I was watching this week’s episode of FutureCar on the Discovery Channel. The entire show was nothing extraordinary until the very last 30 seconds. Throughout the program, they kept returning to this group of young designers, each with their idea of what the future car would be. For me, every design they showed, looked futuristic but was predictable - techie, or macho, or what-have-you. In none of them did the characteristic I have grown to associate with true creativity …

…the ability to look at a situation in a way that is not expected and yields a totally new insight and direction of thought …

The most common occurrence of this phenomenon occurs when a person applies an unrelated area of expertise or interest or reasoning to the problem. For example, what would happen if a medical doctor were trying to design a clock or a botanist were asked to describe a building ?

By cross pollinating orthogonal disciplines, the results are often bold and insightful creativity.

This brings me back to the one “creative” car design in this week’s episode of FutureCar - the “Nanny Car”. The designer, Bo Yeun Park, did not focus on the look of the car, or the features of the car. She looked at the users. More interesting was her choice of “users”. Bo chose children - old enough to have places to go but too young to drive themselves.

We hear more and more about “user centered design” and “outside in design”. I am a firm believer in these philosophies. In an Job interview I was once asked to take 20 minutes and design an ATM for children. That proved to be the catalyst for many of my approaches to problems in the years since that question was first posed.

Start with a real user; become that user; now design something that you like. Now ask someone else to be the user. Do they still like what you created ? If so, then ask another and another. But, if not, understand what is different between you, as the next user, and the next person. Whatever the differences, the solutions will make the design stronger.

By the way, don’t ask me to design a Future Car … my favorite care was the Volvo 240 wagon.

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Posted in Brainstorming, Cars, Creativity, Design, Futurist |

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