Optical illusions of creativity?

reflections on the sand

A TED talk on optical illusions and how we learn to see the world

This was a great talk, and I have pulled a few thoughts out of it:

• Colour enables us to se the similarities and differences between things in the visual environment.
• Sensory information itself is meaningless – it could mean anything. This is the same as for any information – does not have inherent meaning, it is what you do with it that gives it meaning
• Brain has learnt to form patterns and use them – missing letters example. The patterns are often based on what has been useful in the past.
• Context is everything – there is a great example of how excepts that look the same (light/dark pattern) suddenly looks very different when you see how they are lit. The context changes what the information means.
• The brain evolved to see the world in a way which was useful in the past, and we see by continually re-defining reality.
• How can we get people to see the world differently?

This was one question that made me think. The power of the brain to see patterns and enable us to make sense of the world is something that was a strong theme in Edward De Bono’s book on lateral thinking. The very techniques that help us survive can also inhibit creative thinking, as the tendancy is to fit things into previous patterns. This can also manifest itself in pre-conceived ideas – see Hans Roslings talk on statistics on ted.com for a great example of this right at the start of the talk.

So – once again, be aware of how your mind works! Pattern forming is a fantastic technique but it can tend to lead you down the same roads time and again. If you are looking for a new solution, try to stimulate new ideas and avoid putting the problem into the same pattern as a previous one.

There are some great books about this, but a couple of quick thoughts:

Always force yourself to come up with three solutions, then pick the best one. It is surprising how often the ‘obvious’ first solution is not the best.
Change the constraints – think about what is currently constraining the solution and reverse one at a time to see what you would come up with. This specific solution not work, but could set you off in a new direction where a good solution could lie.
Focus on a different part of the problem – when first looking for a solution you can often concentrate on one aspect of the problem which causes a log jam if you can’t solve it. Forget this and try and solve another aspect – you can often find a better solution when approaching from another direction.

How not to do it?

I presented at the Advanced Composites in Civil Construction conference up in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Whilst there I sat through some terrible presentations. I wish people would think about their presentations a bit more. If nothing else, maybe getting everyone to watch the following clip would help….

Very funny, perhaps even more so because it is so true!

One presenter was reading off his slides. He was even talking to the projected image – the audience could have been absent. His last slide had 75 words on it. And I know this because I read it well before he had finished reading it (you can read text much faster than people can read it aloud….), sat there for a while feeling very bored, then counted the number of words and worked out that he could have deleted all but the last seven and still had the same message on the screen. And if he had done that there would have been a much better chance that I would have been listening to him, which surely was the whole point of him being there?

You can see my slides below.

Notice that they might not make perfect sense without the notes (you can view the notes pages if you look at the presentation on the Slideshare site) – but that is the point!

They are not documents, they are slides for a presentation.

If they were slides to be read on the internet then they would need modification so that the story worked without me being there. But since I was there, they act as a support for the presentation, they do not replace it. Slides in a presentation are there to emphesise the point you are making at that time, not to replace you.

So, please, don’t write all your words on the slide…..

Heroes, Angels and Mentors

Everyone needs these characters in the workplace to help encourage a creative culture.

Heroes – people who have made creative solutions to problems, who work in an inspirational way and who are recognised by the company for this. They do not have to be your boss or in your department, but they should be visable and be there to inspire and show that it is possible!

Guardian angels – when trying to be creative there will inevitably be plenty of things you try that do not work. You need to have people who will look out for you and provide the environment where you feel that it is safe to fail – in fact you are encouraged to do so – and you are not continually worried that a failure will count against you. Part of their job is to let you know that this approach exists as well as creating it.

You will never change the world sitting on the fence, and you are bound to have a few falls on the way. My favorite quote for this came from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

I heard a documentary on the radio about the head of BBC light entertainment in the 70’s, Bill Cotton. He was responsible for what was seen as a golden era of light entertainment, with shows such as Morcombe and Wise, Monty Pythons Flying Circus and the Two Ronnies appearing on his watch. The contributors to the documentary made much of the fact that he created an environment which enouraged experimentation and supported and nurtured the stars. Results of this speak for themselves!

Mentors – these are people who can give guidance to you to help out when you get stuck, or when you are feeling at a dead end. This could be either struggling with a solution to a specific problem, or working out your next move in your career. This role might not seem as dramatic as a hero or guardian angel, but it is just as important.

Thinking like a designer

A good slideshow from Garr Reynolds with 11 tips on thinking like a designer. I really liked the comment on slide 3 – ‘adopt a beginners mind’ (view the presentation full screen to see the notes at the bottom):

In the expert’s mind there are few possibilities, but for one with the beginner’s mind, the world is wide open.

We often start trying to find a solution to a problem with a lot of pre-conceptions about what has or has not worked before. Whilst experience can be useful to avoid wasting time on impractical solutions, when you are first trying to come up with ideas this can restrict you too much and prevent you finding new solutions. To start with you need to cast your nets wide and try and generate ideas without prejudice – what may seem initially foolish can eventually build to a new and improved solution.

Experience and expertise is useful when you are evaluating and developing ideas, but can be a hinderance to generating them!

Presenting data

I have put up a new presentation up on my slide share. This is a follow up to the presentation thoughts I gave to the engineers a month ago and gives some tips for presenting data. Inspiration for this came from the excellent Slideology book from Duarte Design.

Tweet a presentation

Having just put up a tweet and had to edit it down to length (then finding you can say the same thing in fewer words if you really try) I wondered if it could be a good way of encouraging brevity in presentations…..

Communicating technical subjects

Things can get complex

Picture by phauly

Ahhhh – I offered to give a presentation on presentation style at our technical review meeting. The reply was ‘can you present this but on a more technical basis’. Well, I think that the basic principles of good design of presentations is common to everything. I am only a novice scratching the surface of finding out about design as a seperate subject, but I think that any engineer is a designer. Unfortunately too often this is all in the ‘product’ or ’solution’ but not in the communication of it. Reading about design of presentations it is really resonating with me, personally and professionally. We all need to be able to communicate our ideas (the knowledge economy has gone, and it is what you do with information that is important). Even a few simple rules such as:

1) Simplify
2) Use powerfull images
3) Know your material – look at your audience

Is relevant for all presentations, technical or not.

I have been reading Slide-ology by Duarte Design – the second source of inspiration I have been tapping after Presentation Zen – and they have some great examples about presenting data and ideas. Keeping things simple in charts and data is such a basic thought, but often completely passed by.

I have just seen a presentation at work which had one slide with probably 100 pieces of data on it. A cut and paste from a spreadsheet – quick and easy, but no use what-so-ever for the audience. I would spend so long trying to work out what it was about that I would not listen to the presenter. Even after studying it for 5 minutes I could not work out what the important point on it was.

If only they had put a little thought into it – what are they trying to get across in the slide – what is the ONE most important thing to get out of this data? If there is more than one point then use more than one slide! A simple design with the important point highlighted would have emphesised the talk much better and allowed the audience to listen to the presenter.

A lot of technical people get scared by the mention of the word design – all sounds a bit ‘management consultanty’ and not scientific enough. It is not. The basics of design in presentations are straightforward and vital for anything – whether you are presenting the years figures, a new resin formulation or your latest kick-ass world changing idea. And not just presentations….

If nothing else, spend some time on it (think about how much time others are investing by listening to it), think about what you are trying to get across and who it is for, and keep it simple, SIMPLE, SIMPLE!

I found (via Presentation Zen) a great article ‘Let their be stoning’ written by a scientist and engineer who had been attending conferences for many years and was moved to write this entertaining and relevant piece. Have a read – you can download it here from the Western Washington University website. I particularly liked this quote:

“If you need a pointer to indicate an important pont or location on a slide then it is probably too difficult or complicated to comprehend”.

Ideed!

Pictures

St Cathrines Lighthouse

I have been making a few presentations recently, and inspired by Presentation Zen and Slideology I have been using a much more visual style. Out with bullet points, minimise text, keep slides simple, use powerfull images.

At first I wondered how I was going to find good images – as I had zero budget so even low cost options such as Istockphoto were not available. I had a few photos myself, but I am no expert!

Then I started to look on Flickr and found plenty of great pictures which were available for use under Creative Commons license. You can use advanced search for pictures which allow commercial use and derivatives (I have tended to look for these as photos can need cropping to fit the 1:1.3 ratio of standard slides in order to fill the background).

This is a wonderfull resource, and to help out I have put some pictures up on my flickr site, including the photo I cropped for the header of this blog. Not as professional as many of the photos, but maybe someone will find them useful at some point.

Standing out

Peacock showing off in front of the chickens

I recently watched a talk by Seth Godin on Ted.com.

One of his main points was that sucess is about getting ideas to spread. In previous times it used to be about appealing to the middle – or ‘unremarkable products for unremarkable people’ as he puts it – where creating a product and touching people by advertising it again and again. In the busy world of today people in the middle are used to ignoring things. People rapidly ignore the unusual – this was also picked up in a great book I am reading called ‘Risk’ by Dan Gardner. I’ll post some more about the book when I manage to finish it – but in the mean time I really recommend picking it up.

Anyhow, back to the talk – we now need to be remarkable. This was also picked up in Tom Peters book Re-Imagine where he comments that we all have to become designers. Introducing something is now about appealing to the ‘geeks’ who use it and spread the word to their freinds. I thought this had an interesting parallel to Tom Peters ideas about having freaky freinds to help develop and drive a project forwards. This idea of operating under the radar to develop something which can be launched on the world (or a small part of it) is something I will be trying out. I’ll let you know how it goes…..

Music with shining eyes

A great talk by Benjamin Zander on music and passion. Yes – another one from Ted.com (I do look at other sites, but there are a few favorites from this site I want to highlight!), and again another inspiring talk it is well worth watching.

Some of the things I loved in this talk:

One buttock playing and the one buttock company

It is one of the characteristics of a leader that he does not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he is leading to realise whatever it is that he is dreaming

Stop thinking about all the notes along the way and just think of the B to the E – if you have emphesis on every note (as with a 7 year old piano player) you do not have the vision to see the whole picture and get the best from it. Sometimes you have to step back from the day to day details to see where you are going.

A lot of classical music ‘people’ see it was ‘only 3% of the world like classical music – if only we could get that to 4% our problems woudl be solved’. How would you walk and talk if you thought this, compared to if you thought ‘everyone in the world loves classical music, but they just don’t know’!

After 20 years of conducting had a epiphany – realised that the conductor does not make a sound – his power lies in getting others to make the sound. His job is to awaken the possibility in other people. How do you find out if you are doing that? Look at their eyes – if they are shining then you are doing it. If their eyes are not shining, then ask the question ‘who am I being that my players eyes are not shining?’ and you can do this equally with your children….

And finally -
His definition of sucesss – not about wealth or power, but how many shining eyes he has around him.