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Intuitive Thinking

2013-02-21T20:54:32-05:00

In my previous discussion of creativity, I noted that there are two primary instrumentalities of creative thinking that design professionals should seek to understand in detail. The first of these is intuition.

The term is latinate, derived from roots meaning roughly "inward looking-after," also transliterated as "insight." In the dictionary, we see intuition described as "direct perception of the truth," "immediate apprehension," and "pure, untaught, non-inferential knowledge."

It should come as no surprise that designers tend to be highly intuitive people. The Meyers-Briggs MBTI personality type index contains a description of what it means to display an intuitive personality, or predisposition to a certain mode of thinking, as follows:

I remember events by what I read “between the lines” about their meaning.
I solve problems by leaping between different ideas and possibilities.
I am interested in doing things that are new and different.
I like to see the big picture, then to fin...

Creativity and its Instrumentalities

2013-02-12T20:55:00-05:00

In my previous post, I noted that the mark of a mature, professional designer is the ability to be productively and efficiently creative without being dependent on inspiration.

That raises a whole host of questions though, doesn't it? Setting aside for a moment the issue of "how?", we need to address a more fundamental question first: What is Creativity in the first place?

That's not an easy question to answer, at least not the way most people mean it. Look up "creativity" in the dictionary, and you'll find a self-referential tautology that looks a bit like this: Creativity > Quality of being Creative > Displaying Creativity > Creative > etc. Authoritative as it may be, that's not terribly useful. However, like Justice Stewart contemplating obscenities, we generally know it when we see it.

Delving into specialist research on the subject in psychology and elsewhere, we start to find definitions that are a little more helpful, but not much. For instance:

Creativity is a ...

An Introductory Rant Against Inspiration

2013-02-11T19:29:00-05:00

The mark of a mature designer is the ability to take a blank sheet of paper and come up with creative, responsive ideas, efficiently and on a deadline: to be productively creative regardless of circumstance.

I can always tell the difference between designers who have really made the transition to being pros and those who are still trying to find their footing. It can be summed up in their attitude toward one thing: Inspiration.

If you're dependent on it, you're not a professional. If you can work without it, you are.

Look at the process of any well-established design architect and you will see that they have a system and a set of tools that they have developed to be efficiently and productively creative. These are habits of mind and tools which they know from experience can be used to generate and refine ideas, even if they're not in a creative mood.

My intention here is not to denigrate inspiration as a source of greatness in design or anything else. When it strikes - ...