Creativity in Design blog

Even though before starting this course I had come already come from a design background, this module has taught me to not only continue being a creative thinker but a divergent one. 

We often hear people talk about thinking outside the box to find the best solutions to design problems, however what if we instead created our own box? 

 I have learned throughout this Creativity in Design module, that we as designers need to open our minds to tackling different situations and how we use those situations to the best of our advantage. 

 I believe that being a good designer also means being a better human being, we strive to find solutions to things that we would have never imagined would or could exist. We are natural problem solvers, and this in turn helps us in our own personal lives too. 

Design thinking is a magical toolbox that can be used for many situations in life, and this makes us powerful. We can open ourselves to different industries, people, culture, history, nature and empathise with this in order to better design for these environments and communities. 

Working with a new team brings every time new challenges, but also deepens our knowledge and acceptance of the diversity of how, we human, think. It opens our minds to go into unchartered territories and nurture a supportive work-out-loud culture.

 I used to think that design was purely linear and just a means to respond to set briefs from the industry, however this module has taught me that there is so much more to design and if anything design should actually be non-linear, and there shouldn’t be this pressure to design for all because we are all very different and extremely complicated beings, have different values, needs as we all come from different backgrounds, cultures, and countries and therefore should be open to listen and open our minds to different possibilities. 

Although as a designer I had learned about creative thinking, this module deepened my understanding of the creative process. Focusing on the divergent state of ideation, putting a break on finding a solution was a challenge for the team but it opened our minds to new perspectives. I learned to enjoy challenging assumptions, engage in alternative ways of thinking, asking why? Above all, it taught me how to practice design with a more human-centred approach, concentrating on the people we wanted to help, what they felt, how they thought, what their needs were before thinking about the things we should construct.  

After our interim crit presentation, we found it crucial to regroup and filter out a few of the ideas that we didn’t want to keep. Even though there were a few good points made from our peers during feedback, our tutor’s feedback really helped stir us in the right direction. 

We immediately called a group meeting and started ideating a few ideas using ‘the crazy 8’ technique of drawing 8 different ideas as quickly as possible without thinking too much, and out of those we would choose the 3 best ones. We knew however a couple of things that gave us a slight advantage; one was that we already had a few strong leads which was the transport waiting areas, and empathy in nature, thanks to our tutor and peer feedback. 

Our group met up at the British Library as ongoing strikes at City meant that the university campus was closed. This proved to be a blessing as being together in a different environment gave us a different perspective of the brief and we remembered that we should enjoy the creative process together.   

Interestingly, we hadn’t bonded as much as a team before we met up at the British Library mainly, I believe due to everyone being quite busy with other modules and their personal lives. And it showed that we hadn’t come together as a group in our last presentation. One of our group members for example had covid, and therefore unable to join us for the final ideation meeting. 

I had mentioned the British Library to my group as it has always been an enjoyable space and experience for me, whether it was for research purposes or just to have a wonder around and a coffee with friends. I found that being in a different environment gave our group a sense of ease and tranquillity, and we all felt quite relaxed which in turn opened our mind to explore different interesting design outputs.

During our fun crazy 8 sketching session, I had remembered that I had seen an online event called: ‘Designing with Empathy’ from the Happold Foundation where many engineers, designers, scientists all took part in this conversation and inspired me to design using data. 

We didn’t want to just try to find a one solution for all with these concepts, however it was important for us not to lose sight of our main topic of ‘Empathy’ or ‘Perspective Taking’ which was the very core of our values as well as who we intended to design for, such as London commuters.

By the end of the session, we had agreed on two main concepts taken from the crazy 8 sketches: The first, was about raising awareness for London species using data and sound in and around transport areas, and the second was using pollution data and sound around public transport spaces and services. The idea was to use pollution data in heavily affected areas of London and as pollution increases, so would a terrible and alarming sound. The idea however, was abandoned as it would be very upsetting for the public.   

The main purpose of these concepts from this ideation session was to bring some Yin and Yang balance between the man made cold public transport spaces, and the natural world represented by organic sounds of London species, and organic chair shapes to be used to add comfort in these spaces. 

This seemed like the best response to creating more empathy, after all, empathy is about our relationship with our natural and built environment and with other human beings.

We ended up taking the sketches and translating them to Miro. 

References and links of interest: 

Empathy, like other emotional and mental capacities, is developed over time and reinforced through our interactions with the world. Although part of our daily destinations, stations waiting rooms are an overlooked shared public  space. In our busy lives, the act of waiting can often be perceived as a waste of time, uncomfortable, poorly designed and maintained waiting rooms accentuate the negative emotions of the traveller.  When 5 minutes can feel like an hour we can get stressed. Well maintained, well lit waiting rooms can make travellers feel safer and more comfortable, helping making our perception of time seem shorter. 

In the Folkestone Central station waiting room, there was a map of the town co created by 100 people telling a story for each area of the town. This taught me a lot about the city and its people, as I was let in on their shared memories. Studying the map also made my waiting time seem shorter. 

https://www.facebook.com/BBCRadioKentOfficial/videos/the-peoples-art-map-of-folkestone-is-bringing-folkestones-artworks-to-life-throu/389166892080244/

When I lived in Raynes Park, there were 2 main waiting rooms (one at each platform). One was cold, with graffiti on the walls, it always smelled quite bad. I never wanted to go inside except if it really poured down with rain on the platform. On the other platform, next to a tiny cafe, the waiting room was cleaner. It also had a shelf full of books and magazines  that people brought in and borrowed from. I liked to see the array of choice, making me read things I would never have chosen to read if I had not been waiting for a train, sometimes noticing  the folded corner of a page, a written note, or an underlined paragraph by its previous owners. - It was always surprising to see how other people experienced the book. What if we had in every station, books we could share, and what if each person could leave a note of what they thought about the book, creating a thread of thoughts?  It would certainly be more fun to wait for the train.

Could design enhance the experience even better so that travellers feel more energised, connected to the space, and the people they share the space with?  

In his thesis “waiting experience at train stations” Mark Van Hagen (2011) 

Hagen explains that designing for services should not only be focused on the utilitarian level, but also on the hedonistic level. In the case of waiting rooms, besides being clean, well lit and safe, they must also provide an environment where the public “spend time in an enjoyable fashion” (citing Falk and Dierking, 1992) The pyramid of needs shows that safety, speed and ease are vital for customers on the move,  just spending a few minutes, but comfort and experience are crucial when they have to stay longer. Within comfort and experience, passengers precise  the criteria as follows: “comfort facilities, aesthetics, social contact, relaxation, privacy, spending time usefully, distractions” The design solutions should consider our physical and our mental well being.  

References and links of interest:

I used to live in Raynes Park, and I recently moved to Folkestone, commuting  to London twice a week. The idea of waiting in and around public transport  spaces seems to be a very mundane yet necessary part of city life. 

At St Pancras International station when I need to wait for the train, there are no waiting rooms on the platform. Instead, there are 2 or 3 benches just before you enter the platform which are set in the freezing draft space. If I want to find a more comfortable heated space, I need to go to a café. The more you pay, the more comfortable it is. I found this to be quite unfair, it seems that public spaces are not catering for everyone in society. Considering the huge price of train tickets, train users should have more respect and consideration. 

In Folkestone, when the weather is cold, or when it is raining, I often take refuge in the waiting rooms, they feel quite clinical, drafty, and very uncomfortable. I find myself constantly looking at the screen with the information of train arrivals. When the train is late or cancelled, I feel that time is passing really slowly and my journey becomes really tedious. But there are some good initiatives: I enjoy watching people play the piano, left by Sir Elton John on the main arcade of shops. It is always a great  people gatherer. Some sing, dance, have a drink, other just chat, but all exchange positive emotions.  The brainchild of British artist Luke Jerram those second-hand pianos in public locations, with an open invitation to play have  been so popular that the idea has been reproduced all over the world.  

It seems that circumstances and environments affect someone’s mood, inviting them to stay longer or wanting to leave as soon as possible, feeling happy with a sense of belonging or feeling isolated and wanting to put a barrier. 

How can a city make us feel good, more open to our surroundings and the life in it? There are initiatives designed to raise empathy in cities.  

The centre for conscious design, an international think tank, organises conscious city festivals to raise awareness of  ‘Urban Empathy’ projects, as a multi faceted approach, linking political, architectural and economic factors.

In the TEDx talk, entitled ‘Let’s spend city money on empathy’ Sascha Haselmayer CEO of Citymart.com talks about how we could invest the billions of dollars otherwise used to build more buildings into using empathic communal solutions for cities. 

He questions city governments who just take citizen taxes yet don’t invest in any real community solutions to improve the lives of the very same people who live in the city.

After meeting with the group, we had a clearer idea of the aspect of empathy we wanted to focus on. How can we emphasise sensitivity to others and our environment in cities?      

So we set ourselves small tasks to walk around our city to initiate a ‘workbook’ (a mixture of images, sketches and annotations) this was based on William Gaver’s ‘Making spaces: how design workbooks work’ and talked about during lecture 2 of our Creativity in Design module. This was London and Folkestone for me, taking pictures of objects, nature and anything that reminded us of empathic representations and behaviour in the environment.

References and links of interest 

Is empathy  influenced by circumstances, surroundings , our inner mental state?  I started to research  a definition of empathy. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary (accessed 15th March 2022)  gives two definitions: the first one is describes it as the action of “understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another” the second one is “the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it “  I became curious about the dual meaning of the word and looked for the history of the word..

The online etymology dictionary  states that the English word appeared first in 1908, “modelled on German Einfühlung (from ein "in" + Fühlung "feeling"), which was coined 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-1881) as a translation of Greek empatheia "passion, state of emotion”. I was surprised to see that  the idea  of the word had come from German early in  the 20th century. There I started to search for the context of its creation.  

A post by Susan Lanzoni on the Yale university press website (November 21, 2018) revealed  that the English word was created in 1908 when English psychologists translated German articles from experimental psychologists.  It described the ability to transfer one’s feeling onto shapes of objects . For example,  the feeling of  stretching upwards when we  look at a high building is explained as “the self merged with the object of contemplation in the empathic encounter”  

In the book “art in translation” ( p. 349, 2014) the editorial states that  in English we use the same term for  two types of experiences, whereas  in German they use two words. The first one “Einfühlung”  refers to “the resonance in the inner life of the viewer with external objects like buildings, natural phenomena, or musical tones” The second one  “Empathie”  is exclusively concerned with our sympathetic response to our fellow beings and other living creatures.” (Citing Robert Vischer ).  The specific type of empathy which describes  one’s  emotional response  to artwork and the built space is said to come  from our “pantheistic urge for union with the world…  allowing  all life to resonate within us.” (Citing Theodor Lipps).

This resonance in turn, was seen to have a physiological basis. Citing the  work of Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann Lotze it further explains that  “the muscular activity that enables us to see, trace, and comprehend an object in space forms the basis of empathy aesthetics”.

So empathy does not only refer to our emotional response to human beings  but to our environment, that includes other creatures and objects, artwork, spaces, the natural and the built environment.  This new insight widened my notion of the domain of empathy. We could consider both  relationships between us and our environment, the city, its buildings , and us and other creatures

Person to person, person to other living species, person to environment (natural and man made)

References and links of interest: 

1.Karnik, N.

Karnik, N. (2022) An overview of Conscious Cities, RTF | Rethinking The Future. Available at: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community/a6275-an-overview-of-conscious-cities/ (Accessed: 3 April 2022).

2.  (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy)

3. empathy | Etymology, origin and meaning of empathy by etymonline

empathy | Etymology, origin and meaning of empathy by etymonline (2022). Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/empathy (Accessed: 15 February 2022).

4. Empathy

Empathy (2022). Available at: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300222685/empathy/ (Accessed: 20 February 2022).

5. Curtis, R.

After working on our group values, we decided to dig deeper into our own experience of empathy  or non empathy in a city environment. As reflection is about our ways of seeing and experiencing the world. 

According to renowned psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman there are three types of empathic behaviours:

Cognitive (sometimes called ‘perspective taking’) is mainly about being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to be able to see it from their perspective.

Emotional (feeling someone else’s emotions) is the ability to understand another person’s emotions and respond appropriately.

Compassionate (we not only understand what the other person is feeling, living but we want to help) 

 Living in a large and populated city such as London can have an impact on our cognitive load which sometimes makes us forget to just look around and be more aware of our surroundings. Thinking about George Perec “Species of Spaces and Other Pieces” and his use of constraints as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration, I decided to go to the corner of Old Street and Bath street at 5:30pm on the 23rd of March, I gave myself the task of scanning people’s movements and interactions with their surroundings during 10 minutes, like an empathic robot. When I arrived there, the streets were busy and noisy with traffic. 

Crowds of people were walking fast, looking straight ahead, some trying to overtake the people who walked a bit slower, a few, walking slowly in a mechanical way,  had their heads mostly down, checking their phones, occasionally looking up  when they had to cross a street. Very few people walked at a more leisurely pace, sometimes on their own or in groups, stopping, chatting, pointing to things. They seem to sometimes hinder the paths of the rushed people, almost like obstacles to be circumvented. There was  a big issue seller, who was mostly static, repeating the gesture of handing a magazine, trying to attract attention from passers-by. Finally there was this old lady who was trying to stop someone in the street, she seemed to need something. For 2 minutes people avoided her or ignored her as if she was invisible, but  someone finally stopped and responded to her. He looked at  his mobile phone, and gestured to her pointing to the street on the right side.  I realised the lady was asking for directions.  

Any of these people could have been me.  I recalled when I am in a hurry, stressed, when there is a lot of noise, traffic I tend to shut down to my surroundings, I have sometimes ran to catch a train and be annoyed when a group of people blocked the pavement, forcing me to overtake them by stepping on the road. When I see someone asking for help in the street,  I don’t stop automatically, but scan the person - this might be due to my years in Brazil where you have to be aware of people who approach you, as my siblings and I have been mugged in the past on the streets. I have also been avoiding big issue sellers when I already bought a magazine and I am asked to buy another one. I could say something to them like “sorry I have already bought a magazine” but often, I just walk past. I could have been this lady who asked for directions. It happened to me a few times, and I have been shocked to see people avoiding me as soon as I said “excuse me..”  

References and links of interest: 

Back in London, my group and I (which was made up of a nice mixture of cultures; India, Norway and Liverpool) sat down at the City cafe to discuss and brainstorm what we value most about our city, and what are some of the challenges we face living in a city such as London. We opened the word document which our tutor provided us, answering these important yet subjective questions. To visualise all of our thoughts about living in a city like London or where we originally came from, we opened a new Miro board. Each of us were assigned a colour (orange, blue, green and pink) to make it easier to see who was placing what. Having spent a few months in Brazil for the christmas holidays, I realised that my values had changed since my time during last year’s lockdown, when I had been slightly depressed and fed up with not being able to live my life in my usual way. I gained a slightly different perspective and began appreciating the smaller things that a developed country had to offer such as; Being able to drink the water from the tap, being able to walk around the city using my mobile device without being afraid that someone might want to steal it, and having that freedom and independence and sense of security which sadly isn’t the case in a place like Rio de Janeiro for a young woman. Interestingly, another group member from India felt the same way.  Things started to get even more dynamic when the two other group members from Liverpool and Norway felt the opposite about London’s water and sense of security. 

Copacabana pavement, Roberto Burle Marx image and my wave sketch 

Today was my last day in Rio. I walked along  the promenade above the beach. It is lined with more comfortable  beach “kiosks” individually owned  and sponsored by big companies: here is Tim’s kiosk - Tim is an international telecom group and one of the major brands in Brazil. The kiosk does offer more comfort an a more hygienic feeling. Down on the beach the multi-coloured parasols add an element of liveliness while being comforting. This reminded me of an article from the UX collective about the psychology of shapes in design,   

(Glovory Design Sep 22, 2020). Square shapes  give viewers a sense of “ reliability and security”, triangles evoke “stability, balance, and movement”  “circles never stop, and so neither does the eye when viewing them, giving them a childlike whimsy.”

There is a clear divide between the beach and the promenade , one feels  tumultuous whereas the other  more orderly, it is good to have both. I looked down on the pavement. Designed by artist and conservationist Roberto Burl Marx, Copacabana pavements undulate like the waves of the sea. The gentle rhythm of the design is hypnotic. Burle Marx took nature as inspiration for his work, introducing  asymmetrical plans and  free-forms 

Built with small pieces of  black basalt and  white limestone inserted on the soil the pavements  don’t fully cover the earth beneath.  Although not perfect not high tech,  they are easy to repair : if a stone breaks, it is easy to just hammer in another stone which is more or less the same size.   

Looking around, there are myriads of shapes in nature, each plant is distinguished by its shape and colour, it is a wonder to look at nature’s creativity in design. Could we use  nature as  designer for our towns, for our devices?

References and links: 

Psychology of shapes in Design: how different shapes can affect people behavior

Before my return from a long Christmas holiday, I was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,  a place I call my childhood home. It  was a great mental escape from the stresses and anxieties I was having back in the U.K,  especially during the long lockdowns of the pandemic. Rio de Janeiro is a city of contrast: the first images that come to my mind are extreme inequalities, poverty, human misery, lack of public financing  to develop infrastructure, poor transport system, defective  water, electricity and waste management systems, noise and pollution, poor quality housing, favelas, juxtaposed against luxurious buildings,  gated communities, modern opulent  shops, shopping centres , restaurants-. However, set against a  magnificent landscape of mountains and sea, with 50 miles of public beaches, Rio has the  power to make me  feel  alive and energised. Walking on the beach, the sound of the waves, the laughters and loud conversations, the shouts of the teams playing footvolley, the noise of the rackets of the Frescobol, remind me of people having a great time. The multicoloured flags fluttering in the wind and the barracks announce the identity of their owners. They  are the reserve of individual traders - any individual can obtain the permission to own a barrack on the beach. Beaches cannot be privately owned,  the beach is the property of the people,  a place where everyone can enjoy being in nature, play many sports, or socialise, without paying anything