The importance of lateral thinking when trying to create something

If everyone is using the same design process, how can you make sure that your design stands out? There are two conflicting schools of thought on this and I’ve tried both...

The problem with the design process:

The general process for designing a product (physical product, app, service, course, anything) is to find a problem, talk to users to understand it better, generate ideas and refine the best ideas with those users until you eventually get to a final product. But if everyone is doing that, how can you make your product stand out? Here are two interesting schools of thought on this.

A couple of years ago, Netflix released a really interesting series called Abstract. Well, if you’re like me and enjoy documentaries on fonts and logos you’ll find it interesting. Anyway, in the first episode we meet a guy named Christoph Niemann and he’s an illustrator. He’s done work for huge clients like The New Yorker, and claims that if you want to be creative, you need to give creativity the opportunity to strike.

“I tend to work by myself, which usually means sitting at my desk and drawing. To a large degree, this involves staring at paper and trusting that crazy ideas will happen.”

I recently gave a guest lecture on this topic and people laughed when I read this quote. But I never even considered it funny because, up until a few years ago, I had the same mindset. I would often spend 14 hours a day in the design studio, just working non-stop. And while this might sound awful, it wasn’t – I actually loved it! But then I watched the second episode where we’re introduced to Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s lead designer for their collaborations with Michael Jordan. He says;

“I think if you just sit in your studio and try to dream up new ideas, there’s not a good foundation for your idea. Just get out there and experience life. This gives you a library in your head to translate into designs.”

He said this while loading some surfboards onto his old VW van – the dream. But I stayed with Niemann’s approach and when I was offered a position as a PhD researcher on an EU project, I happily accepted. The aim of the project was to develop a platform where individuals and companies could sell custom products at scale using 3D printing and other new technologies. My job was to help these companies to understand which products should be customisable and in what way.

I got stuck pretty quickly. I spent long days in the office, researching customisation and looking at random products, thinking “Should this be customised?” “Would people buy that?”

This didn’t work and I got burnt out and frustrated. So, I decided to take on Hatfield’s approach for a while. I took some time off, did a bit of travelling, watched TV, read books and played Xbox.

But inspiration did not strike. The question remained unanswered; where does customisation make sense?

Unique experiences:

One day, during my research I came across a site called Open IDEO. It’s a collaborative platform for huge design challenges like global warming, water sanitation and getting vaccines to remote areas. They were advertising for a sponsored competition entitled;

‘How might we enable older adults to live their best possible life by preventing falls?’

I spoke about this with a friend who told me that her grandparents could no longer use the upstairs half of their home because her grandmother had a bad fall. Another person told me a similar story, saying that a stair lift would not work for their house and that even if it did, they’re too expensive and take away from the user’s dignity. In fact, installing a stair lift after a fall means it is often too late, while installing one preemptively might encourage the occupants to become dependent on it, which is a pity since stairs provide great exercise. This all seemed crazy to me, so I decided to do a little research.

I discovered that the main reasons elderly people suffer falls on stairs is because they are usually living in older houses that were built under older building regulations. Because of this:

1) The steps are often too small for the user to properly rest their foot

2) The steps can become worn down, making them easy to slip on

3) The steps can tend to blend together, especially as a person’s eyesight deteriorates.

So, I thought, “hmm, if only there were some way that you could make each step bigger, add more grip and make them easier to see….” But everyone’s stairs are different, so that would require a custom product for everyone, and that’s not really feasible…unless you used the same technologies as the EU project I was supposed to be working on! So, I made a little prototype and shared the idea on the platform.

The response was overwhelming. There were people all over the world showing encouragement, telling me about how they had shared the idea with their grandparents and their neighbours, and they wanted to know when they could get it. They even wanted a version for the steps outside their homes too. You can read about that project here if you like, but the reason I’m telling this story is because it was the first time I saw the real potential value of customisation, so this restored my faith in the EU project a bit.

At the same time this was happening, a friend had come across an online global group of volunteers called e-NABLE. These individuals design prostheses that can be 3D printed and given to those in need of an upper limb assistive device. The devices are particularly suited to kids as traditional prostheses are really expensive and kids outgrow them every few months. As well as this, kids often don’t feel comfortable in the traditional ones, but these colourful, robotic-looking 3D printed ones are a lot more superhero-esque. While e-NABLE had chapters all over the world, we couldn’t see any for Ireland, so we decided to set up our own.

If there’s interest I can write more about our experience doing this in future, but this is the point I want to make for now; seeing the value that these products could bring to kids and their parents once again reinforced my belief in the potential for customisation. And that’s when it clicked with me – I had been looking at the problem all wrong. It wasn’t a question of “where does customisation make sense?”, but…

Where does customisation add value?

This might not seem like a big difference, but it’s huge. Value is something that can be measured, meaning I could now ask people “How much value would the ability to customise this product add for you?” From here I was able to develop a methodology to help companies make trade-offs between the added value of customisation and the added cost of offering it, essentially helping them to figure out where customisation makes sense.

Lateral thinking:

Lateral thinking is defined as the solving of problems by an indirect and creative approach, typically through viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.

This is exactly what happened for me, and if it wasn’t for the stairs project and the prostheses group, it likely never would have happened. Likewise, I never would have had the idea for the stairs project if I hadn’t been working on the EU project first. So, getting back to which approach I think is best. Is it Niemann’s approach of staying with the problem and giving inspiration the opportunity to strike? Or is it Hatfield’s approach of going out and living life? I think it’s somewhere in between.

You need to go and taste a lot of things. Travel, work on some different projects, volunteer, whatever appeals to you. But while you’re doing this, I think you need to have a mindset where you’re open to the idea that you could learn from or take inspiration from anything. This can be quite challenging and even tiring to do, but once it works for you a couple of times, you’ll start to trust the process and it will happen more naturally, without even thinking. I’m sure that anyone reading this right now could easily think back to at least one thing they did that was inspired by another, and hopefully my own experiences I’ve shared here will help you to get there faster.

Of course, once you’ve got your unique idea or way of looking at the problem, don’t forget to apply the usual design process!

This piece turned out a bit longer than I had planned but I hope you enjoyed it. Have you had any similar experiences with lateral thinking? Do you have any tips on how to gain experiences and apply them to new projects? If you think you’d enjoy more content like this, be sure to follow/connect!