The creativity trigger

Our creative thinking is quite dependent on technology and our connection to others. Take a moment to consider to what extent we are connected: Twitter, Facebook, Dribbble, Forrst, blah blah blah… I don’t have to go on. That connection to the community is something we tap into everyday. We rely on it for knowledge and inspiration.
You are here on my blog reading my personal thoughts on design. If you weren’t here, you’d likely be on someone else’s blog. You might even be looking for a quick inspirational fix and not finding it here, and within milliseconds you’ll be leaving to find that spark somewhere else. Before you leave dear internet traveler, answer me this: Are you looking for that creative spark out here because you can’t find it inside yourself?

“Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long. That’s when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don’t even know it. That’s when you see that it’s so interdependent, that if you take one thing away, the whole thing falls down and leaves you with nothing.” – James Burke

A Creativity Crisis?

There is a creativity assessment¹ that was designed by E. Paul Torrance, some fifty years ago. The tasks are designed to measure creativity, where the subject generates as many unique ideas as possible and combines those ideas into what they see as the best result. Something like, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” What is fascinating is how well this creativity index, or CQ, is able to predict the creative accomplishments of kids that were tested, and what they did as adults. The kids that did well on the tests ended up moving on to be inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs.
The creativity scores, like IQ scores, have been steadily rising. That is, until around 1990. From that point they (CQs) have started to slowly decrease, while the IQ continues to rise. Although it’s too early to say, some think it’s the amount of time kids play video games and watch TV. Another culprit could be the way schools are shifting to standardize curriculum and focusing on memorization, and not nurturing creativity as much.
Consider the parallels of the potential reasons behind these falling creativity assessment results to what we experience currently in design. We are exposed to so much distraction on a daily basis. Some are needed distractions, others are damaging to our keeping focus on the task at hand. And it’s not just pure distraction, but looking for the quickest design solution.
I hate to bring up the inspirational lists and regurgitated content, but I’m sure as hell going to. How many designers would dare to admit they are not going to these sites to find that spark of creativity? Or, perhaps even find something more specific like a layout or color that might just work for their current client? I would guess a lot. In fact, while researching for a previous article² I conducted an unscientific poll of designers and found that they spent most time looking for inspiration, rather than reading more in-depth stuff.
The argument this brings up is how much of this is a normal path in design and that everyone steals… oops, I mean, gets inspired by others. I can accept this to a point. It makes sense, since that is how things begin. They are built off of each other.

“You know, the lonely genius in the garage with a lightbulb that goes ping in his head. None of these guys did anything by themselves; they borrowed from other people’s work.” – James Burke

The Creativity Trigger

Science historian James Burke³ introduces us to the notion that the complex technology in our lives would not exist without a web of interconnected events. He rejects a linear path of history and claims that it is more of this group of events made up of a person (or group) acting for reasons of their own, like religion or profit. They have no real idea of the future or big picture. He also says if our world’s technology is created by this is sort of synergy where these events build off of each other, then the number of these innovations and complexities will accelerate and at some point become too much for the average person to deal with. Is that world the one we live in today?
It is interesting looking at it from the perspective of the design community and the amount of blogs that have erupted over the past few years, as well as the social-type sites sharing code and screenshots. Together they are pounding out information daily that none of us are able to physically keep up with. It is logical to think that there was not some big initiative years ago to someday have an extensive design community with so much information coming out daily. It makes more sense that it was individuals or small groups building off of each other after seeing the success of other blogs.
Finding our creativity trigger does depend on the world that surrounds us. We need that to kick into gear our creativity and help make design that is relevant. I’ve read so many “How to Get Inspired” articles, I think I am uninspired from ever reading anything with the word inspired in the title. Looking at other designs is a tough one too. The line between inspiration and stealing is a hard one to draw. Everyone draws it based on his or her own motivation. I think the only way we could really discover our own creativity is to remove the distractions, the poorly informed articles, and stop using the design crack we know as galleries or searching around Dribbble. Turn off everything.

Turning Off the Right Things

Love him or hate him, Stefan Sagmeister⁴ is an interesting designer. I don’t relate to him on an aesthetic sort of level, and he doesn’t live as much in the web and application design realm like I do. Nonetheless, he has a lot of relevant things to say when it comes to creativity and finding inspiration.
Consider how much we work everyday and the amount of years we do this for. We take this linear path of learning, working, and finally retirement. Well, Stefan felt like his ideas were getting tired and almost copies of previous ideas or of other things that he had seen. He needed to refresh himself (and team) so they could find that inspiration, or creative trigger. He decided to take some pieces of his retirement and pepper it into his working career.

So every seven years he closes his agency taking a year off to explore the world, learn new things, and refresh their creativity. The resulting work I think speaks for itself. I find something like this very inspiring and a simple idea. It is creativity by doing not just seeing it or reading it. It’s not just going outside for an hour and taking a walk. It’s not going to a movie then coming home feeling fake refreshed. It’s really going away and experiencing something completely different. Removing the connection you are so dependent on for your creativity.
For me the overall idea has a lot of merit. Many other companies practice this. Google and 3M give their employees a certain percentage of this discovery time. Although I doubt many could afford to take a year off by any means, I think it would be a good experiment to turn off things like Twitter and not read anything online for maybe a month. Instead, take the time to read a few design books and spend time somewhere else besides staring at a screen searching for a spark that no longer lives inside you. I think by turning off the right things for a length of time that is uncomfortable, we can return to design some amazing things.
Think about it.
1) The Creativity Crisis – Newsweek
2) Connections – James Burke
3) The Dying Art of Design – Smashing Magazine
4) The Power of Time Off – Stefan Sagmeister

Avoiding the Uncanny Valley of Interface Design

There is a theory in robotics first proposed in a 1970 paper in the journal Energy by the roboticist Masahiro Mori. In short the theory states that as you get closer to making a robot that resembles a human, the more unsettling it will be. When our perception of human attributes is visualized, it is a curve that tracks upward when we begin to encounter more human-like machines.¹


We reach a point where there is a steep drop-off. It indicates a point of being too human-like, with something that is not quite right. It triggers psychological alarms that detect the very subtle and unsettling differences associating the mind with things like death. It’s the reason movies (with computer generated people) like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf” were blamed for poor box-office returns.² This disturbance in our perception — before we reach the perfect likeness of a human being – is the Uncanny Valley.

In design we have been continually moving toward similar territory. There is more realism in user interface today due to factors like faster computers. As digital products have become more sophisticated applications there is a need to create controls and interface elements with clear affordance. This means adding touches of 3D through lighting effects, shadows, textures, and so on.

Cockpit app interface for MacOS

There are a few side affects to this surge of realism. I think that there is an Uncanny Valley in interface design that some Websites and applications have landed themselves in through approaching interface design in the wrong way. The Uncanny Valley of interface design might not cause something disturbing, but the user experience can be compromised.

The Good, The Bad and The Trendy

It’s no secret that I speak often and loudly about trends. The real issue I have with trends is when they are used for the wrong reasons. There are certain effects that have become just a default tool for many designers.
As I see it the rationale behind using them is:
1) It’s easy. No thinking involved. Just add a texture, and it’s “designed” now. It’s 99% imitation with 1% perspiration.
 2) They are designing eye candy that will be recognized by other designers as “great design”
3) They don’t know the user and why the effect was used in the other places they saw it. These effects bring their interface into the Uncanny Valley of UI where they seem like the other Websites or apps, but something is off.

What many of these designers don’t realize is that they are doing their client a disservice. Users don’t come to the site or open the application to stare at a UI. They come with needs to find certain content or to complete a task. They have other things they’d rather be doing like walking their dog. They aren’t designers and into the details of every pixel. They could care less if the text has the letterpress effect, unless it hinders their experience.

It’s hard as a designer to find examples of good design. What I mean by that is good design that isn’t eye candy targeted for designers. There is some really beautiful work on blogs and galleries. Of course it’s beautiful though, it’s made for people like me. Sometimes I feel like we’re all so wrapped up in our design world and talk about how crappy some sites look and that we could do much better. What we really mean is that we would design it so we would like it better when we visit/use it.

I went to a large creative conference a while back and saw some really inspirational stuff. I felt reinvigorated after coming back to work. When I sat down to write a report to basically justify the company’s investment for me to go, I went blank. None of the information could be applied to what I did on a daily basis. I realized that the conference was just for designers to feel cool and see things only they would like. It wasn’t anything that would really benefit the users or clients I designed for. That seems to be a lot of the type of work that is praised, as well as the designers who work on it.

Getting Real with Users

Apple has been pushing realism into its interface design for a while now. From glossy buttons, to the metal chrome in iTunes, and now with the guidelines for the iPad. Some of it makes a lot of sense. With the touch interface you want it to be inviting and feel familiar to the user. A screenshot of a notepad application that looks like a real notepad will probably sell a lot better than one that looks clean and digital. Some designers have taken this lead the wrong way.

Pushing the leather buttons on the Calendar app feels very much like real leather buttons would feel: Tacky. — iA

In the article “Designing for iPad: Reality Check,”³ Information Architects (iA) go through a lot of the feelings and explorations they did when starting to design for the iPad. They found that going too far with the realism just brought it into the realm of the Uncanny Valley of interface design. The interface seemed to be more kitsch and gimmicky than an effective way to present content to a user. The interface can get to a point of realism, yet fall short. Real books lay a certain way when they are open. Objects don’t always have six perfect beams of light on them.

The Apple Calender app interface

Creating a word processing app that looks like a typewriter or making the interface for a cooking app look like a real kitchen is driving it right into the Uncanny Valley. It becomes design for designs sake and we lose all sense of purpose for the application. I can guarantee though, that if you put a screenshot up in a certain designer snapshot gallery, you would shoot to the top of the popular list.

If you design something that looks like a book, then users will expect it to function like a book. With a book you lose some of the power and functionality you have with a digital product where it wouldn’t make sense to have a scroll bar on the page and the pages would restack to show your place in the book. It is interesting to see that although the iPad is capable of richer graphics, the Kindle still seems to be a preferred e-reader, with Kindle outselling iBooks 60 to 1.⁴

The iBooks interface

The Kindle interface

If we review the use of smaller interface elements, like buttons or symbols, we find the same holds true for them. There needs to be a balance of detail and simplification. If we go too far in either direction the meaning of the symbol becomes convoluted. With symbols and other UI elements we should be trying to communicate concepts, not replicate an exact physical object.⁵

Image from Realism in UI Design on UX Magazine

It comes down to being subtle and rational with using realism. The interface should not be full of excise UI elements that force a user through hoops because it looks great. If you use a metaphor make sure it is strong and helps to propel the user through the Website or application.

Playfulness vs. Usefulness

Realism in interface design is a delicate balancing act. I love a lot of the playfulness in the new apps I’ve seen. I think that the reason they work well is that the interface doesn’t overwhelm the experience. I’ve seen arguments that being a bit playful with the interface is a good thing. It enhances learning the application and engages the user. I completely agree.⁶


However, think about how many apps users have to do this with. That’s a lot of apps to have to relearn how to navigate. If you think about a DVD’s navigation, it’s a similar thing. They are about the experience, there’s no question. Sometimes I put in a DVD and I can get around easily to find a scene or adjust settings. Other times it is hard to figure out because the designer decided to try and be overly clever.

Even if the application is something for our enjoyment, we still have tasks we need to accomplish. If I go to respond to someone on Twitter, or purchase a song on iTunes, they are still tasks. If the iTunes store looked like jukebox I am certain that the playfulness would get old once I came back the second time to purchase music.

It is so easy to love a certain effect and want to use that everywhere. Not all projects need to have the selections sitting on a perfectly lit wooden bookshelf. On one hand we want to be creative and make something that is appealing and can sell the product. On the other side we have to question the cost of that approach on the experience itself and balance style and function with purpose.

1) The Truth About Robots and the Uncanny Valley: Analysis – Popular Mechanics
2) Into the Uncanny Valley – Seed Magazine
3) Designing for iPad: Reality Check – iA
4) Kindle Outselling iBooks 60 To 1 – The Next Web
5) Realism in UI Design – UX Magazine
6) Usability Ain’t Everything – A Response to Jakob Nielsen’s iPad Usability Study – Johnny Holland

The Man Who Destroyed the Boring Interface and Lived

From the earliest graphical user interfaces, to the latest pixel perfect work seen in apps, the most basic elements of the interface have remained pretty much the same. For example the button: It has gone from a flat rectangle, to a beveled rectangle, to a beveled rectangle with a gradient.¹
One of the first systems to fully utilize a graphical user interface (GUI) was the Xerox Star (Xerox 8010 Information System). It followed close to the metaphor of an office using folders and documents, and the user would click on icons and open windows… pretty much what we do today. The Star ended up becoming a commercial failure.

Xerox 8010 Information System

From there, the more recognizable players like Apple and Microsoft came into the game. They were able to evolve the interface into what we know and use today.
So, it seems that interface design has remained a bit stagnant all these years, until today. Exciting designs and fresh experiences are being built around us. A rich, graphic realism is pouring into our work. It’s a new day for design. But wait, it’s not so new after all. In fact, there was one man who dared to see the interface in a different way years before many designers were even able to utter their first words. He saw more potential in the basic screen than just rectangles; he saw a design playground.

A Gooey (GUI) Pioneer

Kai Krause is considered an influential pioneer in interface design. He built many successful products that encouraged exploration and learning where most software at the time was mostly bare bones and unengaging. Kai breathed a new life into software design that was, until then, mostly dormant.

Mac OS 9|

Most designers look at screenshots of Kai’s design work and refer to it as kitsch, discounting it as mere eye candy for the time. I would imagine if Jakob Nielsen had nightmares about interfaces, they would look exactly like Kai’s Spheroid Designer. If we withhold judgment of “good design” and think about that time in the history of interface design, it’s hard to not appreciate that unique vision.

Kai Power Tools Spheroid Designer

When most interfaces looked more like terrible clip art, he dared to push the boundaries of digital design. We see the remnants of his influence splashed across the Web. The staple design techniques like transparency, rounded corners, drop-shadows were in his products around 20 years ago.

Kai Power Tools Lens f/x 3.0 over a Photoshop window

The tools that Kai created didn’t feel or act like tools. They made people want to reach out and start using them. The off-the-wall interfaces hid a real technology and power beneath their surface. There was no developer’s mental model present here. There was probably not even a user’s mental model to be considered either. It was a Disneyland of interfaces that simply welcomed you to its world to stop in and play for a while.²

Curse of the Sameness

The sameness that we currently find in design is pervasive. Sometimes it feels like the same designer worked on every site or application. What’s interesting is this isn’t a new problem. Although Kai pushed the limits of what was done in interface design, he ironically ended up creating another period of stagnant trends in design. The software he helped build was blamed for creating this string of “bad design.” When asked about this, he responded:
“[…] the camcorder is not a shortcut to Citizen Kane, it is an immensely beautiful and important tool to preserve memories. In that sense I do not like my tools to be approached as one-click-art short cuts to Mona Lisa, but as beautiful aids for playing with your own brain. As such, I’ll compare them to computer games any day.
The most unimaginative misuses are visible from ten yards away, while the subtle little glow and soft texture may be almost completely invisible. […] Surely the tools have a certain look and that can lead to sameness, but that’s actually more of a social problem than one of technology: conformity in style and flat emulations of the existing stuff are the common practice in 95 percent of all books or movies or records. Sad, yes. But I am always happy to see the best escape over the top.”³

Escaping Flatland

The story “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions,” is about a square living in a two-dimensional world. The square is visited by a three-dimensional sphere which he cannot comprehend until he is educated by the sphere of the existence of this other dimension called “Spaceland.” The square’s mind is then opened to new possibilities of other dimensions.
There will always be designers that latch on to a tool or technique and keep us in Flatland. The designers with a vision will break away from the rest of the pack because they are open to possibilities. Sure, they might push us straight into the next wave of sameness. We will certainly look back on today’s popular designs with the same disdain that we do on the “Web 2.0” styles. That’s guaranteed.
We can’t forget that all design is the result of a person, not a tool. Whether or not you admire or dislike the work of a designer like Kai, you have to respect them for moving us past the stagnant Flatland of design and showing us new possibilities.

1) UX Concepts – Rethinking the Button – Dax Pandhi
2) The Genie in the Machine – The Atlantic Online
3) Artist at Play – The Atlantic Online