Revised and updated slides for the first day of the Creativity and Design module at the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight, Nanyang Technological University 2016

1. Creativity and Design
Day 1: Why?

2. Design and
Creativity
(D&C)
why?
who?
how?
what
if?
so
what?
why?

3. The objective is…
“to introduce the basics of product design, including issues
relating to product form and function, as well as aesthetics and
experience. Students will learn how to integrate creative ideas
into product designs that would appeal to consumers. Cutting
edge and relevant issues in product designs will be discussed.
Special emphasis will also be placed on examining product
designs in an Asian cultural context.”

4. Themes:
•Basics of creativity and (product) design
•Form, function, aesthetics, and experience
•Creative ideas and product design
•Understand and appeal consumers
•Asian context
•Cutting edge and relevant issues

5. Student evaluations: 2015

8. Word Association
Three words instantly in your mind:
Creativity

9. http://www.wordassociation.org/words/creativity
“the world's largest database of word associations”
http://www.snappywords.com/?lookup=creativity

11. Word Association
Three words instantly in your mind:
Design

12. http://www.snappywords.com/?lookup=designhttp://www.wordassociation.org/words/creativity
“the world's largest database of word associations”

14. People are increasingly talking about creativity &
design… but what are they talking about?
1

15. Creativity
Design
Innovation
Strategy
Marketing
Sustainability
Product Development
Technology
What ideas dominate?
What ideas are missing?

17. Semantics
Passion
from Latin pati ‘suffer’
http://myjustliving.com/default.aspx?tag=/passion&page=2

18. Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
by Armand Marie Leroi. Penguin Books
http://www.ibtimes.com/chilling-images-human-mutation-across-world-photos-840275

19. Creativity: punctuated change
Different from continuous, gradual, incremental change

21. Who is creative?

22. “Artist Wolfgang Beltracchi masterminded
one of the most audacious and lucrative
art frauds in postwar European history”
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/wolfgang-beltracchi-helene-art-scam
“On my business card, I am a corporate
president. In my mind, I am a game
developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”
http://fortune.com/2015/07/13/nintendo-iwata-dead/

25. Creative diversity

26. Creative potential is universal in humans2
http://www.todayonline.com/
http://www.aiga.org/uploadedImages/AIGA/Content/Inspiration/shutterstock-aiga-diversity-herman-miller-ram-castillo-640.png

27. www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/560072_1393241990913741_1484585483_n1.jpg
media.pennlive.com/midstate_impact/photo/pn-20110824132704-18jpg-c300573418e4b5bf.jpg
www.iloilomovie.com
todayonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/photo_gallery_image_lightbox/public/photos/43_images/24259450.jpg

29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVg_D4VES6o

30. 1: “Others are creative” 2: “Others are not creative”
A: “I am creative” Emancipated view Oppressive view
B: “I am not creative” Oppressed view Sceptic view
Table 1. Four general types of views of creativity based on Freire (2000).

32. “Are you creative?”
is the wrong question,
the real question is
“How are you creative?”

33. Map your creative potential
• How does your cultural background shape your creativity?
• Your family history and life experiences
• Your network: the people who surround you
• Your personality traits and preferences
• Your career goals and technical skills
• Your values, dreams, and motivations
• The abilities that distinguish you from other people

38. Synergies

39. -Break-

40. We cannot find new solutions unless we change the way
we define the problems
3
http://www.todayonline.com/

41. Introductions and expectations

42. http://tinyurl.com/evaluate3ideas

43. Fully electric
folding bike

44. http://www.yikebike.com/

52. Share and compare scores
• Who is the target user?
• What is the problem?
• How was the problem re-framed?
• What criteria were used to evaluate?

53. -Break-

54. Creative, innovative designs…
a) Are extraordinary commercial successes
b) Push the boundary of what is possible
c) Generate new meanings and experiences
They are hard to identify, and even harder to create!

55. Design is like…
Sleep
Eat
Sex
Exercise

56. Creativity and design are ‘rich’ concepts. They can’t be
reduced to formulas, instructions, or best practices
4

57. So, what should we be talking about?

58. Not “Design Thinking” (please!)

59. Bruce Archer (1960s)
“The practice of design is a very
complicated business, involving
contrasting skills and a wide field of
disciplines. It has always required
an odd kind of hybrid to carry it
successfully”
Engineer, Professor of Design Research at
the Royal College of Art
Bruce Nussbaum (2010s)
“Design Thinking was denuded of
the mess, the conflict, failure,
emotions, and looping circularity
that is part and parcel of the
creative process”
Economist, Professor of Innovation and Design at
Parsons The New School for Design
Design

61. 3 Views of Design
ICSID: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hJcnWKezk
Dyson Foundation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD6d8Em8q5A
Roger Martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLjj1MWX0bY
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/medart/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triquetral_bone https://www.healthtap.com/topics/

62. Beyond artistic skills and simplified instructions, C&D are
strategic to an organisation (and a richer personal life)
5

63. http://rfa.itwin.com
http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/55-creative-examples-of-usb-designs/
(Sometimes “Big D” design is easy to distinguish)

64. http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/55-creative-examples-of-usb-designs/
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/vilnvixn-intelligent-accessories
(But very often “Big D” design is not so easy to define)

65. http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/55-creative-examples-of-usb-designs/
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/vilnvixn-intelligent-accessories
A key element of “Big D” design is a combination of creative technology and feasibility

66. 1994 by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf for Herman Miller

68. Joshua Silver: Adjustable liquid-filled eyeglasses

69. Driver of Creativity and Design: Impact6

70. If your presence doesn't make an impact,
your absence won't make a difference
Brian "Trey" Smith

71. “The minute that you understand that you can poke life
and actually something will, you know if you push in,
something will pop out the other side, that you can
change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most
important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion
that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus
embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
I think that’s very important and however you learn that,
once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it
better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways.
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
–Steve Jobs in PBS 'One Last Thing' 2011

72. Design: changing a present situation into the specification
of a future imagined situation
Key ideas:
- But what is the situation?
- And how to imagine a future state?
- Finally, how to achieve a good specification?
7
http://www.todayonline.com/

77. A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go
through measurable means when it is being designed and in the
end must be unmeasurable
Louis Kahn, architect (1901-1974)
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it
looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.
Steven P. Jobs, entrepreneur (1955-2011)
Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.
Charles O. Eames, designer (1907-1978)
What is design? It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the
world of technology and the world of people and human purposes -
and you try to bring the two together.
Mitchell Kapor, entrepreneur (1950-)
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas A. Edison, inventor (1847-1931)
A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor,
mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary
strategist.
Richard Buckminster Fuller, architect,
designer and inventor (1895-1983)
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but
with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.
Herbert A. Simon, economist, computer scientist (1916-2001)
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood.
Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)
The practice of design is a very complicated business, involving
contrasting skills and a wide field of disciplines. It has always required
an odd kind of hybrid to carry it successfully
Bruce Archer, engineer and designer (1922-2005)

78. Define C&D in inner/outer circles

82. - Lunch -

84. Design principles
1. Not only appearance, whole product/service/system
2. No right/wrong answers, no optimal designs
3. Ambiguous starting/end points
4. Problem and solution co-evolve
5. Avoid ‘solutionism’ (sp. technology-based)
6. 99% perspiration (team sport)
7. New ideas cannot be ‘proven’

85. Start anywhere, start today, start with a “vision”8
http://www.todayonline.com/

86. Q: what was the initial core vision of Apple Computers?
Steve Jobs, 1980
http://youtu.be/0lvMgMrNDlg?t=2m23s
02:23 – 13:05

87. “We had absolutely no idea that people would do that…”
“We had some feeling that we were on to something…”
“We are just starting to get the glimmerings of where it’s going to go…”
“Our whole company, our whole philosophical base is founded
on one principle… Right now if you buy a computer system and
you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a
big problem right in the middle of you and your problem”
http://boscutti.com/2013/02/24/boscuttis-steve-jobs-scene-12/

88. http://www.detechter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/nxtcb.jpg
http://news.doddleme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Apple-Macintosh-G4-Cube-with-disk.jpg

89. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/wii_channels/0/0
“…when I first entered the
company I often said that I
wanted to make the sort of
games you could play with your
grandmother.”

90. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/wii_channels/0/0
“The concept of "fun for the entire
family" gradually took form in our
minds. We didn't want any member
of the family to feel left out”

91. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/rhythmheavenfever/0/5
“Listening to everyone here talk
about Wii reminds me that the most
important thing was clearly defining
our vision. Even if it was a vision
without a precedent.”

92. “Creative vision”: discover opportunities, reframe
problems and persistently explore solution paths
9

93. A
B
C
F K N R
S
http://www.goldcoastmodela.com/Early_Ford.pdf
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/331880/347933.html?1363551928
http://25.media.tumblr.com/935fa0bd19cd7f4edfcb7528cffd21ad/tumblr_mga6unWcNt1rgmlf9o1_1280.jpg
Ford Model T
The first car to achieve one million,
five million, ten million and fifteen
million units sold.

94. Henry Ford: “People seem to think that the big thing is the
factory or the store or the financial backing or the
management. The big thing is the product, and any hurry in
getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so
much waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T
that suited me.
I designed eight models in all before "Model T." They were:
"Model A," "Model B," "Model C," "Model F," "Model N,"
"Model R," "Model S," and "Model K."”
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7213/pg7213.html

96. What is your vision?

97. Breakthroughs may seem sudden, but they are long,
iterative processes of trial-and-error and learning
10
http://www.todayonline.com/

98. http://www.businessinsider.com.au/chart-of-the-day-ipad-estimate-sales-vs-iphone-ipod-nintendo-2010-4

100. 61:30 video: http://blog.intelligent.ly/2013/02/seth-godin-video/
“See-Monkey Marketing is over. Product Design and
Marketing are the same thing, and any organisation
that is splitting them apart is making a huge mistake”
sethgodin.typepad.com

101. -Break-

102. https://www.90yearsofdesign.philips.com/manifesto

104. “Since Bill Gore founded the company in 1958, Gore has been a team-based, flat lattice
organization that fosters personal initiative. There are no traditional organizational charts,
no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication.”

109. Design National Policies
• Finland
• United Kingdom
• Denmark
• United States
• India
• Korea
• Singapore
• Japan
A Comparative Analysis of Strategies for Design Promotion in Different National Contexts within the Discipline of Design by Gisele Raulik-Murphy (PhD Dissertation 2010)

113. http://theartnewspaper.com/reports/the-good-the-bad-and-the-blatant-knock-offs/
“Only China has the term,
but lots of countries had the
same conditions of copying
when developing”
Qi Yongfeng, China Communications
University, Beijing

114. “Management teams don't
just need to understand
design better, they need to
think and act like designers”

115. Strategic Impacts of Design in Businesses
e Helsinki School of Economics, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology
http://www.muova.fi/documents/key20130416170946/Raportit%20ja%20julkaisut/MUSA_loppuraportti_2005.pdf

116. http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Dubberly_Jobs-and-Ive.pdf

117. Design Strategy is using the design process to
understand an organization and the market to
discover business opportunities
http://gsadesignglossary.com/design-strategy.html

120. eHelsinkiSchoolofEconomics,theUniversityofArtandDesignHelsinkiandtheHelsinkiUniversityofTechnology
http://www.muova.fi/documents/key20130416170946/Raportit%20ja%20julkaisut/MUSA_loppuraportti_2005.pdf

122. Roger Martin: Rotman Business + Design
http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/roger-martin-on-why-corporates-should-ban-the-
phrase-prove-it-517389434
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNgBRcp0u7w (0:0 – 4:56)

124. Every organisation needs creativity and design, but there
is no “one-size-fits-all”, no “silver bullet”
11
http://www.todayonline.com/

125. Why Design and Creativity in your organisation?

126. -Break-

127. Design problems are “wicked problems”
(as opposed to “tame problems”)
- what is the problem?
- assessment criteria?
- consequences?
- dynamic situations
- causality is complex
- human behaviour
12
http://www.todayonline.com/
http://stamps.umich.edu/images/site_images/Wicked_Diagram.png

128. Earth: beautiful and resilient

129. The next two generations are key

130. 3 billion urban residents in Asia by 2050

131. Asia: spearheading change

132. Asia: emerging markets (and aspirations)

133. Income ≠ success, consumption ≠ well-being
http://bernardoh.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/singaporeans-love-shopping.jpg

134. Design in Asia is a dynamic area, a fertile ground for
unprecedented design-driven innovation
13
http://www.todayonline.com/

135. How did your views changed today?

137. Thank you!