Every Shade of Blue
A way of seeing all the different shades of an idea, inspired by how Vincent van Gogh could paint with every shade of blue.?
Some years ago, I finally got to see my favorite painting, Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone, in person.
As I walked up within inches of that brilliant painting, I almost shed a tear as I viewed its texture and beauty, and my emotions swelled even more as the audio tour narrated, “It’s like he used every shade of blue.”
As I walked through the colorful exhibit, I was struck by how van Gogh seemed to know how to use every shade of every color and could blend and combine them.
Today, that line has become a way for me to summarize van Gogh’s brilliance and, more generally, to understand how to “paint” with powerful ideas to both create and understand amazing things.?
Goal
My name is Troy Hiduke Campbell, and today I’m writing a book called, Every Shade of Blue.
It's a book for the public, with special focuses on business, design, behavioral science, academia, and activism. It's about ideas and how to truly see and value ideas in all their shades.
In a world of 20-second sound bites, 20-word Tweets, bullet-pointed executive summaries, and short academic classes, we share and learn so many ideas, but those ideas are rarely seen in their many possible shades.?But we can change that just as many have and many are.
This is a short summary.
Define
Every Shade of Blue is a way of seeing all the different shades of an idea, inspired by how Vincent van Gogh could paint with every shade of blue.?
This model is built on the simple metaphor that ideas are like colors, and designing with ideas is like painting.
With few exceptions, you can only be a great painter (or designer, artist, leader, or thinker) when you know how to paint with every shade of a color and, ideally, combine that color with every shade of many different colors, as van Gogh could do so well.
Apply: Academia
We have to begin here because academia is full of amazing ideas in the form of theories, findings, and principles.?
However, these big ideas (colors) are only practically powerful if one can see them in their many different shades.?
In fact, applying the big ideas of academia when you only know a basic definition and do not know all the “shades” can be highly ineffective, dangerous, or even morally problematic.?
Here are a few examples.?
In the study of story, the colors are all the big story forms like the Hero’s Journey, Destiny Narrative, The Story Spine, and Goal Story, and the shades of these stories come through nuances and combinations.?
Telling any great story doesn’t just mean knowing a single, basic color (i.e., a form); it means knowing a core color, its many shades, and how to combine it with other colors. No one writes a great story by just knowing a template, but, too often, education is all theoretical template and no color.?
In behavioral science, the colors are the big principles and effects like identity theory, social norms, cognitive bias, or motivated reasoning, and the shades are all the subtypes and nuances of those major theories and effects.?
For example, solution aversion is a shade of motivated reasoning, and the red sneaker effect is a shade of social norms that many people who know, use, and even worship the major theories problematically do not know. Applying behavioral science and not knowing the nuances and moderating effects of a principle can lead to bad or even opposite outcomes. Further, knowing artistic ways to render science in action and how to “go beyond the data with necessity and caution” are also important.
Across the humanities, the colors are the big theoretical perspectives like feminism, structuralism, and post-colonialism, or methods like close reading or more modern archival research techniques.?
But, a theory like feminism isn’t a single thing; it has many shades and even conflicting sub-perspectives to consider in one’s criticism or when seeking inspiration for one’s art. Further, in practice, the theories are implemented in ways that can never be as ideal as one would want. Not knowing the practical shades of applying a social theory can lead to applications that are? “morally pure” but largely ineffective.
Model: A Starting Three?
To immediately start seeing an idea in different shades, you can begin with a scientific mind, an artistic heart, and a business sensibility. These three approaches can quickly lead to divergent ways of thinking, knowledge libraries, and inspirational stories.
The scientific mind is thinking and doing through knowledge that is generated with evidence and logic.
Science is precise, specific, and functionally limited.?
The artistic heart is thinking and doing through expression, techniques that go beyond science, and intuitive actions that often include subjectivity and emotion.
Art can be everything, nothing, and free.
And business sensibility is thinking and doing with practicality and best practices where “good enough” is the critical standard.
Business is vast, basic, and flexibly pragmatic.?
If you like acronyms, you can refer to the key three as BASe (business, artistic, and scientific exploration), and use this to form a “strong BASe” to build upon.?
At its most fundamental, just thinking about or finding a scientific study, an artistic work, and a business application that are related to the idea you are considering can go a long way toward pushing one’s application of a big idea forward.?
Further, by adopting different approaches to discovery, deciding, and designing that oscillate between precise scientific methods, artistic techniques, and business processes, one can, in many ways, stretch and constructively constrain their workflow for amazing results.
Case: Netflix?
When Netflix hired me as part of a behavioral science team to help improve the user experience, what I found was that Netflix did not lack behavioral science knowledge. Instead, they lacked some of the processes and philosophies to see the theories of behavioral science in many different shades for practical use.?
Around 2018, they realized this and spent a lot of effort to improve by hiring many people like myself and expert former Spotify employees, to help them see more.?
In one quite literal sense, Netflix didn’t see how to use every shade of their brand color palette to signal differences and grab user attention that channels design and scientific principles of attention. Most homepage content was sterile and “samey.”?
Now, Netflix uses different shades of black,such as in the Top Ten lists, uses more aesthetic differences in key art, and uses less generic abstract video clips, instead opting for ones that more clearly communicate the plot and better apply the science of attention. Netflix remains one of the best streaming UX, in part, because they have consistently put effort into spending time and hiring many different people to help them see all the possible shades of the principles related to UX.
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Cases: Big Ideas
Many companies, universities, and organizations are built on a big idea. Seeing the many different shades of that big idea is important for continued success and evolution.
Here are a few case studies from my colleagues and my work.?
Nike’s “If you have a body, you’re an athlete” is an idea that drives their innovation and goal to be a world leader for every audience.?
My colleagues at On Your Feet and I have helped Nike designers see different shades across and within groups of athletes, some of whom, for instance, love running and some of whom will never enjoy it.
Stanford Design School’s “rapid prototyping” is essential to its model and other big ideas like, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.”?
My academic colleagues and I have helped Stanford students and designers adapt rapid prototype processes from product approaches to designing, prototyping, and delivering a large-scale event in a single day.
Disney’s “magical positive storytelling” is its essential ingredient.?
My colleagues at On Your Feet and I have helped Disney Imagineers see how to reincorporate past shades and find future shades of their iconic style in the modern world, including applying it to interactive storytelling in the Disney Parks.
The activist movement “Black Lives Matter” is one of the most powerful and complex big ideas of modern times.?
My colleagues at the University of Florida’s Center for Public Communication and I have helped activists and researchers see the nuances of BLM so a more complete story can be told, researched, and reckoned with.?
Apply: Shades of Cool
Here’s one last fun application based on the idea of the Science of Cool .
Beginning with the scientific definition of cool, summarized as, “autonomously breaking the norm,” we can see how many successful companies do the same thing, just differently. Thus, we can understand the concept of “cool” as having many different shades.
Using the color metaphor, you can metaphorically see how some brands’ shades of cool are brighter, edgier, more modern, or more classic than others, but, regardless, every brand’s shade of cool is positively “norm-breaking” to at least some audience.?
Almost every brand wants and needs to be cool to their audience.? But, being cool does and should look different for different brands.??
Here are three examples.?
Vans is the “off the wall” sneaker that channels the classic and modern culture of skateboarding and a gritty but approachable version of street culture.
Allbirds is the “anti-hype” sneaker that boldly broke the norm to prioritize simplicity and sustainability over hype culture or excess, in contradiction to the hype cool of Nike or the grit cool of Vans. However, this norm break has begun to wear out its initial norm-breaking coolness.?
Apple is the “think different” technology company, built on the norm-breaking themes of being for the “rebels” and the” misfits” and celebrating the “crazy ones” who believe they can change the world.?
Critique: Behavioral Science
Behavioral science may be one of the most widely useful sciences, yet even those that "know it," often don't know how to paint with.
Despite behavioral science relating to the “artsy” topics of identity, story, humor, perception, and social connection, it is rarely taught with the type of art that deeply captures its ideas in practice and in shades beyond the data.?
In fact, the field is so dominated by straightforward scientific approaches that many guides and books on applying behavioral science do not even feature the word “art” or any artistic examples.?
Many of those who love behavioral science rarely deeply and expansively define the many shades of the amazing effects of behavioral science, so they paint less colorful applications of the idea. They know scientific definitions and scientific examples, but they do not see their shades in many practical business and especially artistic applications and examples.
Advice: Behavioral Science
Behavioral science is going through a much-needed "better science" revolution right now.
The next revolution (as many have noted) should be one that includes other forms of knowing and doing.
My advice is that behavioral scientists, designers, and teachers should adopt more "artistic heart" approaches sometimes and see the ideas (i.e., theories, effects) such as identity, attention, emotion, and memory in more artistic ways by:
Conclusion
Colorfulness exists in the different shades.?
Everything, everyone, every theory, and every idea has many different shades, and their value and truth lie in those colorful and differentiating complexities.?
I hope the metaphor and approaches of Every Shade of Blue can help you see and?be all the shades.?
Stay colorful,?
-Troy-
This idea is part of the Hiduke House White Paper Books series and was recently featured on the Hiduke House podcast Original & Powerful Ideas .
Hiduke House is a home for original and powerful ideas and services to help people discover and make amazing things -- all built from a distinct "scientific mind, artistic heart" approach.