Look, the Fool

Leave your fear of looking foolish at the door so you can spend more time generating ideas and less time worrying what people will think of you. Look the Fool is a call to action to be brave and accept that not all ideas are going to be mind-blowing. Or even good. The path to good ideas means you’ll need to suggest, and remove, the bad ones quickly and without fear or judgement. Be willing to share the bad ideas. 

Lead by example. If you’re willing to look foolish it levels the playing field and lets everyone know they can speak their minds without fear of judgement.

In the next post I'll talk about taking it to the gutter. From there things can only improve. Personally, I'm happy to absorb some judgement if it fuels the teams creative sensibility, focuses critique and makes everyone comfortable. We can all bond in the gutter.

Get your gut checked regularly

Gut checks are frequent, quick, focused tests of your ideas. Invite someone to give you a quick, gut-level reaction to a work-in-progress. You want an emotional or intuitive reaction that helps you clarify any bias you have as the creator. Go ahead and tell them you're just doing a gut check. The shorter their response, the better. It's not a brainstorm, it’s a fast tool to check your assumptions.

Ask a question so the feedback is focused. Use simple, direct questions and insist on simple, direct answers. 

Example questions:

• What’s the first thing you notice?
• What is the most important thing on the screen?
• What’s the first emotion that comes to mind when you see this?
• Would you trust this?
• Is this funny?

If an email is 50+ words, have a conversation instead

Email has been replaced by social networks as the de facto time waster but that doesn’t mean we're using email any more efficiently. It’s amazing for some things: memorializing the details of a meeting, sharing the details of plan, exchanging information, describing goals. Notice the focus on quantitative exchange.

Here’s what email sucks at: creative dialog. Both words are important there: Creative, meaning there's subjectivity and lots of influences at work and dialog, because you anticipate going back and forth. If you ever feel the need to start brainstorming via email consider stopping and actually talking to someone.

Here’s a rule of thumb that I try to follow (as with all rules of thumb it’s flexible): if an email is more than 50 words consider having a conversation, either face-to-face or on the phone.

Keep asking Why

Wikipedia calls The 5 Whys “...an iterative question-asking technique.” The idea is that you repeatedly ask yourself, or your client/partner/product owner ‘Why?’ as a way to better understand the issue you are addressing. It’s a useful skill when interviewing clients about their feedback or goals for a design.

Example...
I don’t like this logo.

1. Why? I can’t read what it says.
2. Why? Actually it’s okay at some sizes but doesn’t read when small.
3. Why? The font closes up.
4. Why? The icon overwhelms the name.
5. Why? The icon is too big and has too much detail.

Action: Select a new font, simplify the icon and rebalance the hierarchy between the icon and the name.