Two articles that have inspired me

Ted Hardy -

This post originally appeared August 23, 2011 on BetterProjects.net.


Been a busy couple weeks at the day job, so my writing time has been dramatically reduced. To tide you all over until I can return to writing (hopefully this weekend), I thought I’d share with you a couple quotes from articles I’ve read recently that have inspired me.

First up, Alan Cooper, who I’ve shared with you guys before:

You can’t save your way to creativity. Creativity isn’t necessarily expensive, but it’s a human rather than industrial activity, and when you put external cost constraints on it, you put it in an artificial box that simply kills it. Creative people need unfettered time and attention to solve difficult conceptual problems.
Remember this quote the next time you’re told to ‘think outside the box’ and then are told 'we need this by tomorrow morning’. Sometimes the 'spurs’ can get an answer, but it is hardly likely to be the creative one you really need.

Next up is another designer, this time a new person to me, by the name of Craig Grannell.
Only by embracing new technology and then seeing what we can do with it can we ensure we don’t remain stuck in the past. And for everyone moaning about the lack of obvious utility in tablets, people once said the same thing about computers—and look where that got us.
I was the first person to roll my eyes when the iPad was announced. Nice toy, but it will never replace my laptop. I just don’t have a use case for it, I would say. You can’t create on it, pundits would scream.

Guess which computing device goes with me to 90% of meetings now? You guessed it, the iPad. The only time I take my laptop is when I need to host a webinar or display a secondary screen while taking notes.

People, and I, myself was at one time included in that vague generalization, misunderstand the point of using tablets to create with. We’re concerned with creation as it is defined today, not creation as it will be defined 10 years from now. Tablets are ushering in a completely new way to be creative; they are not intended to compete with what we call creation today. Its been less than a year and a half since the first non-PC tablet was introduced and the ways people are using it to create blow my mind. I can’t wait to see where it is 10 years from now.