Creativity in UX/UI Design

What is creativity? Is it something that you just sort of *wait for* to fall on you from above? Or is it something you *work at*? Do you all have those moments when you  you know you need a spark of creativity? You're in the midst of designing something; you're trying to make a new website; you're trying to make a new application; you're trying to work out how to evaluate something

that's hard to evaluate – perhaps  the way people feel or something like this. And you want that *moment of inspiration*, and does it come when you need it? Of course it doesn't! The model we have of creativity tends to be about these moments of genius. And you already heard about, I think, the 3M story, the Post-it Notes. You know – imagine if you'd had that idea to use this sort of magic glue on the back to create Post-it Notes; how much money there has been on Post-it Notes. Or Philippe Starck and the – well, we all know the lemon juicer is not perhaps all it's cooked up to be,

that it dribbles all over your fingers and stuff, but boy is it iconic! And everybody who's anybody in design would like one of those lemon squeezers sitting on their kitchen worktop! We have this idea of creativity as a genius activity. It might be Steve Jobs in Apple or some of these designers we're looking at here, perhaps Einstein. But is that the full story? Certainly that's the sort of way it seems if you look at sort of

Western traditions of thinking about these things. Going way back to the Greeks, you've got the Muses, the different arts, and the idea that somehow or other this inspiration comes from the Muses up in Olympus and gives you these bright ideas, whether it's poetry or whether it's music ... or web design! So, is that the real story? Let's look a little bit back at these two we've been looking at. First of all, let's look back at the Post-it Notes.

The story is a little bit more complicated; it's not just – you probably know a little bit about this; it wasn't just a moment of inspiration. The guy who was trying to design these things – well, he *wasn't* trying to design these things; the guy was called Spencer Silver; 1968, and he's trying to design a really good glue. And he makes his glue, and he puts it on the back of some paper, and he sticks it to something, and it just... pulls straight off again. Whatever he sticks it to, it's rubbish.

Now, I don't know if you've done  this. You've been scribbling away at something; you've got lots  of ideas, perhaps on your napkin... and you're about to throw it away. When you're about to do that, when you're about to throw it in the bin, pull it out again, have another peek because you never know when you might have a *moment of genius*. Spencer Silver was like this, but he knew  there was something about this.

There was something about this he felt could be useful. He spent five years going around 3M talking to people, giving seminars and talks and  talking about this solution in need of a problem. And then, in 1974, a guy called Arthur Fry was in one of these talks and came back to Spencer and said, 'I have an idea.'

Five years, two people, and an idea that could have been.... And that would throw the whole lot away  in the bin before it ever started. Okay, let's look at the lemon squeezer  now. So, Philippe Starck – I think it was in Italy, but he's in a restaurant somewhere. And the story is he's thinking about lemon squeezers; he has this sort of inspiration of a squid,

and hence we get the iconic lemon squeezer. But of course, first of all that's not built just  on that meal time. He knows about lemon squeezers; he's seen lots of lemon squeezers, lemon squeezers which have some of the suggestions – especially if you look at those kind that you do this to – of the one  on the bottom, or be it the other way around; maybe it would work better if you have the sharp end up. But even that – it's not as simple as that. He wrote down on, perhaps it was a  tablecloth – certainly in some of these Italian restaurants you get paper tablecloths

that get taken away, thrown away at the end. But this tablecloth has been preserved, or this napkin has been preserved. And when you look at that, you see things, images, some of them which look pretty much like standard lemon squeezers, and gradually shifting. The order is not so clear. But it looks pretty much like actually the squid came quite late in the day. So, when he tells the story, of course the squid is hot in his imagination, but when you  actually look at the trace of the design,

there were a lot of stages, goodness knows how many sketches, on this very small piece of paper that eventually came up with this idea. So, even something that took quite a short amount of time, unlike the 3M Post-it Notes, which took five years to gestate, this happened quite quickly. But even, so there was quite an *evolutionary  process* in actually coming up with the idea. So, the question is – can we have *techniques* to help us do this kind of thing?

Not necessarily to turn us into immediate magic geniuses, but to actually get reasonable creative ideas when we need them.

What I want to do now is talk about a  few other kinds of divergent techniques. Creativity has two sides to it. There's being *novel* and being *useful*. There's a *divergent side* – that's having  lots and lots of bright ideas –  and a *convergent* side – that tries to  turn those ideas into something that's more useful and buildable. So, first of all, I want to talk about *oxymorons*.

If you want to use this in a more directed way,  actually as perhaps a way of helping you to ideate about your problem, you want  to focus on something specific. One way to do that is just to look at  something and think, 'What do I normally think of as an essential characteristic of this  thing?' And think of a *concrete feature*. It's hard to think nicely abstractly; think concrete. And then just in some way negate it or remove it. So, I've got a couple of examples here. You might think of the word processor with no cursor.

If there's no cursor, how do you know where you're going to type? Well, maybe that's part of the fun of it, and, in fact, if you've got a touchpad,  I accidentally keep touching my touchpad and the cursor jumps all over the place; actually, that's annoying. But are there some advantages of that? You know – perhaps it helps create juxtapositions that you haven't thought of before (perhaps a good creativity technique)? Could you have a word processor with no cursor? One that you perhaps when you type the text always appeared in a sort of fixed area and then you dragged it to where you wanted it?

So, certainly it forces you to think like that. You might have PowerPoint with no projector, but then you might think, 'Well, if I had no projector, would I still find my PowerPoint useful? Well, perhaps it would help me to guide what I'm talking about.' So, just like here, I'm talking to video, but I also have slides. And they're probably going to end up being edited to different slides by the time you see them. But they're still doing a job for me. So, that's a bit about oxymorons. Let's move on to a different divergent technique – *random metaphors*.

So, the idea here is you think about something;  and my window is closed, so I'm not getting too much direct light, but I'm just glancing around the room. I have here a little bag that I put things in that goes into my suitcase when I travel. And it's got things like, I think, a little hard disk drive in and plenty of teabags because I like lots of teabags. So, random metaphor:

A word processor is like a bag that goes into my suitcase, or a word processor is like a teabag. So, I usually find it, if I want to think of a random metaphor, if you're not careful, 'I think, "A word processor is like..." and then I go for a quill pen'? You know – because – you know – I'm not being that random, so I usually try and really make it random, or... reach for your dictionary! A word processor is like a fingertip, or the word above 'fingertip' was 'fingerprint'.

So, random metaphors. In fact, the first time I articulated random metaphors was one of two times in my life I can remember getting a spontaneous round of applause from an undergraduate lecture. Now, it is quite tough getting applause from an undergraduate lecture. And I won't act it with quite the vigor I did for the lecture, because I'm going to knock the  camera over if I do. But the idea is:

There was Professor Schwartz. And Professor Schwartz is getting on a bit, and he's at this networking conference, a big international networking conference. And he's been around for years, and often behind the scenes – he's the man who was behind the internet – you know. You know about ARPANET and how it all started, but he was one of the key figures. Wi-Fi – you know – again started in the Xerox (inaudible), but Professor Schwartz was the person  they always talked to and

really a lot of the ideas came from. And Professor Schwartz is at the desk, at the lectern in front, and he's talking, he's looking up and he said, 'Ah...' – you know – and he's giving the major keynote for this conference. And he's getting on a bit, so maybe it's the last time  he'll give a keynote. And he's giving this keynote at this conference, and he does it with the vigor and commitment that he always does. And he said, 'The metaphor, the image, the idea of  networking in the next century is...'

(coughing) And he obviously has a little bit  of a problem (inaud.); he's getting on a bit, so you expect this. (Coughing) He sorts himself out, perhaps takes a quick drink of water. Okay, and he continues. 'The image –' (coughing) 'The image of networking for the next century –' (coughing) 'is... The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bolognese.'

(coughing) He's getting a bit red in the face by this point, and to be honest, the audience are getting a  little worried. But, anyway, he continues. (coughing) 'The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bologn—' (coughing) 'spaghetti bolognese with parmesan on top.' And with that, he falls to the ground.

Now, to this day, I'm never sure whether the spontaneous applause was because of the  skill of my acting at that point or was because they thought I'd actually died  and were glad that the lecture had ended. However, I'll let you make your own  decisions on that one. The crucial thing is, imagine this conference happened. Everybody goes home afterwards and they think – well, first of all, they mourn the passing of Professor Schwartz because he was such a figure in their area. But then they start to think – now, I don't know

if you know any networking people; networking people do *layers* a lot; they talk about layers. So, if it had been lasagna, they'd have understood. But it was spaghetti bolognese. And this parmesan cheese was  clearly critical – you know – he *died* getting those words out. What did it mean? Can you imagine the creativity of the ideas as all those people went back to laboratories and said, 'What was it he meant? What could be the meaning behind this?'

Whether any of them would be the meaning that Schwartz had in his head, who knows? But so much creativity. So, Choose your random metaphor; take it from the dictionary. Glance around your room. But imagine you've been given that metaphor  by the ultimate person in your discipline. What does it mean? Play with it. Live  with it. And see if you get some ideas.

Okay, let's move on; more – oh,  more brilliant, so we've had the genius in your field; now we have the brilliant designer... *of awful things*. So, one of the reasons you might come to a  design is because there's something existing and it doesn't work very well. So, either you're going to completely redesign it; you're going to do a new word processor, for instance, or you're just going to fix some feature that's wrong with it. And there are things about it you *hate*.

They're really bad, and the users hate them as well – really bad. Imagine that actually you know the person who designed it was an absolutely brilliant designer in their area. Now, obviously they made a bit  of a hash up because things are going wrong. But that feature that's causing problems – imagine it was done *for a reason*. So, and I hadn't thought of examples  before then,

but I was mentioning actually with touchpads when the way my finger touches it and the text goes all over the place. That's a terrible thing to happen, but does that make me think about my writing more? I mean, actually, I think it doesn't. But never mind; let's imagine – what are the positive things behind the fact that when my thumb touches the  touchpad, my cursor jumps all over the place? If you can imagine that there  was a really good reason for that, even though it doesn't work for other purposes, one is you start to have new ideas, but the other thing is

if that reason actually  is an advantage, it's happening for people, if you change it without being aware of that, if you edit and change the software, you might get rid of the problem that people are having, but you also might lose that advantage. So, by understanding the advantages of the thing that you're going to deal with, then you can start to change it in a way that preserves those strengths as you get rid of the weaknesses. So, this is a bit like bad ideas – analyzing those bad ideas.

And, in fact, the prompts that I gave you for the bad ideas you can apply to the software. You know – what is *good* about it? What's *really bad* about it? Not just the surface thing that's bad about it? You know – so the fact that my thumb when it touches the touchpad makes the cursor jump, in itself that's not a bad thing. The problem is that as I type, my typing goes into a random place. So, what's really deep? What's not just the surface thing that's wrong? What are the deep things that are wrong? But also, what's good? What's positive?

Okay, and last on these, this  series of divergent techniques, I want to talk about *arbitrary constraints*. Now, in one sense, you'd think being divergent is about breaking boundaries, living without constraints,  opening up. Weirdly – and this is something that's been found again and again in the creativity literature – is: *sometimes adding constraints can help people be more creative*. So, when you start with that blank piece of paper,

it can be hard, can't it? The tabula rasa. '...Ah!' – you know. I want my wonderful bright idea.... Nothing comes. What happens often is if there is a constraint, so 'I'm going to design a new word processor, but it has to look exactly like the existing spreadsheet,' or 'I'm going to design a new mobile phone, but it has to

work when somebody's holding it in their left hand while bicycling.' You put a very strong constraint on it – you know. 'I'm going to design a chair, but it's going to be a metal chair, not a random chair – it's going to be made of metal, or papier-mâché.' You put a constraint. When you do that, people are forced – one is it makes it more concrete; so, it's in some sense easier, but you're also forced to be creative about that process, about pushing those constraints together. In reality, we always work within  constraints, but sometimes adding constraints

– now, they could be silly constraints or they could be just more fixed ones that make sense but aren't necessarily really given by the problem. Now, you might later on remove the constraint. But *adding the constraint helps you to think more clearly and more concretely*, and *often more creatively*. So, you can do that with *materials*. Another way you often do that is with *time*. I don't know if you've noticed it – if there's a hard deadline,

have you noticed the way you just, you think you're going to work  hard on it, and you do, and... Not a lot happens. And then, suddenly, as  the deadline approaches... and all sorts of stuff happens. So, sometimes, not having much of something or having been forced to do something is better than having complete freedom, even if you want to think out of the box and creatively.

Brainstorming is a group activity where  people come together to share ideas and   think creatively to solve problems or  generate new concepts. The goal is to encourage free thinking and creativity without judgment or criticism, allowing participants to share any idea that comes to mind no matter how unconventional or seemingly impractical. The aim is to *spark creativity and explore various possibilities* which can later be refined or combined to develop more practical or innovative solutions.

Brainstorming sessions often involve structured or unstructured discussions, note-taking or visual aids to capture and organize the ideas generated by the group. So, how can you structure a brainstorming session? Define the goal. Clearly outline the problem or objective. Create a diverse group. Gather people with varied perspectives. Encourage participation and free thinking. Generate ideas without criticism. Build on ideas. Combine, refine or expand on suggested thoughts. Set a time limit. Keep the session focused and efficient.

And lastly, document and evaluate. Record all ideas and assess their feasibility later. You can spend some time after the session to categorize, reduce and analyze.

What I want to do now is talk about a  few other kinds of divergent techniques. Creativity has two sides to it. There's being *novel* and being *useful*. There's a *divergent side* – that's having  lots and lots of bright ideas –  and a *convergent* side – that tries to  turn those ideas into something that's more useful and buildable. So, first of all, I want to talk about *oxymorons*.

If you want to use this in a more directed way,  actually as perhaps a way of helping you to ideate about your problem, you want  to focus on something specific. One way to do that is just to look at  something and think, 'What do I normally think of as an essential characteristic of this  thing?' And think of a *concrete feature*. It's hard to think nicely abstractly; think concrete. And then just in some way negate it or remove it. So, I've got a couple of examples here. You might think of the word processor with no cursor.

If there's no cursor, how do you know where you're going to type? Well, maybe that's part of the fun of it, and, in fact, if you've got a touchpad,  I accidentally keep touching my touchpad and the cursor jumps all over the place; actually, that's annoying. But are there some advantages of that? You know – perhaps it helps create juxtapositions that you haven't thought of before (perhaps a good creativity technique)? Could you have a word processor with no cursor? One that you perhaps when you type the text always appeared in a sort of fixed area and then you dragged it to where you wanted it?

So, certainly it forces you to think like that. You might have PowerPoint with no projector, but then you might think, 'Well, if I had no projector, would I still find my PowerPoint useful? Well, perhaps it would help me to guide what I'm talking about.' So, just like here, I'm talking to video, but I also have slides. And they're probably going to end up being edited to different slides by the time you see them. But they're still doing a job for me. So, that's a bit about oxymorons. Let's move on to a different divergent technique – *random metaphors*.

So, the idea here is you think about something;  and my window is closed, so I'm not getting too much direct light, but I'm just glancing around the room. I have here a little bag that I put things in that goes into my suitcase when I travel. And it's got things like, I think, a little hard disk drive in and plenty of teabags because I like lots of teabags. So, random metaphor:

A word processor is like a bag that goes into my suitcase, or a word processor is like a teabag. So, I usually find it, if I want to think of a random metaphor, if you're not careful, 'I think, "A word processor is like..." and then I go for a quill pen'? You know – because – you know – I'm not being that random, so I usually try and really make it random, or... reach for your dictionary! A word processor is like a fingertip, or the word above 'fingertip' was 'fingerprint'.

So, random metaphors. In fact, the first time I articulated random metaphors was one of two times in my life I can remember getting a spontaneous round of applause from an undergraduate lecture. Now, it is quite tough getting applause from an undergraduate lecture. And I won't act it with quite the vigor I did for the lecture, because I'm going to knock the  camera over if I do. But the idea is:

There was Professor Schwartz. And Professor Schwartz is getting on a bit, and he's at this networking conference, a big international networking conference. And he's been around for years, and often behind the scenes – he's the man who was behind the internet – you know. You know about ARPANET and how it all started, but he was one of the key figures. Wi-Fi – you know – again started in the Xerox (inaudible), but Professor Schwartz was the person  they always talked to and

really a lot of the ideas came from. And Professor Schwartz is at the desk, at the lectern in front, and he's talking, he's looking up and he said, 'Ah...' – you know – and he's giving the major keynote for this conference. And he's getting on a bit, so maybe it's the last time  he'll give a keynote. And he's giving this keynote at this conference, and he does it with the vigor and commitment that he always does. And he said, 'The metaphor, the image, the idea of  networking in the next century is...'

(coughing) And he obviously has a little bit  of a problem (inaud.); he's getting on a bit, so you expect this. (Coughing) He sorts himself out, perhaps takes a quick drink of water. Okay, and he continues. 'The image –' (coughing) 'The image of networking for the next century –' (coughing) 'is... The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bolognese.'

(coughing) He's getting a bit red in the face by this point, and to be honest, the audience are getting a  little worried. But, anyway, he continues. (coughing) 'The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bologn—' (coughing) 'spaghetti bolognese with parmesan on top.' And with that, he falls to the ground.

Now, to this day, I'm never sure whether the spontaneous applause was because of the  skill of my acting at that point or was because they thought I'd actually died  and were glad that the lecture had ended. However, I'll let you make your own  decisions on that one. The crucial thing is, imagine this conference happened. Everybody goes home afterwards and they think – well, first of all, they mourn the passing of Professor Schwartz because he was such a figure in their area. But then they start to think – now, I don't know

if you know any networking people; networking people do *layers* a lot; they talk about layers. So, if it had been lasagna, they'd have understood. But it was spaghetti bolognese. And this parmesan cheese was  clearly critical – you know – he *died* getting those words out. What did it mean? Can you imagine the creativity of the ideas as all those people went back to laboratories and said, 'What was it he meant? What could be the meaning behind this?'

Whether any of them would be the meaning that Schwartz had in his head, who knows? But so much creativity. So, Choose your random metaphor; take it from the dictionary. Glance around your room. But imagine you've been given that metaphor  by the ultimate person in your discipline. What does it mean? Play with it. Live  with it. And see if you get some ideas.

Okay, let's move on; more – oh,  more brilliant, so we've had the genius in your field; now we have the brilliant designer... *of awful things*. So, one of the reasons you might come to a  design is because there's something existing and it doesn't work very well. So, either you're going to completely redesign it; you're going to do a new word processor, for instance, or you're just going to fix some feature that's wrong with it. And there are things about it you *hate*.

They're really bad, and the users hate them as well – really bad. Imagine that actually you know the person who designed it was an absolutely brilliant designer in their area. Now, obviously they made a bit  of a hash up because things are going wrong. But that feature that's causing problems – imagine it was done *for a reason*. So, and I hadn't thought of examples  before then,

but I was mentioning actually with touchpads when the way my finger touches it and the text goes all over the place. That's a terrible thing to happen, but does that make me think about my writing more? I mean, actually, I think it doesn't. But never mind; let's imagine – what are the positive things behind the fact that when my thumb touches the  touchpad, my cursor jumps all over the place? If you can imagine that there  was a really good reason for that, even though it doesn't work for other purposes, one is you start to have new ideas, but the other thing is

if that reason actually  is an advantage, it's happening for people, if you change it without being aware of that, if you edit and change the software, you might get rid of the problem that people are having, but you also might lose that advantage. So, by understanding the advantages of the thing that you're going to deal with, then you can start to change it in a way that preserves those strengths as you get rid of the weaknesses. So, this is a bit like bad ideas – analyzing those bad ideas.

And, in fact, the prompts that I gave you for the bad ideas you can apply to the software. You know – what is *good* about it? What's *really bad* about it? Not just the surface thing that's bad about it? You know – so the fact that my thumb when it touches the touchpad makes the cursor jump, in itself that's not a bad thing. The problem is that as I type, my typing goes into a random place. So, what's really deep? What's not just the surface thing that's wrong? What are the deep things that are wrong? But also, what's good? What's positive?

Okay, and last on these, this  series of divergent techniques, I want to talk about *arbitrary constraints*. Now, in one sense, you'd think being divergent is about breaking boundaries, living without constraints,  opening up. Weirdly – and this is something that's been found again and again in the creativity literature – is: *sometimes adding constraints can help people be more creative*. So, when you start with that blank piece of paper,

it can be hard, can't it? The tabula rasa. '...Ah!' – you know. I want my wonderful bright idea.... Nothing comes. What happens often is if there is a constraint, so 'I'm going to design a new word processor, but it has to look exactly like the existing spreadsheet,' or 'I'm going to design a new mobile phone, but it has to

work when somebody's holding it in their left hand while bicycling.' You put a very strong constraint on it – you know. 'I'm going to design a chair, but it's going to be a metal chair, not a random chair – it's going to be made of metal, or papier-mâché.' You put a constraint. When you do that, people are forced – one is it makes it more concrete; so, it's in some sense easier, but you're also forced to be creative about that process, about pushing those constraints together. In reality, we always work within  constraints, but sometimes adding constraints

– now, they could be silly constraints or they could be just more fixed ones that make sense but aren't necessarily really given by the problem. Now, you might later on remove the constraint. But *adding the constraint helps you to think more clearly and more concretely*, and *often more creatively*. So, you can do that with *materials*. Another way you often do that is with *time*. I don't know if you've noticed it – if there's a hard deadline,

have you noticed the way you just, you think you're going to work  hard on it, and you do, and... Not a lot happens. And then, suddenly, as  the deadline approaches... and all sorts of stuff happens. So, sometimes, not having much of something or having been forced to do something is better than having complete freedom, even if you want to think out of the box and creatively.

Sometimes, though, *habits, regular things*  can also help with creativity. Often, when I've been talking about creativity in these videos, it's been about sort of inspiration, those moments, things that are unplanned, often quite chaotic. Sometimes you want the kick that makes us think of something entirely new. But sometimes actually having *regularity* can be a positive thing as well.

So, we're going to talk a little bit about that. Often actually changing your physical location, we've talked about the importance of designing physical locations, but actually just the act of having multiple ones can be an important thing to do. So, for instance, if I'm sitting at my desk, I'm in a different mode of working than if I sit on a comfy chair. I might sit on my comfy chair and read a book, or perhaps comment on something that I've got to read and comment back on.

Whereas on my desk, I might feel more I need to be productive in typing things. If the computer is in front of me, even if it's closed and I'm reading a book, I might be constantly itching to  open it and read email. The very act of being in a different place *resets your mind*, says, 'I'm doing something different.' So, it may be you want to try and design your working environment. Now, that might be about almost being in different rooms. It might be about facing different walls. It might be going to a coffee shop.

The early Harry Potter's were written in a particular coffee shop in Edinburgh. There may be places you go to; it might be, I said, as simple as looking in a different direction, sitting in a different chair that puts you into a different frame of mind. So, some frames of mind might be more, 'I'm being productive and doing something.' Others might be more expansive in thinking. So, that's about habits of mind, so you create these slightly different circumstances

that help you to think differently. Now, that's true of where you sit. But it's also true perhaps of what you're wearing. So, I mean, literally perhaps the hats – we  often talk about wearing different hats. Now, if you're a hat-wearer, you  might actually have your thinking cap that you put on. I certainly use T-shirts quite a lot. I mean, I wear T-shirts, and I actually sometimes use them to create little personas for myself.

So, at the moment, in these creativity slides I've been wearing this T-shirt. I do wash it in between. And it was given to me by my daughter, who is an actor, and it's sort of geometric and slightly perhaps ambiguous and unstructured. And so, it feels like quite a nice one to wear when I'm talking about creativity. Also, when I've been doing statistics slides, I've been wearing this T-shirt, which is – actually, it's not statistics, what's on it – it's semantic web keywords.

But it looks a bit techie, so again feels quite a good one to wear for statistics. And of course if I go running, I wear different T-shirts, perhaps my Tiree Ultramarathon T-shirt, just to show that I can put some fitness in as well. So, by wearing *different clothes*, you  might again put yourself into different frames of mind but also create a persona of yourself.

So, by doing something different, by being somewhere different, you go from being the 'I'm working on graphic design.' to 'I'm working on thinking about people.' modes. Or it might be going from management to creative modes, but choosing different ways of being. So, *dressing up*, *where you are*. Sometimes by *time* – we can organize time. Now, this is a particular place where we cross over to

bits of time management, but – and there's different video series about that – but *time routines can often help us*. I'm a James Bond fan. I've got – this is  *Goldfinger*, one of the very early – it's a 1961 copy of *Goldfinger*. Ian Fleming worked for – I've forgotten which it is – one of the major London newspapers. But he had two months a year when he went to Jamaica,

to – he had a house there called 'Goldeneye'. And every morning – and I've forgotten the numbers for this; I was trying to look them up and I've missed them – but it was something like he would get up and he would write a thousand words. And then he would go snorkeling in the water, and lovely warm Jamaican waters. Then he would go back, presumably dry, have some breakfast, and then write another 500 words. And then that was him done for the day, and he did other things.

And every day he did that. And at the end of two months – and you could do the sums to work out if I've got my number of words right – but he had the next James Bond novel written. So, he created a timetable for himself during the day. Now, that was a timetable about *producing*. Sometimes, it's more inspirational things. So, there's a technique that some people do, which is that you go to a dictionary and every morning you sort of randomly open it,

you choose a word, and you write a *poem* where that word is crucial, or at least that word is in it somewhere and it's a crucial part of the poem. Now, the poems don't have to be that good.  So, this is not about producing the wonderful work of poetry that's going to change the world. But it's about getting yourself into a mindset where *you are being productive* and thinking about things  and building that habit that says, 'When I want to write a poem, I can write a poem. That's easy.' – you know.

'And when I want to write a particular poem about a particular thing, that's different.' But the actual act of just writing a poem becomes something that's natural, something you can almost turn on. A personal example of that for me was some years ago I wrote a regular editorial on HCI education for  SIGCHI Bulletin, which was the members' magazine for ACM SIGCHI. What would happen is each – it was  every two months,

and every two months I'd come to deadline day and I'd not written anything, I'd not thought about it at all, and it had to be one page of ACM two-column layout, which is about 850  words. And what would happen is I was completely blank; I'd get up and I'd often go off for a walk or something like that; thoughts would mill through my head; and I'd come back and I'd write it, and by  midday I had something written. And I knew I had to do it; the deadline helped. I'm rotten at doing things without deadlines.

But I would get to that deadline and I would have written something that had a patterning to it, had a focus, usually a little bit of something current, some sort of deep issue all mixed together. And that taught me a lot. I learnt to write – my craft of writing. It wasn't necessarily the best writing ever produced, but I learned my craft. I was doing something regularly and therefore building up the skill set. That then meant that when I wrote other kinds of writing I was better prepared to do that.

Now, these kind of things – none of these work necessarily for everyone, and some techniques work better for some, just like all the other kinds of techniques we've talked about. But it's certainly worth trying these kinds of things.

Brainstorming is a group activity where  people come together to share ideas and   think creatively to solve problems or  generate new concepts. The goal is to encourage free thinking and creativity without judgment or criticism, allowing participants to share any idea that comes to mind no matter how unconventional or seemingly impractical. The aim is to *spark creativity and explore various possibilities* which can later be refined or combined to develop more practical or innovative solutions.

Brainstorming sessions often involve structured or unstructured discussions, note-taking or visual aids to capture and organize the ideas generated by the group. So, how can you structure a brainstorming session? Define the goal. Clearly outline the problem or objective. Create a diverse group. Gather people with varied perspectives. Encourage participation and free thinking. Generate ideas without criticism. Build on ideas. Combine, refine or expand on suggested thoughts. Set a time limit. Keep the session focused and efficient.

And lastly, document and evaluate. Record all ideas and assess their feasibility later. You can spend some time after the session to categorize, reduce and analyze.

In this lesson, we're going to  now look at convergent techniques. I'm just going to take us to that formula  for creativity: *structure plus diversity*.   So, on the left, we've got the problem – the thing that we're looking for solutions to. We've then got this – and on the right the solution. The initial stages we've been thinking about are these divergent stages,

the jumps of insight, and the bad idea is a particular example of that. But then we need to go and sort of tighten down towards a single solution because in the end what we've got to do is deliver to somebody, whether it's a piece of software or whether it's a design, but something that actually solves the need and can be used. In fact, if we think about a divergent thinker, we're thinking about somebody who's creative, who thinks differently,  who's perhaps exciting or interesting,

maybe just a little mad, but in some way perhaps a positive image from a creativity point of view. However, if we think about *convergent thinking*,  it feels actually *conservative*; it feels *uncreative*; it's all about the sameness, about plodding and about going down the same paths, maybe just a little bit boring. It seems like there's a gulf between the two, as if there couldn't be any connection between them.

But in fact, if anything, that's far from the truth; the two actually are all about *working together*. What we'll do is going to remind ourselves about some of the reasons why we might want divergence in the first place, and that will help us to see why convergent thinking is also very, very important. So, let's first of all – why do we need divergence? Actually, the answer is *sometimes you don't* – you don't need to always be a divergent thinker.

Sometimes, the ant-like plodding from place to place works. You might have a problem. There might be a standard process that gives  you a solution that everybody's happy with. You know – if that's the case, no need to have lots  of bright wild ideas; you just do the same thing. For instance – you know – somebody comes to you; they're wanting a new website for a trucking company, and you happen to have a few years ago done – a different trucking company; you take the general

pattern for that, you reapply it to a new one, and everybody's happy. Easy peasy. Of course, we know that design doesn't always  work like that. Sometimes there is no obvious right solution. To talk about 'the solution', there's *a* solution, not necessarily the right solution, and often what we do in design is we start with a problem, generate lots of different initial ideas, and then just sort of have a feel of how good they are – you  know. And some you might instantly reject and

say 'that's terrible', others you think 'oh yes, that's really good', others a bit in between. There are lots of these times when we have to generate lots of different ideas and then make decisions between them. There's another time when we need divergence  as well, though, which is when we get to a problem. So, sometimes we start with a problem – well, we  always have a problem; we have our initial need; we think we know where the solution is. So, for instance, imagine our website again. We've got a standard theme and way of building websites that we use time and time again.

Somebody comes with a new need for a website. We think, 'That's fine. We'll just put it into our standard framework.' So, you start off with your standard process,  you think it's going to work, you start with it ...and then you get stuck. Something happens  in the middle; there is some problem, some technical issue, some aesthetic issue that  actually blocks you. So, for instance, you might be using your standard theme to your website, but maybe it's designed implicitly assuming that there was never a huge category with lots and lots of pages in.

And for some reason maybe it's lots of products or something like that – you end up with one of these categories and the menu ends up with lots and lots of items – so many that it doesn't fit on the page, and there's no nice way to scroll, and you think, 'Ah! It's failing!' And then what you do is you start to think of alternate ideas. You might start to look at other frameworks, other themes. Some of those will encounter problems as well, but eventually you try and find something  that is not your original idea of how you

proceed but gets you to the solution. So, that's another reason why you want divergence. So, what about *convergence*? You know – so, obviously we need divergence. We've got reasons why that might happen. Where does convergence come into this? What we're going to do is start off with those ideas where you have lots and lots of ideas. You've got a problem, you've generated lots of ideas, and then you need to filter them down.

So, part of convergence is about going from all those ideas to *one solution*. One way you do that is simply to  look at them, decide some are just non-starters, put those in the bin; progress the others a little  bit – you know – develop them a bit more. This is a classic thing you'll have done if you're involved  in graphic design, for instance. You often generate lots and lots of ideas, some of them that you decide you don't like, some of them the customer doesn't like, others you start to develop a bit and you look at them in more detail.

Perhaps eventually plump for one of them, generate the solution from that. So, there's the process – there's a bit of extra generation going on, but a lot of it is just about filtering. It's about throwing out and ending up with one of them. *Evaluation is the key to this.* And this is why in user interfaces, a new user experience, evaluation is such an important thing. Sometimes you can't actually work out what you want, so you generate lots of things and then you evaluate them and see which has worked out good.

This has – in one sense, there's a model of  creativity that's going on here, which is   a variation of this diversity plus  structure. It's about *generate and filter*. The diversity is the generation – you generate lots of ideas, and then you filter them down. And this does work, not a hundred percent but quite a lot of creativity can be seen in these terms. So, one way to think about this is about typing  monkeys, and you might have heard the story about

if you have enough monkeys or you leave  a monkey long enough, eventually it'll type out the complete works of Shakespeare. You might have to wait a very long time for your one monkey. But instead of that, perhaps you don't have one monkey – perhaps you have four monkeys or rooms full of monkeys. So, imagine a warehouse and in the warehouse there's desk after desk after desk. And each day trucks come and throw loads of bananas into  the warehouse.

And in the warehouse there is row after row after row after row of typing monkeys. And then there's the *assessor*. And the assessor is a human. And she wanders up and down the rows of monkeys, looking at what they're typing. A lot of the time it's just gibberish. And every so often she comes across something, and perhaps it says, 'To be or not to be. That is the question.' She looks at that and she thinks, 'Wow! That's profound!',

pulls out the sheet of paper from the monkey's typewriter, perhaps puts a new one in for the monkey, then takes it to the warehouse door. And the warehouse has a door with a letterbox on it. Only most letterboxes are for posting things into the house. This is for posting out. So, she takes the piece of paper with 'To be or not to be. That is the question.', folds it up, posts it out through the letterbox. Outside the letterbox – it's a bit like Big Brother House – there's always press people waiting.

And when they see the the sheet of  paper pop out, they all pounce on it and look at it. And it says 'To be or not to be. That is the question.' And everybody goes, 'Wow! That's profound! There must be somebody really creative inside that warehouse.' Now, the question just to think about for a second is: Where is the creativity?

Is it in the rows and rows and rows of typing monkeys? —which is the divergent part of this process. Or is it in the assessor who looks at that piece of paper and thinks, 'Oh, that's a good one!'? Is it half and half? Or perhaps if you had  either the typing monkeys or you had the assessor on their own, there would be no creativity. It's actually when the two come together. So, let's go back to our filtering and evaluation.

So, one model, I said we have the selection or  the evaluation side, which is like our assessor; we have the generation side. Now, in  fact, things are never quite that simple. Our generation is not quite like typing monkeys,  and our assessment isn't always independent of our generation. Even in this model we've got, if you were doing this, if you've generated lots of ideas and then chosen some of them and tried to  develop others, quite likely in your final solution

you will have used elements of both or multiple ideas that you developed. So, you developed two ideas, went forward with them; you might choose one as the dominant one, but you might well use bits of inspiration from the other as you develop that into your solution. Even the ones that you reject quite early in the process, again there might be bits from them that have influenced what you're doing further on. So, it's not quite a matter of just choosing which one.

It's not like that assessor just choosing the best sheet of  paper that's got the best words on it, but actually a little bit of a more feedback process going on, even at this stage in this simple model. This takes us to the second kind of  convergence, which is about being analytic. So, here again, think about all of these ideas  that have been generated. What you also might do, and some of the things we've talked about doing already have elements of this,

is just look at all of those ideas – before  you start selecting them, before you choose which ones develop, just look at them and  think about them. And as you think about it, you build an understanding of the domain, of the problem space and perhaps of the set of potential solutions; so, you're starting to build this understanding of what's going on. When you've built that understanding, then  you're in perhaps a better position to be really clear about what your *criteria* are. So, you might know your criteria upfront.

They might be really simple ones like which is the fastest, which is the most efficient. But often life is a little bit more fuzzy than that, and it's actually only as you understand the problem can you start to formulate your criteria with which you're going to use to choose which ideas to take forward. You might be able to use that understanding  to actually ignore the ideas then and jump straight to a solution – say, 'Aha! Given what I've seen with all these ideas, actually now I know how to solve the problem.' And you go off and do it. You might use that understanding to generate new ideas.

And then, of course, from those new ideas you might generate new understanding. So, there's lots of ways you can use that understanding. But crucially, this is part of that process where you take that divergence and use it  in order to generate analytic understanding, models, concepts of what's going on. I think of this a bit like a cartographer. So, people have gone out into the field, they've gone in expeditions, they've come back and they've told you

they followed this river, they followed that path, they might have measured heights of mountains and done all sorts of things like that. And then, you're the cartographer and you've drawn the map. Now, you've got the map. Once you've got the map, you can then start to ask questions about, 'Well, if I want to go to somewhere new – somewhere perhaps that none of my individual people have gone to but they've perhaps surrounded in different ways, they've looked at from different directions,

you can start to plot a route on the map. It doesn't mean you won't have problems. There may be, for instance, a narrow chasm that was deep so you can't cross it but just wasn't very apparent to the people. So, it doesn't mean you won't have any problems, but certainly you're in a position to enter that territory in a  way with confidence you wouldn't have otherwise. Now, if you think about that in terms of the  web design or graphic design problem,

by having an *understanding* of the problem area, suddenly you're able to sometimes jump to that solution or to at least see ways past problems that you  can't do just by randomly trying things. So, in a way on its own, what divergence is being like is a divergent creativity on its own with nothing else; it's a bit like playing darts – you know – with a blindfold on. So, you can throw your darts and if you throw enough darts, sure enough, you'll probably hit the dartboard.

When you have that understanding that's come from analysis, it's like playing darts with your eyes wide open.

Your portfolio is like a friend who can speak  highly of you to any potential employers or   clients. I want to fall in love with how you  present your stuff. These are your technical   tasks. I'm not just looking at your technical  expertise; I'm interested in your journey. The   one thing, in my opinion, that beats empathy is  experience. I want to see the thinking. I'd look   for evidence of them having built components, them  having an understanding of what components are,   and if you can do that, then the world's your  oyster. That's really kind of what I look for. I want to see the thinking process. I want  to see why some decisions were abandoned or  

why some directions were abandoned and what was  chosen instead. I would say, for me, it's not that   important what methodology exactly you're using,  but I would still love to see that, of course. But   the more important part is that you can argue why  you decided to move in that way, and that "why"   should not be based on assumptions, not "because  I felt like" or "because I had a feeling that."

That doesn't go in my book. You need to have some  objective language in use that clearly explains   that this is objectively better. And again, you  can always say, "Well, drop-downs are faster," or   "This is faster." Well, ideally, you would need  to have data to prove that. The more thinking,   the better. I mean, personally, I have sometimes  situations where somebody would just draw a   solution on paper and give it to me, and as long  as I can follow and understand what the process  

was like and why this thing has been chosen,  that's all I need. That's fine; that works for me. If you're looking for a job, most of the time  what you want to convey through your portfolio   is that you've reached the competency levels. To  do that, I would say any kind of project or any   kind of format to show that you've done the work  will work. It could be a fake project; it could be  

a real project. Sometimes it doesn't even have to  be linked to a Figma prototype, because I know we   tend to be very, very obsessed with tooling. For  example, I have someone that I've been mentoring   who had a past experience in video editing.  Something they've been doing is actually working   in a clinical office to enhance the engagement  with patients. To do this, they actually made  

a bunch of videos of the doctors just to feel a  bit more approachable, so it's not just a screen   between the patients and the doctor. To me, that  is user research. This is also understanding the   problem, the creative ideas, and yes, maybe the  outcome is a video and it's not a screen design.   But if he has this project and some UI exercise,  then yes, for me, he'll be able to do UX work. A few things, and I'm trying to answer  this fast, okay. Work on some components,  

even if it's just for your own products. Show  that you have an understanding of what component   design is. Then I would work quite hard on a  couple of aspects, and these are hard skills,   by the way. I'd focus on learning about  typography, spacing, all that good visual   design stuff because it is important in  design systems. And then finally, work   on your writing skills. Being able to communicate  well, especially written communication, is really  

valuable. I'd look for evidence of them having  built components, them having an understanding   of what components are, of what a design system  is. And yeah, just try and read about it. I'm not looking for anything polished; that  is just the end product. I'm interested in   your journey. So it doesn't matter if you're  junior or senior, I want to see your process:   how to go from one step to the other, what is the  problem, how do you approach presenting it in a  

way which is user-facing, how do you write feature  specs, how do you take it to a wireframing state,   how do you create low-fidelity, high-fidelity  user interfaces. Anything you are building   should not be based on an opinion. You  should give me data. You should say,   "I did this because I did competitor benchmarking.  This is what worked in other games. People connect   better with characters, so it was a good way  to introduce that meta feature." But also,   what did you do? Even if you are just a  student, did you build that prototype,   and did you do some kind of mock testing with  another player just to say, "I also tested it  

with somebody who's never used this feature.  This is the feedback I've got." Show me your   process, show me your journey, show me your  objectivity. That is what I want to look at. On a junior level, if you are applying for  mid or senior level, I'm not just looking at   your technical expertise, which I know you  will have. I also want to see soft skills:   how good are you at collaborating, how good  you are at taking criticism and feedback,   how good you are at defending your decisions,  how good you are at taking initiative,   how good you are at aligning your stakeholders.  So my general rule of thumb is everybody who's  

hired needs to be good, including a director,  because I have to get hands-on also many times.   They should have solid or technical skills  with potential, but the higher up you go,   I want to also see more of your soft skills:  leadership, collaboration, and all that stuff. I think the biggest thing is storytelling.  To me, basic skill. That's the beauty of it.  

I think a lot of this stuff is sketching, it's  whiteboarding, it's customer interviewing, it's   being able to speak with a variety of team members  and get them all to a single story that actually   makes sense to the customer. Really being able  to balance opposing viewpoints and say, "Well,   let's make two prototypes. Great, it seems like  we can't come to an agreement. Let's make one like   this and one like this and test it." I've done it  many times in my life, but if you've ever done any  

prototyping or any kind of sketching or ideation,  that is just kind of your basic technique,   just taken to the next level. And with AI, there  are so many Legos for you to play with and so much   opportunity. And if you can do that, then the  world's your oyster. That's really kind of what   I look for: being able to do all these things, but  also facilitate this discussion about how far you   can take it. And of course, everyone's got some  Figma skills. I don't think you need to be a huge  

Figma jockey for this thing. Once you've come up  with the idea, it's just a matter of documenting   using your design system components. Hopefully,  you do have a design system; I hope you do, all right. My advice for portfolios,  whether it's design systems or not,  

is the same. You should tell the story of  the project. So don't think that a design   system project versus a different type of  project has to be structured differently   or has to be structured in a specific way. Focus  on the milestones that happened in that project,   the challenges that you overcame, and what you  delivered, and tell that story. That should help   you to just have a consistent story arc and really  focus on the project dictating the case study,  

not you having to fit every project  into a very cookie-cutter format. In portfolios, if I were to apply for  a job, I would not just be like, "Oh,   I've done this little AR app and I've done  this little VR project," but I would make sure   how it connects to the users and who this was  designed for. One of my projects that I would  

personally lead with if I were to apply for a job  is probably this inclusive gym that I've created.   It was a smaller project for me. It's not in my  main research portfolio, but it allows children   in wheelchairs to exercise and play games with  each other. Actually, from an AR perspective,   it's not particularly technically challenging  or hard, but at least it would demonstrate how   I think about this space and what kinds  of AR and VR solutions I want to create.

Where I see my responsibility. In a design portfolio, I'm a very visual person,  so I want to fall in love with how you present your stuff and with the style,   with your typography. Typography, that's the first thing I see  in the portfolio. If you're not taking good care   of your typography with your character length,  your line height, hierarchy, all that stuff,  

that's already like I'm done with you. I don't  want to see you; I don't want to know anything   about you. Get out of here. No, it's just like,  in the web, everything we do as designers,   a lot of it is text. Most of it is text. So I  look for that care and attention to detail in   a portfolio. That's the first thing I notice,  and actually, it's not because I'm looking for   it. It just instantly pops for me. I see it's  like, "Ooh, ah." It's like, "Ah, you tried. You  

tried. Close." I know it's cruel, but sometimes  if you have a lot of portfolios you're seeing and   you don't have a lot of time, you're just looking  for excuses to close that window. You're looking   for excuses to filter out people. That sounds  cruel, I know, but that's how recruiters work.   They have to filter out people because they may  have a lot of options, and they're just looking  

for excuses. So don't give them that excuse. I'm  going to say something a little bit controversial:   don't write the whole design process, all  that thing like that cookie-cutter template   design process that I'm pretty sure you didn't  even follow. You just reverse-engineered it   and put it there in your portfolio. Tell  me a story. I want to be entertained. I know that sounds now even cliché. It's all about  storytelling, but it really is. We're humans,  

and we just want to gather around the fire and  be told a story before we go to sleep. And in these stories, you can be the hero. All the  challenges that you went through, "Oh man, we   tried this and it didn't work, but that allowed me  to learn, and then I overcame my challenges, and   I became the hero of this story." You can be the  hero of that story. It can be your user. When you  

were doing user testing, you found out something.  Tell that story of that person. It could be maybe   it is actually the company. They were struggling  and they were trying to get to a new market or   something. Tell me that story. I want to be  entertained. We all want to be entertained. If   I'm going to be looking at your portfolio, you  better have good typography and a nice story. Empathy is really, really important, right?  We talk about empathy a lot as user-centered  

designers, as human-centered designers. But the  one thing, in my opinion, that beats empathy is   experience. Portfolio-wise, specifically, I  really want to see a breadth of experience   there. The reason why is that I think more than  anything, if you have worked for startups and also   larger enterprise companies, if you've worked  on mobile products and you've also worked on   desktop products, if you worked for enterprise  systems and consumer-facing products, B2B, B2C,  

that means that you've seen a range of different  needs of the user. And that also means that in   entirety, when you're working on these different  projects and you're consuming the research that   it takes to build these products, you're in a  place where you really understand what the user   needs. So if you have actually experienced what  the business needs and also what the user needs,  

if you've experienced how to toggle between the  two, then I can look at that and I can be like,   "Well, you look like you can learn a  lot." With AI, especially for ethical AI,   what I think needs to be done is that there  needs to be a lot more assessment and quality   on designers that showcase a breadth of learning  and a breadth of implementation of that learning. When I'm interviewing people, or especially  when I'm teaching, what I typically like to  

do is I like to really, really encourage  my students to go in and just explore the   world and explore the ways that they can  implement strategies in different ways,   and also fail. That's a really big part of  being a designer. I don't even consider the   vocabulary of failure as something that I  have in my book because I don't consider   it failure. I just consider it, "Oh, it's a  learning lesson. We just learned something."