Creativity on a schedule

Many moons ago when I was producing pithy 3 minute packages for Television News Magazine shows, my workflow went something like this:

• Assemble crew and gather footage / interviews on location.
• Review footage, write script, and choose relevant material for the next day's edit.
• Have no idea how I was going to direct the edit.
• Put everything out of my mind, go home, sleep.
• Wake up the next morning and know exactly what I was going to do for the edit.
• Walk into the edit suite with a large cup of coffee a bust out a great package in 6 hours.

It was automatic and it worked every single time.  You would think that by now I'd have my creative workflow figured out.  I've worked on creative deadlines all my life and it's never been a problem.  Until now.

My thesis has turned into one hell of a bear to wrassle with. It's an exercise in creative writing and pegging down a multi-threaded narrative.  I have direction or at least I'm pretty sure I know where I'm going with it.  But the actual act of sitting down and writing is proving to be far more difficult than I had originally anticipated.

At first I thought it was a case of working some creaky old muscles I haven't worked in year.  And even through I think the writing is coming along (or a least improving incrementally) it's the act of just sitting down and engaging in a session that's just not getting any easier.

15 years I was younger and had fewer personal responsibilities.  I look back on it now and can't fathom how much free time I had.  And I think that's the crux of my issue.  I need moments of quiet reflection to get my head in the space to process what I need to do and put me in a position to execute. These days I have precious little time.  I have my job which demands the lion's share of the attention day to day.  I have kids.  I have adult responsibilities with adult worries.

Occasionally I get a burst of inspiration and if I'm able I rush over to the nearest computer and can get a fair amount of work done.  Most of the time, though, it's like pulling teeth.  So what's the solution here?  I need to get this done.  I'm making progress, but not as much as I would like.  And it's honestly not a good as I'd like it to be.  Still, IT HAS TO GET DONE.

I suppose I need to make peace with the process and use whatever creative juices dribble out.  And when there's nothing there, just solider on and do the best I can.

Jammin' with Jager

Attending a talk with Michael Jager is a bit like being in an information blender set to "liquify".  It's a constant barrage of ideas and concept that while never boring, is nonetheless difficult to parse.

Although they have a varied clientel, JDK is perhaps best know for their work with Burton snowboards and Microsoft Xbox.  It was their work with Xbox that I find the most interesting, but not because of the design and marketing work they did. 

Side Note:  I never liked the Burton spots, but then again I am so not the market for Burton.

I find it intriguing because Micrsoft has a brand that is lothed by so many.  Micro$oft, Microshaft, Windoze, etc.  The list goes on and on.  It is considered a faceless corporate monolith only interested in delivering bad product and services, taking your money, and maintaining a stranglehold on innovation.  So why work with a company so universally loathed?

I think the Microsoft doesn't always get a fair shake.  I'm coming at the from the perspective of an avid game player, but in the earlier days of computer gaming, it was the openess of their operating system (DOS) that allowed game developers to fourish, experiment, and push the technological boundaries of the PC.  Meanwhile, Apple's closed system actively sought to stifle game.  Expansion was difficult if not impossible.

When Windows 3.1 launched it was notoriously bad for games.  Developers continued to make games in DOS.  Microsoft saw what was happening, got the best gaming minds together and asked them what windows needed to do to run games better.  The result of this reaching out was DirectX, which is the building block of nearly all PC games.

Getting back to Michael Jager and Xbox, I think he saw past the bullshit and connected with the Xbox team on a personal level.  Saw what they were doing and was able to help them craft a message that resonated with the public.  For a relative newcomer to home videogame consoles, Microsoft has done remarkably well capturing their target (heh) market and becoming a household name.  Even Microsoft detractors have to admit, they knock this one out of the park.

Interactive Interactions

While we are certainly not the only animals on the planet to do so, human beings are perhaps best known as users of tools.  It is this evolving relationship with these devices we have incorporated into our lives that helps to defines us.  How we choose to interact with the world around us colors our cultural perspective.  With what we choose to interact is also clearly dependent on our environment.  In short, we are what we do (…apologies to Jung for pulling that quote completely out of context).

In the last 20 years computers and the internet have become invaluable tools.  They are nearly inextricable from our daily live.  They are also head-scratchingly difficult to use.  Part of this is due to the open nature of what computing is capable of in a world where nearly all media has been touched by digitization.  But it’s also because computers haven’t been around long enough to enjoy the benefits of numerous iterative design cycles.  Consider how many revisions mundane objects like toothbrushes and toasters have gone through.   Compared to the lowly toothbrush, computers have been with us for an insignificant spec of time.  And for most of that time, computers have been the stomping grounds of engineers and technicians.

Until recently, little thought has gone into how normal everyday people would interact with computers.  If we can agree that the notion of “interaction” is akin to a kind of conversation with the tools we use, and “interface” as the method in which we convey our message, working with a computer is a bit like an English person trying to talk to a  French person through a Japanese interpreter.  It’s the interface that’s getting in the way.

Fortunately, we have been making great strides over that last 5 years or so.   The smartphone revolution is a great example of that.  Earlier mobile phones had tons of functionality shrouded by a mostly impenetrable interface.   Sure, my Dad could probably figure out how to create and maintain a contact list on his old phone, but the learning curve was not worth the effort need to achieve a desirable result.  His old analog address book worked just as well.  However, the moment I handed him my iPhone, he almost instinctively understood how to use it.  Interactions with the device nearly always provided instant and logical feedback.  He was learning how to talk to the device, but it was so painless he didn’t even realize he was learning.  It just seemed natural.

Although we’ve come a long way in a short time, there are still computerized devices in our homes that are inexplicably complicated to use.  Tivo is the most easy and elegant DVR interface ever invented.  Why is my Comcast DVR counterintuitive in nearly every way?  Is it because it’s just barely good enough to be functional for 90% of the consumers?  I would predict that in the near future there will be some interface standardization initiated by what we’ve seen in smartphones.  Devices will adopt context sensitive screens instead of modal buttons.

More importantly, I suspect there will be huge changes in interaction, and by that I’m mean the flow of the conversation.  A lot of our interactions with these machines are what I would categorize as “call and response”.   We tell the machine to do something; it does it, spits out the result, and waits for the next input.   We are already seeing devices anticipating our needs based on past interactions.  This kind of adaptive interaction will become more prominent in the future.  Our dialogue with our tools will become more participatory and less authoritarian.