We have a lot of problems. Maybe they’re even more reckoning than they used to be. As rapid changes unfold in our work communities, in our neighborhoods, within our families, this will be a period of transformative growth like none we’ve seen before and for many of us, like none we’ll see again. So, who is leading the definition of our new normal? 

For those of us inclined to take action as leaders in our communities, we’re not just shoring up the bridges to keep ourselves moving forward, we’re also working against the dark patterns in programs and business to build stronger, more productive and resilient communities altogether. As I’ve been watching the statements of social support flood my inbox, for the mostpart it’s not coming from the social support systems of my childhood: church and state. It’s coming from the brands I’ve invited into my lifestyle. They know we’re looking to the business community for leadership beyond their baseline products and services.

And we know that the big pivots we’re making to sustain our work and households are demanding. Our human nature resists this kind of challenge and uncertainty. In many ways we’ve accepted breadth over depth, en masse cheap over fewer, better things, and we’ve compromised both quality and stability. This plays right into the Capitalists’ Dilemma–when we focus on optimization over innovation, we remove jobs instead of bolstering economic growth through creating new work opportunities. Who wants to join the race to the bottom?

Innovation is our way out. 

At the entrepreneurial scale, it’s a deeply personal process that forces us to reckon with our ability to develop an inspiring vision and clearly communicate a compelling mission. Much of this also translates into bigger business leadership roles, and there’s the added dimension of organizational design.

For most of my career in tech, innovation and design thinking have been the parlance of our times. And yet, there are still so many approaches to product and service innovation, it’s a rare and delicate balance to achieve alignment in direction and purpose across the three critical functions required to innovate:

Development of market potential (The Business)

Connection with community (Experience Design)

Engineering the product or service (Technical Execution) 

Part of the alignment issues map back to the inconsistent assignment of value across the different functions. An even bigger part of the misalignment stems from different leadership styles across the functional domains. The most important part of my development as an innovator is likely my diverse skill set. I started as an engineer, evolved into a product designer, then startup founder. My most elegant systems thinking began with my engineering leaders, my enthusiastic drive for market growth started with my business leaders, and I cherish the skills from my designer’s tool kit because the human-centered approach to problem solving also works very well for developing collaborative teams. 

From team to team, our trickiest management issues are typically either managing up to influence the decisions that empower our team’s impact, or offering support within the team to envision new paths to achieving goals, open up opportunities, and inspire leaps of faith. And our issues run deep. To take the bold creative risks, we need to share our work with vulnerability. Sharing new ideas in unproven territory with decision makers is risky, so it helps to support an internal process that acknowledges our fear, takes responsibility for the good work we thrive on, and disarms the power in others’ judgement. How might we empower ourselves and our communities to show up with this kind of vulnerability? In my experience, we need to build an environment based on trust, kindness + respect.

To effectively develop the rich cultural foundation for inspired, empowered risk-taking and to manage the delicate balance we need for breakthrough work, I propose two additional dimensions to our conventional innovation model (market development, customer connection, technical success):

The upward force of our vision + mission as a leader

Why am I the leader to bring this vision to life? 

When we get clear on our mission, we’ll bring courageous and authentic leadership into our team’s creative culture, as well as our customer’s experience.

The grounding force of tapping into our cultural moment

How do we connect what we do, in our work and brands, to our specific audience’s culture, beyond what’s trending in popular culture?

When we dig deeply enough into the ‘why’ underlying our product decisions, we’ll find ourselves in the territory of deep human values. We create personal connections when our work aligns with those values. Connections, conversations and community development go hand-in-hand with every business decision from square zero. 

When we go from nothing but a nebulous idea to something tangible that moves people, the journey is marvelous. We’re often inspired by the outcomes of remarkably brave and generous innovation. So much so that some of us will embark on our own journey of creative leadership to take chances and envision new possibilities. We’ll find a massive treasure trove of strategic direction sent forth by tried and true tactics. And finally, once we dive into the trenches to put it all into practice, we’ll inevitably be challenged to bring our whole selves to work. Not every job requires this. Disruptive innovation calls us to bring it. For those of us that seek transformative experiences, setting forth new possibilities in mission-driven work is where it’s at.

Resources to develop an initial roadmap

What’s the story?
Start with your why
Come away from this with inspiration? Shortlist the values you’re seeking to bring into the world with your product.

Explore your customers’ why
If you’re not hearing detail from your customers about the problem that your work is solving, then you may not have found the right audience yet. When you do, use these details to validate the problem.

Competition in the solution space also helps validate the problem. Take a close look at what they’re doing, then note – what’s distinctive about your approach?

Take the values you shortlisted from your ‘why’ + the values from your customers’ needs and develop design principles. Check out some examples:
A Master Designer’s Universal Principles
Specific Product Design Principles
More Inspiration from Dieter Rams

And now, the proof of concept–
We need to visualize how our product will function, so we’ll develop a prototype. The prototype is an interactive model of the product that gives us a sense of its design–its form and its function.

We also need to leverage this prototype to test assumptions that our product is a viable solution for solving our customer’s problem. The smartest way to get through this with only a little sweat (no blood, no tears… well maybe a few) is to limit the prototype features to just enough detail for testing (and hopefully validating this concept!)

There are so many possibilities in tools and frameworks to prototype a product, and our choices are of course dependent on the type of product. Here’s a list of some of my favorites (prioritizing those with low or no licensing fees, for the sake of experimentation)–

Sketching
Inkscape
Tinkercad

Digital Interfaces
Figma
Webflow
Draftbit

Manufacturing
Maker’s Row
Thingiverse
Shapeways
SparkFun

Testing
dscout
Hotjar

In this year where we could probably all use a little more ease and love, I still don’t mind rolling up my sleeves to get down in the more meaningful parts. The fresh ideas to play, the inspiration to stretch, and more conversations to bring us closer. Things like our deep dives into creative culture–the risks we take for authenticity, for vulnerability, to open up possibilities.

Creativity is not just about craft–
it’s about choice.

One of the silver linings in being stretched quite thin and potentially pushing boundaries: We often get more clear on what’s most important.

After a few weeks spent ill and quarantined, I finally went out into the bright new world. Feeling quite fresh with the deeply layered snow, the sheen of the freeze coating nearly everything, and the sun! So. Much. Sun. Hello February! You’re almost gone, and yet I’ve just arrived.

Another silver lining – I’ve had a little more time than usual to reflect, and I kept my spirits from plummeting by dreaming about the changes to my flow. We’re all on the brink of bouncing back into a wildly vibrant world – new friends, new projects, many new possibilities. How will the changes to the way we parse out our time change us? And after merging so much of our daily grind into our personal space, what are our best environments for creative work?

You know I’m always prioritizing the right blend, the right balance for creativity. The environments and systems that support us are just one of four key ingredients–we also need to nurture our trusted partners, cultural abundance, and autonomy to pull it all together. But after these past weeks spent in the very slow motion of self preservation, my environment was truly a most important focus in getting me back to my creative capacity.

Movies, books, mags–I’ve been digging through so many cultural artifacts in this exploration, and I’ve come back with treasures!

Amid dreams of beaches + Bali, I found myself wishing … if I can’t be there right now, what about bringing a warm, balmy sun here? Remember when Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project transformed the Tate into a lazy, hazy sunset space? His production of presence is an inspiration in the balance of art + science.

“We are here to question ourselves, to examine ourselves, to see ourselves in the context of the world.” –Olafur Eliasson

In episode 2 of Apple TV’s Home series, Chicago artist and community designer Theaster Gates takes us on a tour of the spaces he’s developed. His vision is expansive. From the roots of his home and library, to the listening room on the block, cafe, community center, and material mill–he nurtures not only his own creative capacity, but also spaces for us all to explore and collaborate.

Journalist + author Michael Pollan’s personal inquiry into the art of architecture, the craft of building, and the meaning of modern work has been a model for my exploration as a writer. Across many topics, books, and articles, he continually dives into the relationship between man + nature, then writes his way through the reckoning of his explorations.

“A connection hinted at in words such as independence, individual, pragmatic, self made… To build a house in the first person, a place as much one’s own as a second skin, would require an explanation of self and place and work itself that simply could not be delegated to somebody else. The meaning of such place was in its making.” –Michael Pollan

 

If you haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of Cal Newport’s Deep Work, it’s worth considering our environment’s impact on the ability to focus. One of my favorite gems from this work–

“Deep work helps you quickly learn hard things. Let your mind become a lens thanks to the converging rays of attention. Let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.” –Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

And another of Deep Work’s takeaways is a focal point in my next article–
Chicago architect David Dewane’s conceptual Eudaimonia Machine, a precise work space layout based on Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, meaning the epitome of human capability.

I’ve been experimenting with practices to stay motivated in pushing boundaries through my work, as well as ways to sustain connections with community as we’ve all grown tired of our screens. The Eudaimonium model has given me interesting ideas for this well beyond interior design. I’ll share more about this in my upcoming article draft.

As I’m wrapping up this research phase, I’d love to know –

What’s been working for you as you’ve shaped new environments for working from home, maintained optimism for innovative work, found new resources to work through this long slog of uncertainty, or restored connections to the people and places we’ve been missing?

Drop me a line + let me know!

When the going gets tough, it’s hard for me to change my mind. Myopic, tunnel vision and close-mindedness are all symptoms of my being overwhelmed. But in a silver lining of our current cultural revolution, I’ve taken solace from quite a few wise teachers who’ve been liberally sharing their practices of gratitude, hope, and compassion to usher in a sea change.

Yet, even when these practices lead me to lighter and more connected places lately, I’m still uneasy. 

I wake up too early. The mornings are unusually filled with hesitation. And with all that mental processing going on behind the scenes, it’s deeply exhausting. I’ve become more vulnerable to the quick hits of dopamine that come with passively scanning my news and media, keeping busy, and scavenging for treats. They’ve been less effective than usual though. As even my most reliable soul balm (tuning into stories where I can ride along in another hero’s journey) fails to consistently hold my attention and warm my heart, I realized something — 

I have to get out of my head. My antidote to fear is most often active. In actually doing something physical — feet moving, pen to paper — the tides turn. The work begins to flow, and all the things feel better. In charting this change in course, I remembered that my antidote for fear has another key ingredient: 

Creativity.

Perhaps this recipe will work for you too. If you’re looking for your own creative cocktail, allow me to bring some science into the mix. Theories of cognition tell us that creative activity empowers us with choice and decision-making that reduce depression and isolation. Quick wins also earn us a dopamine hit. And just by writing notes we care about, we can boost our CD4 + lymphocytes to strengthen our immune systems.

The dopamine trip can be a slippery slope though. As we get excited in anticipation of a fabulous future, thinking about all the wonderful ‘what-ifs,’ this gives us that quick dopamine hit. A quick boost will not sustain us though. Careful, consistent actions are more impactful (and less exciting), of course. When we create habitual practices, we chip away at long-term goals, which in turn reduce stress and generate a slew of healthy neurotransmitters to nourish our sense of wellbeing.

There’s an additional proactive dimension to the creativity in self-directed work as well — 

Particularly when connected to the outreach of mission-driven endeavors, doing the work that’s bigger than ourselves is a key to fulfillment, a path to the deep satisfaction we crave. Of course, we want to be successful. Accomplishment through shared experiences is where we really build lasting bonds and sustained growth.

We’ll inevitably work through significant losses though, and some of us will find a counterbalance in creativity. We’ll take our time and turn it into something new, something meaningful. It matters because it moves us to connect more deeply. We take this spark and create a moment to support others, to cultivate community. 

Our current cultural moment is not what we’d expected. It’s so much more. We have new jobs to be done, new challenges, and new opportunities. And yet, change is uncomfortable. As innovators, our competence and creative confidence give us an advantage. We have tools to dig deeply into problems, better understand potential, invest in creative outcomes, and lead with opportunities for more people to contribute to our collective challenges. Let’s get creative with this conversation.

“When you know, teach. When you get, give.”
Maya Angelou

DESIGNING TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
What the most historic event in fashion taught me about designing better digital

At any given time, at least a hundred notifications line up in my digital queue, promising me a better life beyond the click. More beautiful homes–”This Dreamy Surf Town Hideout Just Hit the Market,” more brain power–”Your learning breakthrough starts here,” more social–”You Don’t Want to Miss This Summer Fun!” and more fitness–”The only one who can tell you ‘you can’t’ is you. And you don’t have to listen.” Being a product designer myself, I skeptically skim through the noise. But more often than I’d expect, I find myself meandering right into these mousetraps. Then I really surprise myself when I buy. Though I didn’t see it coming, I’ll bet there’s a maker on the other end of that message that knew. She knew about the product and every part of its brand experience, then figured out exactly how to nudge people like me straight into action. Sadly I’m not as unique as I think I am; I’m just a compilation of the archetypes, the recurring themes in our cultural mythology that designers, writers and many makers know well.

Some makers tell stories, some design cars, others fashion clothes. Some of us are designing interfaces to make the machines greet us more gracefully. All of us watch closely to observe how our craftsmanship might elevate our people’s experience. As humans, some of our defining traits stem from the masterful making of things then sending them off into society by way of storytelling. What do these products and stories do for us, beyond their surface utility? A lot actually. These products and experiences are tools that transport us to our future selves. Cultural products speak to our aspirational tendencies. Deep down, they promise success and happiness, even heroic adventures.

My work as a product designer focuses on creativity and its impact on community. I’m particularly intrigued with products that tap into a cultural story and get carried forward through commerce and media. The ones we hear about have successfully woven a rich fabric of meaningful connections to achieve maximum impact. How does it all come together? And why do we care?

Being quite new compared to other creative disciplines, digital design realized its objective power right away–lots of info, processed very quickly can cover a lot of ground. More recently, we digital product designers have begun to grasp the superpower of emotional connection through the more subjective inner worlds of our consumers. Though qualitative research to understand why people do what they do is a mainstay in successful product design teams, we’re still often missing a link to identify our consumers’ latent needs and the underlying motives that make them meaningful. More mature design practices know all about this. Looking to fashion and theater, they’ve opened my eyes to another universe of deeply moving cultural communication. Through their stories and products, they’ve long been leveraging these connections to make things that matter. They are modern day mythologists.

We got a glimpse of such mythology in action when the Metropolitan Museum of Art launched its latest curated fashion collection the first Monday in May–Camp: Notes on Fashion. The Met Gala set forth a look, as championed for the rest of us by the stars who’ve joined the Camp in full regalia. They move in fits and starts along a red carpet, and we see through media’s lens how themes take shape from the visions of design masters and the beautiful people who embody their message.

Whether or not we’ve intentionally adopted style as a tool in our own social presence, we’re all impacted by the judgment that comes with what we wear. Cindy Sherman, an artist well known for using dress-up to transform herself into characters–the women of vintage Hollywood, aging socialites, circus performers, pin-ups and milkmaids–plays with concepts both campy and creepy to explore society’s assumptions. We see these tropes and immediately connect with their intriguing resonance. Though Sherman is often the subject of images, she edits out those that capture her essence, opting instead for the look that represents the iconic idea she’s going for–only the symbol is worth sharing. In her recent feature in The Gentlewoman she remarked, “And the one thing I’ve always known is that the camera lies.”

The Met’s Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton also knows there’s more than meets the eye. He themed this year’s event in response to Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’.”

Among my favorites of Sontag’s 58 notes is this one:
#10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a “lamp”; not a woman, but a “woman.” To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

Sontag’s sentiments on Camp make this year’s theme particularly compelling for those of us with a love-hate relationship with fashion. She explained, “I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it.”

Our relationships with products are similarly complex. From fashion and beauty to our phones and smart homes, these things mean more than function and form. Most of our things have a job to do. There are additionally many nuances in how and why they do what they do. While some keep it basic and utilitarian, others imbue the job with luxurious experience. Our interactions with these things also impact many levels of how and why we do what we do. When we get deep, we realize that our relationships with things contribute to our identity altogether. I learned this from a market research report when working on software for the Moto Z phone. Consumers felt that their phone was an extension of themselves. Digging deeper into this phenomenon, I found Russel Belk’s research exploring collections, possessions, and the extended self, 

“From the small boy to the connoisseur, the joy of standing before one’s accumulated pile and being able to say ‘this belongs to me’ is the culmination of that feeling that begins with ownership of the first item… they become us.”

Style is having a cultural moment that’s become very much about an experience beyond the simple presence of a look. We can get creative with our sense of self and mindfully map where we fall into the social order. The style industry banks on this. We gather what we need to create a presence, hone our stories in social experiments amped up by our digital reach, then watch where they trend. Most of us can’t stop watching the rising stars in our circles–the hood favorites, pros on their rocket ride, the pop culture ascent. Why? Since the Greek Gods, our icons inspire us to connect through stories that resonate with our deepest desires.

Those desires are our beacons, they guide us to the life we most want to live. Mythology and literature professor Joseph Campbell famously taught us about this ideal path into our human experience. He wrote, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.” That’s the magic of mythology, that these beautifully crafted stories, characters and artifacts we can’t stop thinking about, they are the media that move us along our path. As such, our most iconic brands, media mavens and all the things we buy from them just keep showing up, pointing us in the direction of our wildest dreams.

The Costume Institute’s spring 2019 exhibition CAMP: Notes on Fashion examines how irony, humor and exaggeration are expressed in fashion, at The Met Fifth Avenue May 9 - Sept 8.