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Totally agree with the quote from Robin Williams. Especially looking at the evolution of the design practice, I feel that we've been getting further and further away from creativity, and closer and closer to engineering. I'm sure there's still a lot of creativity, but it feels that way, especially with the growing complexity of the design deliverables.

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That's a really interesting point. So have you found there's a pressure to deliver artefacts that gets in the way of more divergent explorations?

I've found that engineering teams tend to think about their work very logically and need to be coaxed carefully into less rational and more 'mad' approaches to generating ideas or solutions.

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Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by Ben Strak

I don't like generalisations, but I believe that some designers have also started to adopt a more engineering mindset, especially those working with complex systems (design systems but also organisational systems).

Similar to your example, creative workshops that use discovery methods or design thinking are not so uncommon also to encourage designers to approach their work in a more "Mad" way. I think overall innovation tends to suffer diminishing returns as companies grow in size and complexity.

I wouldn't say that pressure doesn't play a role, but I think complexity is also at fault.

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Ah yes, see what you mean. Totally agree that real innovation can get pushed out by defaulting to what's easy within the current design system and/or organisational 'way of doing things'

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I remember seeing the escape shute before. Crazy as it might seem now, lots of people said that about early patents and design for aircraft at the beginning of that era. In fact about most things we take for granted today. I remember Philips dropping their video phone because the concept of people looking at each other on a phone call was fatally flawed. Experts said women would never answer a phone unless they had make-up on.

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It's true. And I'm always very much on the side of the crazy people trying to do things in a new way. The explosion of creativity around the problem of fire escape was kind of an amazing phenomenon!

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