Journeys allow us to explore, they allow us to discover; they can be arduous at times, and full of surprises and fun at other times. Most importantly, journeys provide us with an understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the world. The journeys themselves are often the least difficult part; more often it’s finding the courage to start.
- Rachel Hinman
I first heard about Rachel Hinman’s project 90 Mobiles in 90 Days, when she first began this past June. For 90 days, she posted sketches, prototypes and ideas about mobile design and user experience on her blog each and every day. The experiment ended in September and Rachel has since posted an extensive wrap-up of her experience.
When I read over her findings, I immediately thought about an article I read this week by Mike Arauz that recounts an anecdote from Bill Buxton’s new book Sketching User Experience (which I also happen to be reading).
A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece. At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.
This story shares a number of parallels with Rachel’s experience and bears a similarity to one of her painting professors who undertook a similar approach as the ceramics professor. Drawing this connection made me also think back to my once a day photography project. This interconnection solidified some things in my mind.
- Creative outlets outside of work are essential. While creative workers have the luxury of being creative at work, there are often constraints and project parameters that prevent you from fully exploring ideas. Finding your own unrestricted creative outlet allows a free flow of ideas that would come out in more restricted environments.
- Forcing creativity isn’t ideal, but it works. Creative people usually work best when ideas aren’t forced. However adhering to a strict regime of repetitive creation always produces at least one good outcome, if not more. Plus, more practice never hurts.
- Ideas can’t evolve until they are brought to life. Putting things on paper, words or simply building them is essential to exploring ideas. Forcing oneself to record things is a key aspect of almost every creative field and a richly rewarding practice, if you can get in the habit.
Reading about Rachel’s project has giving me lots of motivation and encouraged me to think about my own creative practice. I have been thinking of a lot of new things recently and I hope to apply what I learned here to these ideas.
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