Greg Cohen: What do you create?

Kevin Bethune: New ecologies. A holistic approach toward looking at solutions that could exist across physical digital service.

When do you do your most creative work?

I'm a big believer in serendipity and having an open aperture to always leave my senses open to what I'm observing.

How do you start?

Asking who are the actual customers and broader stakeholders? Never take what is handed to me as a given. Who are we actually serving?

What is your process for evolving your creative work?

Always having the conversation continue versus the start stop, hand off behavior from the past.

Do you have any building blocks that you repeatedly use in your creative process?

They just take the industry paradigms as a given. We need to actually interrogate those foundational principles and question why does that have to continue to be that way? What if we changed it or what if we use new technology to inform a different way of doing it? 

Exemplars [are] living examples of trends: social trends, tech trends, environmental trends, economic stuff, policy, regulatory, and energy related trends. We want to bring all those nutrients into the conversation to widen everyone's aperture.

Are there any periods of time that are important that are frequently neglected?

Where are you putting your calories? Three rough categories of how I interrogate my time: I'm accountable to stakeholders that need to be communicated to. That's the first bucket of calories. Second is any design work or business work, the time it takes to document your learnings, your insights, your point of view. These are a lot of calories. The third bucket is the precious creative problem-solving time. The first two categories tend to overwhelm the third and collapse the third into nothing.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I follow a lot of luminaries on social media that I greatly respect. Also going to conferences and participating in community outside of my day-to-day work realities.

What are your most frequently revisited sources of inspiration?

See things that are bleeding edge.

How do you get the most out of your collaborations?

Surface the guiding principles that define that work, the bullet points of the why behind how.

What is the hardest part of creation?

Analysis paralysis. Sometimes people don't know where to start or they might be waiting for all the data and evidence to be in their hand before they begin. None of those things will ever be true.

How do you go about making progress when you feel like you're blocked?

There is a repetitive act that is part of creative problem solving where you still put in the time every day. I had to get that garbage out of my system to be able to find a clear path to what is more relevant and resonant.

What do you think different creative fields have in common?

All of them share this desire to make serendipitous as well as intentional sparks and connections across disparate inputs.

Greg Cohen: What do you create?

Kevin Bethune: Creating new ecologies. A holistic approach toward looking at solutions that could exist across physical digital service, even human related services that could come together to meet people where they are.

What is your signature or what distinguishes your work from everyone else's?

Using visuals as storytelling vehicles or problem solving medium is my signature approach.

When do you do your most creative work? And why do you think that is?

I'm a big believer in serendipity and having an open aperture to always leave my senses open to what I'm noticing, what I'm observing. I need to block the calendar out for specific blocks of time where I want to actually protect time to be creative. 

There's all kinds of other demands: talking to stakeholders, communicating, or developing or creating deliverables that sort of encapsulate the findings of the recent days and weeks. All that busy work can take away from the precious creative problem sometimes.

How much of your day are you actively engaged in creative work?

A good third of each day.

When you're creating something from scratch, how do you start?

I gravitate to asking or interrogating who are the actual customers and broader stakeholders around that central customer? Never take what is handed to me as a given. Usually there's more people to meet than meets the eye. Who are we actually serving?

Do you begin with the end in mind or do you let it evolve organically?

I definitely learned and evolved to let things naturally play themselves out organically. Beginning with a beginner's mind, [rather] than just assuming there's an answer on the table already.

How do you set up your environment or conditions to create?

You'll have the right tools in front of me and have I sort of removed any noise or distractions or clutter.

And in reference to your book, Reimagining Design, which is a spectacular book and a very singular point of view. You mentioned that kind of design is window dressing or an afterthought if you don't do it right. And  what do you think are the first steps to making design the horse rather than the carriage, so to speak?

I need make sure that I'm showing by demonstrating, by doing, what design can do. Actually show that design is helping to advance their business goals by emphasizing with the metrics, the KPIS, the objective. It's avoiding being theoretical and behaving in a way that demonstrates design’s value from day one.

Once you have your initial conception, what is your process for building, improving, or evolving your creative work?

The conversation should never stop with the people that we claim to serve. Always having the conversation continue versus the start stop and hand off behavior from the past.

Do you have any Legos or building blocks or algorithm that you repeatedly use in your creative process?

Who are the people that we claim to be serving? They just take the industry paradigms as a given. We need to actually attack and interrogate those foundational principles and question why does that have to continue to be that way? What if we changed it or what if we use the new technology to inform a different way of doing it? 

And exemplars is just being living examples of trends: social trends, tech trends, environmental trends, economic stuff, policy, regulatory, and energy related trends. We want to bring all those nutrients into the conversation to widen everyone's aperture. We can actually look around corners and anticipate where the future might play out.

What percentage of your creative time is spent prototyping or experimenting?

10% of my week I'm building or crafting something that I wanna show someone.

To what events or practices would you attribute your greatest gains and skill?

The act of experimenting. I always try my best to carve a little bit of time for ongoing learning. Trying new tools and incorporating that into my project flow.

In your book, you talk about giving a team time to coalesce and develop their norms and such and also about allowing time for data collection to be digested. Are there any other periods of time that are important that are frequently neglected or deleted?

Multi point teams haven't had the track record of the precedent of collaborating the way that the present moment and our future is gonna require. Where are you putting your calories? Three rough categories of how I interrogate my time. I'm accountable to stakeholders that need to be communicated to. That's the first bucket of calories. Second is any design work or business work, the time it takes to document your learnings, your insights, your point of view. These are a lot of calories. The third bucket is the precious creative problem solving time. The first two categories tend to overwhelm the third and collapse the third into nothing.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I follow a lot of luminaries on social media that I greatly respect. Also going to conferences and participating in community outside of my day to day work realities. Any time I take a business trip, I'm always trying to find where are the local design destinations, museums, galleries, start ups, research organizations that I could visit just to get my hands on fresh things that I haven't encountered before?

What are your highest yield source materials or your most frequently revisited sources of inspiration?

See things that are bleeding edge, that the average person isn't seeing. I can bring that back into my work.

When and where do your lightning bolt ideas occur?

I go for a moderately long run. That's mental therapy to destress, burn off the stress, get the endorphins going. I could have them in the shower.

How much of your creative process is solitary and how much of it is collaboration with others?

Half and half. I'm alone, making and drawing and synthesizing a point of view. Then I'm engaging teams and sharing and getting feedback.

What's that like? Or how do you get the most out of your collaborations?

Let's surface the guiding principles that define that work, the bullet points of the why behind how.

What role if any does feedback play in your creativity?

That wiring for creative critique was half of the time spent in the classroom. Keep a systematic, repetitive beat to feedback and sharing and getting constructive critique.

What is the hardest part of creation?

Analysis paralysis. Sometimes people don't know where to start or they might be waiting for all the data and evidence to be in their hand before they begin. None of those things will ever be true. So one of my best professors, who has since passed, but when I took one of his drawing classes way back when, he would make us open up our new sketchbooks that we just got from the student store and he would make us literally like crumple up the first piece of piece of paper in the sketch pad and get it out of your system that you're gonna fail.

How do you go about making progress when you feel like you're blocked or at a dead end?

I think there is a repetitive act that is part of creative problem solving where you still put in the time every day. I had to get that garbage out of my system to be able to find a clear path to what is more relevant and resonant.

How do you avoid ruts and preconceptions?

Coaching my team not to fall in love with the ideas that are right in front of them.

What do you think different creative fields have in common?

All of them share this desire to make serendipitous as well as intentional sparks and connections across disparate inputs. Being able to connect the dots in surprising ways.

Can you give us any teasers or any inside scoop into your next book?

Non Linear: Navigating Design With Curiosity And Conviction. It's not linear, it's not formulaic.

Greg Cohen: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me. Mr. Maeda speaks very highly of you...

Kevin Bethune: No problem, and definitely mutual feelings for John. And yeah, happy to be of help to your project.

We're going to start out with some questions to get to know you personally. So what do you create?

Right now, I would probably best describe it as creating new ecologies. And when I say that I'm really speaking to really a holistic approach toward looking at solution that could exist across physical digital service, even human related sort of services that could come together to meet people where they are, where they need us the most. And that could be involved in a client partnership in any industry honestly. 

So a lot of the projects are usually like connected devices where some physical element connected to a digital platform, and some other projects might include a human service like coaching if figuring out how to make the coaching work over a digital interface, whether it be phone calls or over chat or video conference, teleconference. That kind of approach to the work.

And what are you working on recently that you're excited about?

There's one project in particular we're working with a client partner for the last five years in the space of wellness and weight management. And this company is called Invoy with an "I". Essentially the company already had, when I met them, a very deep well of IP and intellectual property around respiratory chemistry. 

So, if you could imagine, if someone were to wake up and use a solution, they would wake up, blow into a device. And the device basically allows you to understand what has happened in your body over the last 24 hours versus you or I stepping on a weight scale. It might take a week or two before we understand the patterns of nutrition, fat, burn water, weight, muscle gain. 

There's so many variables where we find ourselves guessing when we think about nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress. Whereas this arms someone with real time information, more or less. Like that can guide your choices based on yesterday. You can guide your choices for today with new information. So that's what we're definitely excited to bring that to more and more people over time.

Oh, wow, that's powerful.

Yeah.

What is your signature or what distinguishes your work from everyone else's?

I think I've had a very multidisciplinary series of career chapters. But when I engage any project, I definitely use design as the tip of my spear and specifically, I'm a very visual person. I draw and sketch a lot. Could be at my home studio, sketching design work or I could be in a meeting. And I'll probably be the first one walking over to the white board and visualizing the conversation that the team is having. 

So sort of using the power of design and specifically the power of visualization to get people on the same page, about getting excited around a future opportunity. Using visuals as storytelling vehicles or problem solving medium is sort of like my signature approach or tact when I engage anyone.

And when do you do your most creative work? And why do you think that is?

I think it honestly could occur at any time. I'm a big believer in serendipity and just like having an open aperture to like always leave my senses open to what I'm noticing, what I'm observing. I try to be very observant, no matter if I'm running between meetings or from out in the marketplace, talking with people or just in the normal traveling, just try to pay attention to things and to your point, around like really diving into creative thinking or even creative time. 

I do try to be mindful that I need to block the calendar out for specific blocks of time where I wanna actually protect time to be creative because there's all kinds of other demands on our calendars where it's like talking to stakeholders, communicating, or just developing or creating deliverables that sort of encapsulate the findings of the recent days and weeks. Like all that busy work can sometimes take away from the precious creative problem sometimes. So I try to at least protect them in blocks on my calendar.

And how much of your day are you actively engaged in creative work?

Probably a good third of each day.

Moving on to questions around process, and more specifically getting started. When you're creating something from scratch, how do you start?

I think I naturally gravitate to just asking or interrogating: who is the actual customer, and broader stakeholders around that central customer? And never take what is handed to me as a given. Usually there's like more people to meet than meets the eye. Like who's actually being served in someone's business? Usually, it's never just the end consumer. There's other people usually involved. 

And also by the way, the planet is a stakeholder in terms of the sustainability and the implications of every business and design decision and the broader impact on society, environment, etcetera. So I start with interrogating, who are we actually serving? What entities are we serving?

And do you begin with the end in mind, or do you let it evolve organically?

I definitely learned and evolved to let things naturally play themselves out organically. Before I got really versed in design and got more experience in design, I probably followed more of a hypothesis – first approach it by having at least an answer to begin, and seeing and then advancing that answer forward until proven otherwise from new data or new insights. But I've learned to be a lot more objective when I begin a new project with a beginner's mind, than just assuming there's an answer on the table already.

Chefs call it mise en place, or people call it fertile soil or getting in the mood. How do you set up your environment or conditions to create?

Excellent question. Upon reflection, I am probably mindful about where am I working? And you'll have the right tools in front of me and have I sort of removed any noise or distractions or clutter that would inhibit my sort of mental thought process as I begin to ideate anything. If you were to step in my office, that's very, very minimalist. I won't claim OCD, but I've been accused of being OCD in terms of how I keep my work areas. 

And then when I travel, I carry very minimal tools. So when the mood strikes, I'm ready and I can pull out my tools.

And in reference to your book, Reimagining Design, which is a spectacular book and a very singular point of view. You mentioned that kind of design is window dressing or an afterthought if you don't do it right. What do you think are the first steps to making design the horse rather than the carriage, so to speak?

I think it's a two-sided coin. When I engage new businesses, whether they be startups or larger enterprises, eight times out of 10 they might have a very – and I don't judge them when I say this – they might have a very limited view of what design can do, because maybe they've only used design in a certain way in the past, and I can't hold that against them. It just is what it is. 

On one side of the coin, I could try to explain how great design is and what it can do and I could try to have a discussion about that, and sometimes that's warranted. But I find that sometimes trying to explain can fall on deaf ears because people are busy, people have agendas, people have priorities where design might not be top of mind, which I might be thinking about it. 

And the other side of the coin, I need to be mindful to behave with the same courage and with the same strategic conviction as the best business person around the table and the best technologist, and make sure that I'm showing by demonstrating, by doing, what design can do. By action and showing that I can not just speak about design in terms of its theoretical benefits, but actually show that design is helping to advance their business goals by emphasizing with the metrics, the KPIS, the objective, that they have the strategy and that I can use design and behave in a way where I can use design to inform the strategy, the road map, the future for what they have. But then also I'm using design by doing to inform what imminent things need to get done and delivered to their stakeholders to fulfill the business needs. 

So, it's avoiding being theoretical and behaving in a way that demonstrates design's value from day one.

Moving on to questions about evolving the work. Once you have your initial conception, what is your process for building, improving, or evolving your creative work?

My first instinct is to say that in a normal design work plan, if you almost like borrow from the design thinking playbook of the double diamond or visuals like that, usually they sort of depict discovery, then followed by ideation. Maybe we diverge and consider a bunch of things and then we converge on the one solution and we go build it. That sort of "V" solution, from going wide to narrow, wide to narrow. 

But, I just found that the reality doesn't necessarily work that way. It's more chicken or the egg. And I just try to, no matter what hypotheses are on the table, no matter what ideas we're surfacing or who we're talking to in terms of potential customers and these kind of things, that the conversation should never stop with the people that we claim to serve. That it's an ongoing conversation to evolve anything. 

I just try to make sure that the teams and myself have an open aperture to always be conversing with those people. If I have sketching, I might go the next week and show those sketches to those people and co-create better sketches, live with them. We have a prototype, it's going back to them and sharing what we've built and having them use it and record their experience and their reactions to it and then go rinse and repeat again. So, I guess it's all about staying plugged in and always having the conversation continue versus like the start stop and hand off behavior from the past.

And with regard to your creative process, do you have any Legos or building blocks or algorithm that you repeatedly use in your creative process?

For me, there's sort of two visuals that I'm hyper-mindful of no matter like the brief, no matter the situation, no matter the opportunity. The first visual is almost like in most cases, the team I'm about to engage probably has not been used to really doubling down on multidisciplinary collaboration. And they might believe in the idea, in theory by looking at a Venn diagram, but the reality is that they probably don't practice it enough. So I at least try to get the them to think about ensuring that the team is multidisciplinary and diverse and like mix its expertise and backgrounds. 

And then the other visual is like, OK, what does that team give us? It gives us the ability to see the future time horizon. Look what needs to be built in the short term, mid term, and long term. And we can now look into that future horizon through a looking glass lens. And I sort of cut that looking glass into four quadrants where I think about one, who are the people that we claim to be serving? 

And again, it's more than just one person usually. And what's their value criteria across that lens? If the other quadrant is like industry paradigms usually a lot of industries, a lot of folks might attack that opportunity, but they, they just sort of take the industry paradigms as a given. They don't question them. They say, “Oh, this is all like health care works. So this is how industrial goods or energy works.” And that's just sort of it. And it's like, no, we need to actually attack and interrogate those foundational principles and question why does that have to continue to be that way? Like what if we changed it or what if we use the new technology to inform a different way of doing it? So that's industry. 

And then the last two quadrants are more or less taking an open aperture towards the different trends. And exemplars is just being living examples of trends taking shape and ensure that the team has a wide open aperture to think about social trends, tech trends, environmental trends, economic stuff, policy, regulatory, and energy related trends and even other categories of trend that could be part of the conversation. And then the exemplars are just like finding all the different examples it might be start up, might be research, it might be luminaries like John, for example, or what he's tinkering with, with AI. Like we wanna bring all those nutrients into the conversation to widen everyone's aperture. So we're not missing something and then we can actually look around corners and anticipate where the future might play out.

Ok. What percentage of your creative time is spent prototyping or experimenting?

It always should be more but probably, like, 10% of my week I'm building or crafting something that I wanna show someone.

And how much of your creative process is routine or habit, and how much of it is spontaneous or improvised?

I think the go-to vehicles of how I used to crystallize my thoughts or the teams thoughts are probably sort of somewhat routine. I joke that I'm an analog new guy, like I will gravitate to just like pens, markers, and paper or the Sharpie, or the dry erase marker and the whiteboard more often than that. And again, I’ve seen a lot with like digital UX design people or other industrial designers where they'll jump into their tools that might be more feature forward. 

But I tend again, like tip of the spear, tend to visualize first with super analog mediums that are right in front of me. But the actual thinking process, I have an open opportunity to allow serendipity spontaneity to take shape as I gather different input, diverse inputs.

When you have ideas, what makes one idea more promising than another?

I think did I succeed in running that idea through a set of filters? When it's time for some discernment, like we're in the early stages, it might be, we're just gonna let all the ideas fly. We're not gonna judge them yet. But when we do have to start to choose and discern like I need to understand, based on what I've learned from stakeholders, is this desirable to them, to my audience? Does it even matter to them? 

Secondly, is it technically feasible to pull this off? Like, could I get the right engineering talent in the room, the right prototyping capabilities in the room to pull this off so that it actually works? And then lastly, is it actually like a potential source of revenue? Could it actually work in terms of supporting the business objectives? And is it like sort of strategically aligned to what the business should be doing? 

If it passes those filters of examination, then I think we're on to something. And still it doesn't mean it's gonna work. We have to keep testing until we got the right recipe.

And at what point do you test your assumptions or challenge your creative choices?

Any time I can quickly talk to the people that I'm serving. Like I can have a conversation with them after a day of quick rapid ideation. It could be a conversation over Post-It Notes. But if I need to apply some design craft, I might need the week to like do proper design work and flesh out renderings or go make things and clues together what I think the solution is at that early stage. A

nd then maybe the following week I go have concerted conversations in the field using those prototypes of stimulus, not as like an answer of what we're gonna go build. It's just like, hey, I'm XYZ designer. I'm just working on this, and I built this. Doesn't mean it's right. Can you help me understand what's wrong or what's good about it and how to pivot from there? I sort of look at it as there's moments where it's quick and there's other moments where it takes some time to flesh out the next iteration.

So how do you distinguish when it's time to test and try new things, or when it's time to dig deeper or double down on your existing ideas?

I think it's based on the evidence that I have in the moment, also being mindful there's usually with any businesses that need to deliver by a certain date, the dates and gates of when things need to launch, when things need to be relevant in the business. 

I guess the short answer is I'm mindful to the critical path and needs of the business, to sustain the business and how my design work needs to support that. If I'm designing in a vacuum and it doesn't support that, then I'm leaving myself vulnerable for people to question like, “Why is Kevin or why is this team a part of this project, is not supporting critical path or it's not supporting critical objectives of the business?” So always making sure that we're rooted in that. 

And then it's like, OK, with the evidence, how can we move fast? Based on the time that we get to discern how good an idea is, then it's like, these sort of ideas are worth doubling down and spending more time. And maybe also the discipline to actually halt other ideas that aren't working, that aren't passing the muster.

Honing your craft is a nonlinear process. Sometimes you make leaps and bounds. To what events or practices would you attribute your greatest gains and skill?

I think with any new learning, any new capability or approach or trying to develop any expertise, I've learned in my career, the act of experimenting. So, there might be the immediate asks of the job that I definitely have to fulfill. But I always try my best to carve a little bit of time for ongoing learning. And, technology with its revolutionary shifts as it enters the market. There have been recent paradigms where advanced 3d capabilities came on the scene and I had to learn new skills and by constantly experimenting and trying new tools and incorporating that into my project flow, gradually over time use that to master something new. 

Rapid prototyping could be another example where you learn certain capabilities. You invest in certain capabilities and try to bring them into your process and see what works and what doesn't, and then it becomes part of your new routine. I always have that view to experiment with the new things that are coming.

In your book, you talk about sustainable, systemically respectful growth while others are talking or touting 10x ideas. Are they mutually exclusive or can they coexist?

I think ultimately, unfortunately, like the 10x sound bite that we hear, the unicorns… I think there's a reckoning that we're experiencing already. A reckoning has probably been working on us over the last couple of years where that like the 10x mentality, the unicorn, the power principle, whatever you wanna call it. Not every bit of growth is created equal. A lot of the unicorns that we used to celebrate in the media have still not been able to show a coherent business model or the ability to sustain themselves with a clear unit economics that they actually make money, versus in the recent sort of venture capital paradigm where it was all about the valuation more than actual credibility of the business model. 

And I think now, I think those days are honestly over and that anyone investing in any new business needs to definitely be interrogating like is there a real like business here, real model that's self-sustaining and is that worth investing in? So I think that's sort of the new genre that we're entering, which makes it harder, like it makes the demands for proving your model, your business model, that much higher of a bar to achieve. 

The last thing I'll say is if we're serving that constellation of stakeholders that we claim to serve, that constellation of stakeholders is better connected. They're more aware of the implications of a redesign or business decision on the greater ecology, whether it's ethics, data privacy, environmental regulatory barriers, trust, all the things. Those stakeholders have value criteria that centers on those ideals, on those convictions. 

And so we can't just extract money from people. We have to make sure that we're delivering on the promise and that we're delivering on what they care most about. And believe me, they care more than just the money. They care about like safely doing it, safely growing and not harming anything in the process. So that's why I use those words very carefully in the book.

Also in your book, you talk about giving a team time to coalesce and develop their norms and such and also about allowing time for data collection to be digested. Are there any other periods of time that are important that are frequently neglected or deleted?

Yeah. I think you're heading on an important point, the team chemistry up front, because usually again, multi-point teams haven't had the track record of the precedent of collaborating the way that the present moment and our future is gonna require. So cultivating team chemistry can't be looked at as a soft skill anymore. It's a critical skill. And then as teams start to move forward, they have to think about how do you spend your time as an individual, as well as a team? Like where are you putting your calories? 

And so in the book, I speak about three rough categories of how I personally interrogate my time. Usually the first category is I'm accountable to stakeholders. My clients are stakeholders, the executives that they support are stakeholders,  and consumers are stakeholders. There's a lot of stakeholders that need to be communicated to. So that's the first bucket of calories. 

The second is for any design work or business work or anything. It true, not just for design, any experts on the table. There's usually the time it takes to document your learnings, your insights, your point of view. And it takes time to build slides, takes time to build Excel models. It takes time to organize your wireframes for any solution in a coherent manner that are worth presenting. These are a lot of calories. 

And then the third bucket is the precious creative problem-solving time. And I try to keep my typical week balanced across those three categories. But unfortunately, the first two categories tend to overwhelm the third and collapse the third into nothing. And so, a lot of organizations, they feel like they're doing stuff. They're creating deliverables. They're creating outputs. They're not really having any time to think creatively about their opportunities.

Moving on to questions about finishing. How do you know when you're done?

You are never done. Even if you wanna ship on time... I think we're accountable to definition and delivery to make sure that the business model is supported by critical path execution, delivery, and happy customers. But there's always something to learn. The customer will never be fully satisfied. 

As a designer, I'm never fully satisfied. There's always things to improve. But I only have so much time. I gotta ship to respect the business’ critical path. But if we do a good job with that shipment, we'll learn things and we'll get another chance to ship a better product the next time, and the next time and the next time after that.

What makes a creative project successful?

I think it’s the ability to satisfy the stakeholder value criteria that's at play. And some of that might be business related, financial related. It might be the desirability of: will I opt into using your experience over a competitor or a substitute experience because yours is that much more desirable? And definitely, can this work? Is it technically possible to deliver on time with the engineering and technical prowess that we have?

Moving onto questions around outside sources of inspiration and collaboration. Where do you find your inspiration?

I'm constantly scanning. Funny, I follow a lot of luminaries on social media that I greatly respect. I mean, before I met John, he was a luminary that followed. I read all of his books. I follow what he was about to say on Twitter and LinkedIn and eventually met him at a conference. 

Also going to conferences and participating in community outside of my day to day work realities helps me immerse with other people that have different challenges, and we can share best practices with each other. And then I'm out there constantly and market. And I love to travel just to see other cultures, other cities, other countries and try different experiences. Any time I take a business trip, I'm always trying to find where are the local design destinations, museums, galleries, startups, research organizations that I could visit just to get my hands on fresh things that I haven't encountered before?

And what are your highest yield source materials or your most frequently revisited sources of inspiration?

I think between books and social media in terms of the healthy stuff that you can find and be inspired by. I always like getting out there and going to see things that are bleeding edge, that the average person isn't seeing, because I can bring all that back into my work.

Are there any media, like books, blogs, magazines or podcasts that you recommend on creativity or design?

Yeah, definitely. A big fan and I used to actually serve as a co-host, but the Design Observer organization led by Jessica Hein and Ellen McGirt. There's a couple of really interesting podcasts where it's all kinds of creative manifestations. They have all kinds of interesting and diverse guests that bring a new lens on creativity every episode. So the Design Observer set of podcast properties, media properties is a good starting point.

When and where do your lightning bolt ideas occur?

You know, it's funny. Every morning, I go out for a moderately long run. So that's definitely almost like mental therapy to have that physical outlet to sort of destress, burn off the stress, get the endorphins going. So a lot of ideas come to me when I'm on the morning run. I could have them in the shower. 

And then I definitely have worked really hard to prime my home and my home studio workspace to have all kinds of creative things around me. So I can easily reach for a resource with little effort.

How much of your creative process is solitary, and how much of it is collaboration with others?

Probably half and half. I'm very mindful to make sure I block the time where I'm alone in my own thoughts in my head, making and drawing and synthesizing a point of view. But then I'll carry that into the other half of the time where I'm engaging teams and sharing and getting feedback, or engaging stakeholders outside of the day to day, and getting feedback when I collaborate with others.

What's that like? How do you get the most out of your collaborations?

I think it's very important to not just like put a sketch up on the wall and expect them to react. Like a lot of people don't know how to, especially multidisciplinary teams that are new, working with each other. They don't necessarily know what feedback you want from them. 

So I try to frame and I coach other designers to do this.We put the work on the wall. But then I also require that, let's surface the guiding principles that define that work, whether it's a sketch or why or whatever, like one of the bullet points of the why behind how, why this sketch or iteration is composed the way it's composed. 

And then third, I try to remind the audience that the team that's in the room, like reminding them where we are in the process. And this is the type of feedback that would be helpful. And let's keep our conversation at that elevation versus fixating on a button color or the typography choice. That's not important at the moment. This is what's important. This is the feedback we need to move forward.

I think this is gonna be huge for you in particular. What role if any does feedback play in your creativity?

Oh. It is vital. When I pursued formal design training after some early forays of practicing design in the industry, when I went back to grad school for more design education like that wiring for creative critique was half of the time spent in the classroom, half of the time spent in the studio. And so in any work that I'm a part of, we're constantly reviewing iterations every single week. 

Again, we give team members the breathing room to make sure that they're not constantly being interrogated with people evaluating what they're doing. People need the space, the breathing room and the freedom to not feel like they're failing, in case they fix something up that isn't completely done. Again, it's all about framing but we try to keep a systematic repetitive beat to feedback and sharing and getting constructive critique.

And moving on to questions about challenges or obstacles and overcoming them. What is the hardest part of creation?

I think there's normal analysis paralysis. Like sometimes people don't know where to start, or they might be waiting for all the data and evidence to be in their hand before they begin to put pen to paper. And in reality, none of those things will ever be true. 

So one of my best professors, who has since passed, but when I took one of his drawing classes way back when, he would make us open up our new sketchbooks that we just got from the student store and he would make us literally crumple up the first piece of piece of paper in the sketch pad and get it out of your system that you're gonna fail. So just immediately rip up the first sheet of paper, because then let's go and realize that you're gonna fail every page.

That's amazing. What stops your creative flow faster than anything?

An untimely interruption. It's like despite efforts to protect the time… It's the call that I can't ignore or the intrusion into the office. It's some fire or some emergency that comes up. But again, I still try to at least make that likelihood very low and I'm very disciplined about what things that are put in front of me. I'm very judicious in terms of assessing what's really important versus a lot of stuff that just claims to be urgent, that isn't truly important.

Do you have any notable mistakes or failures that you think others can learn from?

In a past chapter of employment I definitely found myself in situations where we had to advance a new idea based on someone's vision and we expected the larger team to embrace that vision and make it part of their work flow. Well, again, reality doesn't work that way. It's not that clean. People may not trust that elements of that vision and maybe there's not enough of a “what's in it for me” convincing argument to make them wanna switch from how they've been doing things to entertain this new idea and let alone there's usually not enough evidence. So situations where there wasn't enough evidence of why they should even switch. 

So as much as  we're tasked with articulating a new vision and trying to convince people sort of dug in their heels and would not change. And so we had to abandon that through the top down approach and work with teams, one team at a time and then go more bottom up and let's really listen to that team, understand what they like about, their existing process. Try to convince them to maybe try some elements of the new vision without calling it the new grandiose vision and just seeing what can work at more of a smaller scale. 

And little by little then you have to get evidence. You could hold up and say, “Oh, this is pointing to something bigger, who else wants to try this?” And then you can convince larger swaths of team to move forward. So that was a hard moment where we had to really pivot and pivot even a lot of team members to factor how we attack that change effort.

And how do you go about making progress when you feel like you're blocked or at a dead end?

I think there is a repetitive act that is part of creative problem solving where you still put in the time every day. Like one day might be a bunch of sketches that I'm not happy with, but I know that I can put the pen down, get rest, wake up the next day, and have another runway to fight again. And usually the stuff that I found terrible a couple days ago, there's some elements that I could bring into my new thinking for today. Where it all is, all of those learnings, all the failures do build up to something. Where it's like, ok, I'm on a better path because I had to go through that. I had to get out there. I had to get that garbage out of my system to be able to find a clear path to what is more relevant and resonant.

In your book, you talked about experimenting as creating evidence for the path forward and I thought that was very poignant and I like that a lot. How do you avoid ruts and preconceptions?

Maintaining an open aperture, not just falling in love with the design work in front of me or making sure that I'm coaching my team not to fall in love with the ideas that are right in front of them. If we have an open aperture, truly, we should be constantly scanning the market landscape. We should constantly talk with stakeholders. And we'll, as long as we're doing those things, the evidence will be sort of right in front of us, whether what we have is working or not or if we need to pivot and revise and evolve.

Can you think of a time that a constraint was beneficial to your creativity?

Mm. I think probably the biggest, visceral response I can think of and that's consistent across all projects is a deadline. You still need a deadline. You still got to deliver. And call me old school, but I'm of the mind and anything that I engage, If the business has set deliverables to support the needs of the business, that's the number one constraint of we will always deliver. We will do the best we can with the time afforded. But there's a mindset, we always will deliver. 

And again, if we do a good job with that, we'll get another chance to evolve and improve and refine and take feedback. But we're gonna always have a mind to deliver because not delivering inhibits our ability to learn. I worry more about that than any ruts that might happen in the near term.

What's a telltale sign that it's time to abandon an idea?

Again, feedback and constructive critique. And paying attention to what's happening in the market with trends and exemplars. Like if the variables aren't lining up in our favor for that idea, and the idea isn’t proving out desirability, feasibility, viability and strategic alignment, then we're better off focusing our resources elsewhere and stopping work on that idea. That takes discipline.

What kind or type of work would you like to do that you haven't done yet?

I feel heart full of gratitude and very privileged to have done the things that I've been able to work on. I have affinity areas, passion areas where it's like, OK, that versus being all things to any industry that comes in front of the business. There's a couple of industries where I wanna double down and spend more of my time because I like living in that industry and yeah, I love connected products. I love connected audio and home audio and smart home devices and I wanna spend even more time there.

And these are questions about creative crossover. Do you have more than one creative skill or hobby or interest?

Visual is my primary because by nature of the design work. Other things like I love to video edit. I do a lot of my own marketing for the business or I help with a lot of marketing efforts for my client partners as well. So I don't never call myself a marketer, but I find myself using my visual talent to create marketing assets or videos for what I need to promote. 

And then I'm always listening to music. Music definitely catalyzes my creativity.

What do you think different creative fields have in common? And is there anything universal to most or all of them?

I think whether I'm a musician, a designer, even like an engineer prototyping in a garage, everyone that's creative or is actually practicing their creativity in the purest essence... all of them share this desire to make serendipitous as well as intentional sparks and connections across disparate inputs. 

And those inputs could be a number of different things. It could be elements, foundational components, existing matter, media, and or examples or trends and being able to look across the landscape of diverse information, qualitative and quantitative, and being able to connect the dots in surprising ways. That's actual creativity.

What skill or techniques from a different field would you like to bring into your own work?

Again, I'm drawing a lot on music. So I look at musicians’ process, the improvisation. There's an author, Nat Nixon, who I recommend you probably talk to as well. She does a lot. She bridges a lot with the creative process with jazz and the notion of improvisation. I really enjoy her writings. It's actually very real. That's a skill that I think all creative problem solvers can benefit from.

And what do you think the relationship between skill and creativity is?

In terms of the relationship, the framework that comes to mind is the work from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His notion of flow in the pursuit of the optimal human experience. Where he takes you through a rubric in his writing. He takes you through a rubric of like what does it mean to enter that state where your skill level is to a point where you're able to address a high challenge with remarkably high skill. Where it almost feels effortless and time slips away. 

That's when I feel like I'm at my most creative and things are just flowing and time almost stands still. I'm just in the zone. But if I'm learning something for the very first time, I know my design work may be bad using that new approach or skill or method because I'm just trying it for the first time. And I'm thinking more about the skill or I'm thinking about the tactics to get through it versus the actual thinking of the idea.

And who do you think of when I say most creative person?

I mean, my hero, when I think about the most creative person, I think about folks like John Maeda, to me was like my polymath hero. He's done so many things across engineering, computer science, art, design computation, AI. He's so willing to try different things and orient his life to try new chapters. So I've always had tremendous inspiration from that. He's definitely still one of my biggest creative heroes.

And is there anyone else that you think we should talk to for this project?

Natalie Nixon would be one. She's a friend of John's as well. Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to mind.

OK. I have two more questions for you. It's difficult to choose between your children, but what is your favorite work that you have done so far in your career?

Mm. One connected device that I love the project was a cryptocurrency hardware wallet called KEVO Hardware Wallet. And that was just a fun effort to just join a start up with a co-founder and my portion of work was to drive all the industrial design of the device. The packaging, the collateral, the permanent case that the device fits in when it's not being used. All those things. It was an ecosystem that was under my full creative control and that was a lot of fun to steer that to its completion.

Can you give us any teasers or any inside scoop into your next book?

Yeah, I can. I am allowed to say that the title is called Non Linear. And the subtitle is Navigating Design With Curiosity And Conviction. And so it's gonna be somewhat related to the first but not necessarily a sequel. It'll stand on its own. 

Essentially, it's again rooted in lived experience. I bring to life the journey, the non-linearity of the journey, the nuances of unlocking innovation, the actual journey of going through those pivots and learning steps. But it's not linear, it's not formulaic. And unfortunately, I think the business world all too often thinks that the creative approach is a very linear or formulaic beat and it just isn't.

Oh, that sounds amazing. When does it come out?

It's written, but it's going to go through a lot of stuff on the editor side. So it won't come out until February of next year.

That's awesome. And thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. You've been every bit as incisive and illuminating as I had expected. Even more. 

No, my pleasure. Glad that hopefully this could be of help to your project. Thank you.