Finding Creativity in Interactive Design

     I recently got turned on to a new website called TED.com.  The tag line on their home page is "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world"  It is basically a site with a collection of 10-20 minute video lectures on about any imaginable subject.  With the search for creative inspiration in the field of Interactive Design in mind, I clicked on a video titled, "Design to Challenge Reality"by Kelli Anderson.  Here is a link to the talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/kelli_anderson_design_to_challenge_reality.html

     It turned out that this lecture greatly affected my creativity.  Kelli Anderson starts the lecture off by describing herself as an artist who searches for hidden talents of everyday things.  Also she begins to describe why she designs certain things.  She mentions that things that are visual has great power over our brains.  Type, shape, color, and texture can come together to create just about anything.  To summarize her talk, she explains that thinking about everyday things in a new and creative way can lead to changing reality.  To use our class terms, the "P" in SCAMPER, which is put to other uses, is what she elaborates on.  "Doing something better by doing something more absurd" is her concept.

     

     In her talk she gives three examples of this.  One of those was a wedding invitation:

     This wedding invitation doubles as a record player.  She managed to uncover the hidden talent of the audio qualities of paper.  It was an actual working record player.  In her description of the invitation she explained that people have certain expectations about media that they should not always possess.  This ties into our classroom discussion about assumption.  Most people have the assumption that paper is quiet.  Because she challenged and reversed this assumption she created something totally different and interesting.

     The next example that she includes in her speech is more of an experiment.  She set out to challenge and reverse the assumption that all newspaper state facts.  Kelli and a team of designers successfully replicated a version of The New York Times.  They formatted it in the same way but filled in with all fake, yet positive and uplifting stories.  They created an alternate reality:

     Instilling the power of positive thinking might empower people to strive for a better future.  The designers created unexpected messages of hope as a result of their creative use of newspaper.  These ideas expand my creativity because they help me to remember to push things beyond their expected role and create the unexpected.  The unexpected will have more of an impact and make a difference in the world around me.