Quotes About Creativity

If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough—they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.

We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise. Machines require precision and accuracy; people don't. And we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs. So

If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough—they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things.

When people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentration upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem.

A positive emotional state is ideal for creative thought, but it is not very well suited for getting things done.

the first edition of this book, then called POET, The Psychology of Everyday Things, I started with these lines: "This is the book I always wanted to write, except I didn't know it." Today I do know it, so I simply say, "This is the book I always wanted to write.

Engineers and businesspeople are trained to solve problems. Designers are trained to discover the real problems. A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.

How does the product manager keep the entire team on schedule despite the apparent random and divergent methods of designers? Encourage their free exploration, but hold them to the schedule (and budget) constraints. There is nothing like a firm deadline to get creative minds to reach convergence.

In the absence of external information, people can let their imagination run free as long as the conceptual models they develop account for the facts as they perceive them. As

It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.

In the absence of external information, people can let their imagination run free as long as the conceptual models they develop account for the facts as they perceive them.

The psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that being happy broadens the thought processes and facilitates creative thinking.

We have long known that when people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentrating upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem.

attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively. How does that make something easier to use? Simple, by making it easier for people to find solutions to the problems they encounter.

Attractive things do work better—their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties. The three levels of processing lead to three corresponding forms of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Each plays a critical role in human behavior, each an equally critical role in the design, marketing, and use of products.

Our strengths are in our flexibility and creativity, in coming up with solutions to novel problems. We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise. Machines require precision and accuracy; people don't. And we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs. So why are we always required to do so? Why do we put the requirements of machines above those of people?

Great designers produce pleasurable experiences.

With open-source software, inexpensive open-source 3-D printers, and even open-source education, we can transform the world.

the writer is [...] the work's way of getting itself written

Machines are braver than art.

you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures...

The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.

The combinatory agility of words," he wrote in "Not-Knowing," "the exponential generation of meaning once they're allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven't yet encountered.

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else.