Strategic Creativity - Doing Innovative Research That Fuels You
The main problem designers have when given a brief, is coming up with a solution in mind before carrying out the research. In order to be truly globally innovative it's important to do primary research, ask the right questions and gain insights.
We attended a workshop held by Simon Bolton at the RSA in London, about decoding briefings, doing innovative research that fuels you, and how to start when you plan to get insights to do really creative work later.
We were taught about what he called "Strategic Creativity"
To make sense of a brief, you have to find ONE major point to focus on. Find a driver and define what your research will deliver. Know the purporse you're working for.
3 elements of any project
You have to set your focus to address these 3 elements:
1. Context
Every research starts with a context, it tells you WHERE to look
2. Issues
They tell you WHAT to look for
3. Goals
These are the questions you want to explore. Goals tell you how to EVALUATE the collected data.
Define your need and what to collect
It's all about asking the right questions
What do you know?
What don't you know?
What do you need to know?
3 Ways of Researching Data
Collecting information and stuff, according to him, is not researching, everyone can collect information. It's more important to analyze and decode a situation in order to understand the why.
It's about observing, interviewing and experiencing. You observe the context, the issues around it and the goals you wish to achieve. You interview people to get deeper into the issues and to get some focus. And you can only understand the problems a user has when you experience the situation yourself and get high quality insights.
Defining the issues and what you're looking for in the data
Collect - cluster - categorize - classify
When collecting information you should start to see patterns (âpattern recognitionâ). You see the links between your observations and statements, group the information and then classify and describe the distinguishing features and qualities of your data.
Insight recognition (Consciously decoding)
Identify the pieces of information
Describe what the problem is
Break through it, not only describe it, but analyze it, point out the opportunities etc
This process will create a lens for you to look through when you explore the context.
Writing a focus statement and create "creative confidence"
The brief is the basis of your research. When you found out what the brief is about, write a focus statement that defines what you have to do. You have to clearly define what you need to find out before you start.
The focus statement serves you as a driver and tells you what to do. It should define measurable actions and consists of creative verbs that signify an exploratory creative action that are linked to nouns. For example "identify, determine, define, explore, establish" "values, factors, qualities". It's not about "finding a solution" or "developing an idea forâŚ" or "Help people" but "Finding ways to help people"
In the end you develop a research plan about what you need to find out.
The key point is to avoid coming up with a solution in an too early stage of the project, but asking the right questions in the beginning.
"The world needs better questions, not more processes"
