Why Creativity Loves Uncertainty

[Music]

today

i’d like to share with you a journey of

why the uncertainty of going

off on a tangent can help creative ideas

transcend the original brief and become

more powerful

this is me age 10 with my best friend

george

and we made a t-rex out of cardboard

boxes and yogurt pots

i grew up in cumbria and i didn’t have a

lot of pre-made toys or tools

so instead of playing around with

prescribed things by the toy company

we had to be resourceful and creative

and trust that the meandering approach

would be an adventure in itself i didn’t

know at the time but this would become

core to my approach as a professional

designer later in life

25 years later i got to work on all

sorts of unusual design challenges

this is kyle more about him later as we

were part of a tv show called big life

fix

i worked with seven other amazing

designers makers and engineers

and we were tasked to help people

overcome various disabilities

through clever use of technology

much of the process was about jumping

into problems that was seemingly

impossible because the initial brief was

usually only partially right

we ended up often going on all sorts of

different tangents in order to

understand

what the real questions were

over my career i learned to appreciate

the subtlety

of uncovering the right questions

designers as a generalization often

prototype

for answers in other words validation to

things they want to find out

artists on the other hand prototype for

questions

da vinci i suspect would have done a

combination of both so i thought that

would be a useful point to make

and in many ways i needed to learn how

to combine

the designer’s validation with the

artist questions in my work

i had to create room for uncertainty

that comes from going off on a tangent

and not knowing whether it was going to

be worth the bother

and that the outcome would be more

rewarding either personally

professionally or commercially

one example was working at dyson despite

being surrounded by sophisticated

prototyping facilities

i still worked in cardboard dyson

actively encouraged the speed

and non-precious mindset to iterate fast

what began as a childhood past time of

tinkering had grown into a professional

skill set

spurred on by finding my tribe at dyson

i wanted to engage other designers

i realized that there were not actually

many

online tutorials to how to master the

art of prototyping

and so i was compelled to try doing one

i respected daily bloggers like spencer

nugent and his sketch a day blog

and emailed him asking how do i get

started very kindly the advice that he

gave me

was give away everything you know with

enthusiasm

even if it’s imperfect because it will

take you places

so this was a makeshift setup in our

living room

to record key techniques in prototyping

in case you hadn’t guessed this is my

tripod

hanging a camera on it from the ceiling

with my wife’s compact mirror stuck to

the back of it with blu-tack

so i could see what my hands were doing

as i was demonstrating the videos

what resulted was a rather basic but

effective website

i even made tutorials on materials other

than just cardboard and then i waited

not really sure who would notice

amazingly this got me my first gig with

a tiny computer

called a raspberry pi i created a

tutorial on how to make a protective

case from it

from the very box that it was shipped in

this actually got me noticed by a wider

community

and took me all around europe creating

hackathons and workshops with startups

and agencies

i realized that you can actually become

an expert simply by going off on a

tangent for long enough

as a so-called expert i started making

tools

just because i could i had taught people

how to make this seamless joint

but it required quite a lot of skill and

so i thought about making a tool

to do it more easily and here it is

the cardboard rebate tool it also

happened to work

in coryx which is the plastic you see

for sale signs made from

and as it turned out this ended up

helping me make

a space pod

even on large scale projects i still

worked in card for speed

and ease of discussion with the team i

realized that my rebate tool

working in card and plastic meant this

space pod

could be made from an unlikely material

choice

here’s the correct space pod going all

the way

to the edge of space

and coming down safely again without any

damage

so lessons learned make tangential

tutorials

alongside my day job get to travel

europe doing cool workshops

make a tool just because got to build a

space pod

applying this mindset to a bigger task

and going back to the tv documentary

this got me thinking

the best bits of my work came from the

unexpected

and unplanned part of the creative

challenge

i had to allow uncertainty

because i could increasingly see how it

raised the bar

of my work i was lucky enough to work on

diverse challenges from helping a

photographer who had lost the use of his

hands

to enabling a visually impaired

schoolboy find his friends in the

playground

to a novel solution to prevent sheep

wrestling

and to kyle who had dreamed of becoming

a hairdresser

and whose story i’d like to focus on as

it shifted my perspective

in design and provocation

kyle was born without full use of a

fully formed hand

and yet he had always dreamed of

becoming a hairdresser

for him becoming a hairdresser

represented much more

than a career change when i met him in

his training he was having difficulty

holding hair

and cutting it and i had to learn about

hairdressing myself

as well as understanding kyle’s own

journey

it was not lost on kyle but this was not

a straightforward career choice

but he was determined

i studied the back history of

prosthetics and orthotics and spoke to

leading experts at universities

although we explored bionic and

mechanical hands

these simply could not hold something as

delicate as a human hair

this meant we had to revisit the

original brief

and ask deeper questions about our hands

but dexterity and tools

the inspiration struck when trimming

hair with clippers

so the batteries had run out and the

oscillating teeth that usually cut hair

were now jammed and were gripping and

painfully pulling my hair

and i realized this could actually be a

great thing to turn into a mechanical

tool

that kyle could control

this was the early prototype made from

some combs

and a toggle switch as well as a paper

clip

it starts unlocked hair flows through

the two combs next to each other

one is then locked bracing the hair

tightly against the other

and then released again by pulling in

the opposite direction

so the hair flows through cleanly

together we had explored all manner of

ideas

and ultimately created something simple

and effective

based on tangential notion

it was so effective that his cohorts at

the hairdressing academy

actually marveled at how well it held

hair holding actually more than their

small hands could

kyle himself started to realize that

although we couldn’t recreate

flesh and blood we had created a

compelling

alternative so revisiting

the initial considerations the design

validation

can kyle cut hair the artistic

provocation

should cut hair and as we might call it

the da vinci question what does it mean

for people with an impairment

to style hair but

there was still a more complex issue

around perception

we both realized that it was not so much

the design process

but kyle owning the impairment that he

was born with

the real merit was the journey we went

on together through all its twists and

turns

that landed the final idea kyle went on

to cut her professionally

in a modeling agency as well as being a

professional male model himself

and whenever carl goes next i’m sure

it’s going to be another adventure

but for us both the design collaboration

went

way beyond just cutting hair

and became about kyle having the

confidence to do something remarkable

against all the odds

fall in love with the uncertain tangents

of the creative challenge

as much as the initial design brief

so uncertainty on a whole new level

covert 19. it was the first national

lockdown in the uk

we felt isolated virtual solutions felt

a poor substitute

but physical interaction felt unsafe

access to workshops felt like an

unreasonably risky excursion

bad news for a prototyping expert like

the brief came from a client to create a

tech art commission to celebrate their

10th anniversary

and the concept was to create an

original open source

3d printable project that’s fun and

could be made by a stranger

even on the other side of the world so

the realization is that the first part

of this

was i was pretty confident that i could

deliver however the second part

frankly was where the uncertainty lay

how could i make it fun

and how could i make it work with a

stranger on the other side of the world

i knew

from that uncertainty something

interesting is going to happen

the traditional approach to this type of

commission

would have been to make something which

can be viewed passively

as just more entertainment yet the

potential here

was to create something despite the

lockdown

a way to actively engage the community

in making something

together enter

radioglobe a project made in knockdown

in isolation and yet was one of the most

connected things

i had done i took the origin story of

the company’s history

which started out in radio spares after

the first world war

i wanted to capture that feeling of

building something like a communication

device

a bit like a crystal fm radio but give

it a modern twist

although web radio can be accessed using

websites and apps lockdown emphasized

are yearning for something more physical

and playful radioglobe allows you to

any of 2 000 plus radio stations

simply by spinning the globe and moving

the pointer to a city

to tune into music news and discussions

[Music]

the entire project was completed in four

weeks

in a two by two meter shed it used

simple tools

a cheap 3d printer and a tiny raspberry

pi computer

as well as some specialist components

that could be found on the client’s

website

thanks of course to the amazing

collaborators on this project

however it’s worth being honest that

ordinarily i would not have chosen to

work with these people

because they simply didn’t live near me

the creative constraint of lockdown

meant that now i selected collaborators

based on a talent

first not geography-first basis

much of the work was managed on digital

platforms and we even got created with

video calls holding our phones in

different angles

around cardboard models and drawing on

pictures so that we could understand

each other over distance of course card

played a heavy role and so

it was ready to go open source to the

general public

the diy project is live on instructables

and had many detailed steps on how to

make it

from printing tips to parts to tools

electronics and controls wiring

and of course installing the globe i

just wanted to show a picture here of my

four-year-old son

using it because i can sorry because of

the global media coverage

we had a bigger audience and radio globe

has been nominated for various awards

around its original take on community

engagement

through open source collaboration radio

globe inspired people to attempt

something

out of their comfort zone and many

people have built and remixed the radio

globe

thanks to the open source nature of it

as a designer there was a lot to learn

simply by watching people interact with

now often open source can just mean

people

download and don’t actually change the

designs

however with radioglobe makers truly

tailored it to their own preferences

from new colors and features to new

hardware and software iterations

people really made it their own but my

personal favorite has to be chuck

at 75 years young who has made his own

radio globe

in lockdown the irony of it was that i

didn’t truly have chuck in mind when

designing radio globe

but this is testament to the notion of

being open to the uncertainty

and what it might bring you as a

surprise

the journey has taken me down lots of

uncertain and tangential paths

but i wanted to leave on this fall in

love with the exploration

as much as the initial design brief the

creative outcome

will be better for it thank you