Jon Kolko,

Austin Center for Design

it says, “so go ahead and critique it—I
can defend every bit of it.”
In reality, creativity (and
particularly, innovation) is often
indefensible. As author Edward
DeBono notes, “The problem is this:
Every valuable, creative idea will
always be logical in hindsight. If an
idea were not logical in hindsight,
then we would never be able to
appreciate the value of the idea.”
But before there can be hindsight
there must be the present, and in
those early moments a new design
idea is rarely logical. Students have
connected dots with their informed
intuition and made leaps between
facts to get to a new, provocative
reality. The idea hasn’t had a chance
to mature, and so those connections
are poorly understood, even by the
designer herself. And so a new idea
does not hold up to criticism and can
be easily trivialized. An experienced
designer understands this, at least
intuitively, and has typically learned
to frame criticism as suggestions
rather than as mandates.
The design process always performs. Following the broad design process always results in new ideas, grounded in both the reality of a problem space and the tacit
knowledge of the designer. But there’s
no guarantee that the ideas are any
good, and in many ways, this presents
a challenge for students of design.
On the one hand, as students learn
the process of ethnographic research,
synthesis, ideation, and storytelling,
they start to make things. That’s
powerful, and it feels good—for many
people, this is the first time their ideas
are taken seriously, because it’s the
first time their ideas have been given
form other than language. When an
idea has form, it becomes real. People
can respond to it, can argue with and
about it, can critique it, and can be
offended by it. Students realize that
power quickly (often the first time
they show their work to someone
else). As students gain ability with
craftsmanship, the fidelity of their
idea improves, and as that fidelity
increases, criticism shifts. Audiences
stop focusing on and critiquing the
manner in which the idea is presented
(I don’t believe this idea is real) and
can start to critique the idea itself (I
don’t think this idea should be real).
On the other hand, as students
begin to make things, they begin to
realize the fragility of their ideas.
New ideas are like crocuses growing
in the ground: so full of potential, but
so easy to crush. The high fidelity
in which the idea is sketched can
be misleading: If the idea appears
real, it indicates a sense of creative
confidence. “This idea is bulletproof,”
Teaching Confidence
in Process

New ideas are like
crocuses growing
in the ground:
so full of potential,
but so easy to crush.

INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG 22 INTERACTIONS MARCH–APRIL2014 COLUMN BODONI, BAND-SAWS, AND BEER

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