008 journal article. The default network was discovered accidentally. Researchers were studying the brain activity of people who were given certain tasks to do. Some participants in the study were told just to sit and think about nothing in particular as part of a control condition in the experiments. Initially this data was not even analyzed, but some researchers began to notice that there was quite a lot of brain activity in certain areas when people were supposedly not thinking about anything in particular.

Continued research on the default network shows that it’s active when people are exploring mental simulations—when they’re preparing for events that they think may happen, before they happen. When people run through simulations based on their past experiences, when they think about the future, when they imagine alternative scenarios, and when they think about the perspectives of others in their situation—it’s this default network that is active.

The default network does simulations, goes through your memory to look for things that you’ve experienced in the past that might be relevant, and imagines possible alternatives ideas and solutions.

The default network is critical for the creative process. It’s important to set the idea or problem in the executive attention network first, but then you have to stop using the executive attention network. The two networks can’t operate at the same time. You need the default network to look for ideas and connections, and run through possible alternatives. If you keep concentrating on the problem or idea, then you’re using the executive attention network and not your default network. You have to step away if you want to be creative.

So far this chapter has discussed the first two steps in the creative process:

1. Setting the problem or idea with the executive attention network.

2. Stepping away to engage the default network.

The “aha” solution comes from the third network involved in the creative process: the salience network.

The salience network works best if you’ve asked a clear question or posed a clear problem or idea in the executive attention network, and if you’ve stepped away and stopped using your prefrontal cortex so that the default network has been engaged.

1. Write down your initial ideas in a notebook or draw a picture of the problem you want to solve to ensure that you are spending some concentrated time focusing on the problem. This is the executive attention network.

2. Step away, whether it’s to take a walk, listen to music, or clean the house. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you step away. This is the default network.

3. Be prepared to grab the “aha” ideas when they come. Because the salience network does its work behind the scenes, you don’t have to do anything in particular to get it to work.

Some of this research focused on daydreaming. Daydreaming refers to the thoughts and images people have when their attention turns inward—when they’re in default network mode.

Most scientists today use the term “mind wandering” instead of daydreaming. This is probably because the term “daydreaming” has taken on negative connotations.

Rebecca McMillan (2013) wrote about the history of research into daydreaming. The first scientist to study daydreaming was Jerome Singer, starting in 1955.

Singer actually divided daydreaming into three types: positive constructive daydreaming (wishful thinking, creative thoughts), guilty-dysphoric daydreaming (obsessive thoughts and fantasies), and poor attentional control (an inability to concentrate on the task at hand). Only positive constructive daydreaming is related to the default network.

And as adults, many of us work in corporate cultures that also say it’s not OK for us to sit at our desks, stare off into space, and “do nothing” for a while. It might actually be the most productive thing you can do.

The 33 percent figure comes from Jeffrey Ellenbogen, the director of the Sleeping Brain Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have been trying to figure out what sleep is all about for decades.

Wilson (now at MIT) was working with rats in lab experiments on learning. He recorded signals from the rats’ brains while they were running mazes in the lab. One day he accidentally left the equipment hooked up. The rats were sleeping, but the equipment was still recording their brain signals.

When he compared the signals from the sleeping rats, he found that the signals matched the brain activity when the rats were awake and running the maze. The rats were re-running the maze in their sleep.

There are four stages of sleep. A series of research studies at Robert Stickgold’s Sleep Research Lab at the Harvard Medical School shows that people jettison most of their memories of what happened during the day in Stages 1 and 2, and they transfer the memories they want to keep to long-term memory during REM sleep. REM sleep is also when most people dream.

A small group of cells in the brain stem affect proteins in the amygdala and hippocampus in the brain. These cells are responsible for memory consolidation during sleep.

Although I haven’t yet found the research that would support the idea that stimulation of peripheral vision increases creativity (I’m still looking), there is research that shows that noise and music increase creativity.

It turns out there is a Mozart effect—and a Bach effect, and a Taylor Swift effect. It’s a “listen to music you like” effect. In fact, it’s not really a music effect. Even listening to audio books can boost people’s ability to solve visual problems after they listen (Naintais, 1999). In fact, listening to anything they like helps people solve problems better afterwards. The idea is that the audio puts people in a better mood, which makes them perform better.

But what about creativity—does listening to music make you creative while you’re listening?

Step 1: Get a pen or pencil and a piece of paper, and take up to 30 seconds to write down as many things that are white as you can think of. Not things that could be white (for example, a shirt could be white or blue or green), but things that are usually white. Begin!

Ok, now do the second part of the exercise:

Step 2: Get your pen and paper ready again, and this time take up to 30 seconds to write down things to either eat or drink that are white. Begin.

Count up how many items you have on each list.

I got this exercise from Keith Sawyer’s book Zig Zag: The Surprising Path To Greater Creativity. The point of the exercise has to do with constraints. Most of the time when I have people do this exercise, they come up with more items in Step 2 than in Step 1. That’s because the second time the instructions included constraints.

It’s certainly true that too many constraints can and often do limit creativity, but having no or too few constraints also hampers creativity.

If you have no or few constraints, then you also have a less-defined problem or design space. It will be harder to set a specific intention about what you’re designing or solving. This means that the executive attention network discussed earlier in the chapter won’t have a clear idea of what to focus on. And the first step in being more creative is to stimulate that executive attention network with a clear intention.

What constraints you should impose, and how many, depend on what you’re designing. Here are some examples of constraints you could put on a design or a project:

• Limit colors

• Limit size

• Limit shape

• Use a particular style guide

• Use a particular set of design patterns

• Do the work in a limited time frame

As an introvert, I like working alone. But I also know that I’m more creative when I’m collaborating with others, and not just collaborating asynchronously through email or sharing documents, but collaborating with others in real time.

I’m probably not alone, however, in my reaction to the suggestion that we all get together and brainstorm. I have to admit that sometimes I cringe. It’s partially because I’m an introvert. But it’s also because brainstorming can be ineffective and even harmful to creative collaboration if done incorrectly. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do brainstorming.

Scott Isaksen and John Gaulin (2005) reviewed dozens of research studies on brainstorming, and did some of their own research. Here’s what they concluded:

• The instructions that people are given are important. In one study, when the researchers gave the group the instruction to generate five to seven ideas, the group produced seven ideas. When they gave the instruction to generate at least 20 ideas, the group produced 21 ideas. When the instructions did not include a number, the group generated 29 ideas.

• Having a trained facilitator to lead the group has a huge (positive) impact. The groups with a trained facilitator produced more ideas by a factor of 5 to 1 over groups without a trained facilitator.

• Some of the groups used a variation of brainstorming called “brainwriting.” Brainwriting is different than brainstorming: people write down their own ideas first, then hand that paper to the person on the right, who adds more ideas and hands the paper to the right, and so on.

• The groups using brainwriting and a facilitator came up with more ideas and better ideas than any other groups. When the facilitator participated in coming up with ideas (not just leading the group), then the group effect was even stronger.

• Individuals working alone generated fewer ideas than any of the brainstorming or brainwriting groups. The differences were striking. The brainstorming groups with facilitators generated an average of 126.5 unique (nonredundant) ideas per group. People working on their own, not in a group, generated 58 unique ideas. The brainwriting groups, with facilitators, generated an average of 208 unique ideas.

Another reason brainwriting works better than brainstorming is that quiet people, who may not shout out ideas in a regular brainstorming session, have the chance to have as much input as everyone else.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

You’d think that wanting perfection would be a good trait in a creative person, and often it is. But perfectionism can also be detrimental to creativity.

Brian Sullivan spoke at SXSW in 2015 about the downside of perfectionism. He talks about research by Brené Brown that connects perfectionism with shame. Perfectionists have a hard time taking criticism. They tend to equate criticism with proof that they’re wrong. If perfectionists are afraid of being exposed as a fraud, then they’ll fear change and collaboration.

Changing the idea of failure from a bad thing into a process often enhances creativity. There’s the famous quote attributed to Thomas Edison:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

He purportedly said this when he was trying to find a good filament for the light bulb. And indeed, he had tried many different types of filaments, and ways to use them that had not worked. But he didn’t consider these attempts to be failures. He just thought of them as part of an iterative process. By going through all the different possible filament materials, he believed he would eventually find the right one.

If you’re open to the idea that failure is iterative, then you can accept that you may not get the most creative idea right away, that you’re not going to solve the problem necessarily with the first idea you come up with, and that you don’t have to come up with perfect, fully formed ideas. You can get past the idea of failure. If you’re afraid of failing, then you’re going to be afraid of starting. Assume that you won’t have perfect ideas at the start, and see if you can get to the point where you think that’s OK. Turning the idea of failure into an idea of iteration is a great way to generate creative solutions.

The same applies to designing with a team. The team needs to iterate to get to a good design, too.