So You Think You're Creative?

Studio 360 revisits an episode that explores the source of creativity: 

We're always talking about creativity, but what do we mean? Can we find creativity, can we measure it, can we encourage it? Kurt talks with Gary Marcus, a psychology professor about what science tells us about creativity. A researcher puts jazz musicians into an fMRI machine and has them improvise; an intrepid reporter gets her creativity tested and scored; and a little girl introduces us to her imaginary friends (all of them).

Stephen Fry Hates Dancing

Stephen Fry Hates Dancing turns a monologue on the myriad ways in which the British comedian and actor hates rhythmic human movement into a strange celebration of the art through a spirited interpretive-dance reenactment/rebuttal. Directed, choreographed and performed by the US dancer and filmmaker Jo Roy, the result is a delightfully charged piece of performance art that’s utterly engaging, whichever side of the dance divide you tap your feet.

Ada Lovelace, the First Tech Visionary

Betsy Morais, The New Yorker:

Augusta Ada Lovelace is known as the first computer programmer, and, since 2009, she has been recognized annually on October 15th to highlight the often overlooked contributions of women to math and science. The main event is being held today at Imperial College London, with the début of an anthology of essays, “A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention.” “I started to think that one of the biggest parts of the problem was that women in tech are often invisible,” Suw Charman-Anderson, the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, told me. After reading a study in 2006 by the psychologist Penelope Lockwood, who researched the dearth of female role models in the sciences, Charman-Anderson thought that a fête for Lovelace could raise awareness of her noteworthy successors. This year, dozens of celebrations will be thrown around the world, including an “Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon” at Brown University, where volunteers will ramp up Wikipedia entries for female scientists.

Cap Watkins: Treat Your Life Like a User Experience Problem

Too often, the product design, product management, and engineering teams are thought of as three separate entities. This divide, according to Cap Watkins, the VP of Design at Buzzfeed, can lead designers to feel undervalued or even defensive when the product managers or engineers attempt to make suggestions to their work. Having realized this battle at Buzzfeed, Watkins proposed the question: “How do we create a culture of empowerment for design?”

In this 99u talk, Watkins provides a step-by-step process to blur the lines between the different product building teams in an effort to get feedback on not only the work being done, but also the process on how that work gets done. Change is complicated and creating the internal partnerships will adjust the way people work, ultimately for the better. “We have to realize that working together doesn’t mean we’re trying to take each others job,” says Watkins. “We’re just trying to be better collaborators.”

The Accidental Power of Design

Graphic designer Michael Rock, writing for The New York Times: 

The basic motivation for design is the very human desire for coherence. With so much designed in the world, we begin to take its results for granted. Often, what we have conjured assumes the sheen of inevitability, as if its results were inalienable facts in the world rather than the product of someone’s ideas and actions. In other words, design solidifies, and naturalizes, things that start off as opinions, stories and traditions, supplying form to the fictions by which we live. We rarely stop to consider the faith-based proposition represented by our paper money or the imagined national narratives engendered by borders. Unlike words, the meaning of which can be debated, the objective materiality of designed objects exudes a unique power. Once established, it’s difficult to think outside the systems and structures these objects represent.