Robin's Interesting Thoughts

“To [the younger] generation, it seems slow, purposeless even to go from website to website in a single, sub-par Web browser environment when they can get rich app experiences right from their [mobile] home screen.”

– Owen Williams, TNW

“The way these creative individuals confront life suggests that it is possible to be both extroverted and introverted at the same time. In fact, expressing the full range from inner- to outer-directedness might be the normal way of being human. What is abnormal is to get boxed in at one of the ends of this continuum, and experience life only as a gregarious, or only as a solitary being.”

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow

“In the absence of information, people make it up.”

-Anonymous

Robert Brunner, director of Apple’s Industrial Design group in the 1990’s, recruited Jony Ive to his team. Some of his thoughts on how he did this are recorded in Jony Ive by Leander Kahney.

Creating a work space:

“[The studio] was essential to recruiting talent. I can’t have people working in cubicle hell. They won’t do it. I have to have an open studio with high ceilings and cool shit going on. That’s just really important. It’s important for the quality of the work. It’s important for getting people to do it.” -Robert Brunner

Getting the word out:

Talented, ambitious designers were more inclined to go to firms with a strong creative history like the Bay Area’s IDEO.

To help with recruiting, Brunner […] started promoting his work through design magazines. He created mock-ups of fantastical Apple products and ran big glossy photos of them on the back of I.D. magazine, the international design bible. One was a gigantic bicycle navigation computer that showed maps and local landmarks. Another was a chunky wristwatch computer the size of a cantaloupe.

“They were concepts, not real products,” said Brunner. “They started to get attention. It was totally recruiting. No other reason. They were sketchy, information appliance models. A little bit tongue in cheek.”

“A particular subculture, dominated by computer engineers, is influencing the world of education to favor those school students who are most like that subculture.”

-Seymour Papert, Mindstorms (1980, p. 35)

“[To be a great manager,] you have to reconcile responsibilities that, at first sight, appear contradictory. You have to be able to set consistent expectations for all your people yet at the same time treat each person differently. You have to be able to make each person feel as though he is in a role that uses his talents, while simultaneously challenging him to grow. You have to care about each person, praise each person, and, if necessary, terminate a person you have cared about and praised.”

-Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
First, Break All The Rules

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has listed nine contradictory traits that are frequently present in the dozens of creative people he has studied. The seeming contradictions make creative people hard to understand. I identify with all of these except number 5.

Some of my favorite seeming contradictions:

• smart and naive
• playful and productive (responsibility and irresponsibility)
• attentive to real detail yet fluent in imagination and fantasy
• genuinely humble yet displaying a strong sense of pride
• rebellious and conservative
• very passionate about their work, but extremely objective about it

Pun intended.

“Simplicity is… trying to define the essence of something and come up with a solution that seems utterly inevitable and obvious. I think a lot of people see simplicity as the lack of clutter. And that’s not the case at all. True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, well, of course.’ Where there’s no rational alternative.”

-Jony Ive [interview]

Genius: teaching kids empathy by letting them interact with a baby and mother, and encouraging them to talk about what they see. This is the most compelling curriculum for social and emotional learning (SEL) that I have seen.

“An amazing opportunity for life lessons that don’t involve getting in trouble.” -Mary Gordon [TEDx video]