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
me
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
search
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]
me
[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
it
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