DesignOps 2020: The Science of Creativity for DesignOps (Session Notes)

Speaker: Dr. Karl Jeffries, Founder of DrKarlKJeffries.com

—For past 20 years Dr. Karl Jeffries has been fascinated by research on creativity and how it related to designers and other professionals
— Virtually everyone has an opinion on it
  • Creativity is an evocative word
— Two types of reactions
  • People tell him they are creative
  • People tell him they are not creative
—So let’s ask the question: Are you creative?
  • Will have instinctive response of yes/no
  • If mild panic attack, I’d like to note an interesting responses
— Creativity has a role in UX
  • From some professionals, Karl heard creativity is something to be avoided, and is about the user
  • For other UX professionals, UX is crucial to whole process, and different associations ad
— Creativity fuels design, and design fuels innovation
  • If you value innovation, invest in creativity
—Deeper understanding of creativity improves return on investment for companies
  • Creativity also builds resilience, a key theme for the conference
— Takeaway: Take your creativity seriously, put in structures in place for creativity resilience for yourself and for your organization
— Speaking for himself, Karl took creativity for granted (and didn’t know creativity was subject of study)

 

 

— Karl’s story:
  • Formal study of creativity came in September 2000, and teaching designers
  • Higher ed had changed to mass model
  • Range of abilities higher
— If said “We need more creativity”, “20%” only grasped what was meant
  • Meant to ask if he could help “80%”
— Found book on Amazon on Edward De Bono called “Serious Creativity”
  • Devoured book and developed workshop around it
— De Bono led to Torrance, Stein (Sternberg), and Cszikmenthai and others
  • People who dedicated minds to study of creativity

 

— He had been educated at elite design school, worked as designers, but nobody told him of study of creativity, and how he could use it.

 

— The question that can’t  be escaped is: What is creativity?
— Standard definition of creativity is as follows:
  • Creativity requires originality and effectiveness
    • Exact terms can change, but same principles at work
    • Features of novelty and usefulness
Importance of defining creativity, in that the definition reveals values and myths you don’t know you have
  • These values under pin professional cultures and shape unconsciously
  • Definition of creativity valuable for people to do
Most people don’t define creativity, even at peak performance

 

— There is a common set of creative myths
  •     “I can’t be creative. Can’t draw”
  •    “ Only special people can be creative”
  •  “ You can’t teach creativity”
— Myths aren’t true, but people act as if they are.
— Creativity researchers have focused on debunking myths
— Most interesting is that myths take root when industries say they need to be creative

 

 

  • Person is in creative trouble when “creative” is part of their job title

 

 

— Sadly, creativity industry looks more like a stressed out individual
  • In an interview, a creative said she was an idea machine, who had no support in maintaining her performance. She was used up and spat out by the industry.

— Think of creative professional as an ideas athlete
  • Day in/out to find solutions to complex challenges
— Analogy of athletes
  • Elite athlete doesn’t turn up and do their thing
  • They are regularly coached and trained
    • For athlete to achieve personal best, there is an ecosystem to guard against burnout and support peak performance
— Odd that athlete has coach or nutritionist, and use professionals to improve performance
  •     Not odd to ask for Olympic athlete
— Absurd is for creative professionals to lack advantage for own professional potential
  •     Absurd especially how creative potential is tied into organizational KPI
— Goal of preventing performance from being undermined
  • Especially important with tech workers

— Jeffries found out that workers in tech at UK, were five-times more depressed than UK average
— This finding came from a 2019 survey (pre-Covid)
  • Causes of stress was work
  • It was not people reporting periods of stress, but rather constant stress impacting their daily lives
  • Same as high-intensity professions like medical workers and health service
  • This type of stress kills creativity
— Structures that support creativity, need to be developed
  •     Creativity becomes metric for resilience and for well-being
  •   Goal of healthy creative culture
    • We create culture and design the system
As DesignOps moves forward, what future do you want to build for creativity?
Resilience research shows optimism is good for us
  • Not false hope or lacking criticality
  • Rather aware of challenges, and focus on embracing optimism (Have opportunity now to do things differently)
DesignOps can set a new default future, and don’t have to perpetuate creativity myths
  • Push approach for other professionals
Instead see yourselves for what you are, what you need, and what you give
  • However you label yourself. What you really are, you are creativity olympians, and idea athletes
  • Can develop practices and structures to nurture creativity for yourself and what to support
Imagining if you brought peak creativity to what you did. Imagine if you were supporting others, and what could be achieved compared to default future.
We have everything we need to begin. So let’s have courage to reach for future. Let’s dare for creativity and resilience and dare greatly.

 

Questions

  1. What is your opinion on voluminous options of design thinking training programs targeted to positions?
— Good that knowledge is getting out there and bringing in different people.
— Need processes, but only as good as people and how they are supported.
  •     Need to remember that there are people using these processes or businesses
— Myths that creativity is solitary response is not helpful
— Tools and process are good, but need values, beliefs, and confidence in your own creativity to go ahead
— Again, it depends on program. So choose the program creatively.
  1. How do you fuel creativity through exceptional situations like COVID-19?
— Same way to think for designers to define what is meant by word of “creativity”
— People have not consciously thought through creativity
— Initially, get people to see themselves as an idea athlete, and building out support structures, beliefs, and values
  • Having management structure to allow for peak performance
— Challenge to do what you need to do to look after yourself to prevent burnout, and then matter of nurturing and developing yourself
  •     Depends on organization
  •     DesignOps can follow old creative industry paths, but still defining itself to nurture creativity within the people in organization