Issue 71

WELCOME

Being Designerly #71 contains curated articles about the designerly behavior of Curiosity, AI & Creativity, creative process, brainstorming questions, ways to be more curious, Adobe's AI guidance, and designing for foldable screens.

FEATURE

Being Designerly - Cultivate Curiosity

In this series of posts about Being Designerly, we explore ways to be more creative by thinking, feeling, and acting like a designer. This short excerpt from a book-in-progress is about Cultivating Curiosity and ways to cultivate curiosity

CREATIVITY

AI Could Help Free Human Creativity

Imagine the future of creativity in a world of generative AI that enables us to map choices as never before—to explore exponentially more combinations of choices, compare and contrast infinite approaches at a glance, and constantly test new ideas.

AI will not necessarily come up with our best ideas for us. But it will greatly reduce the cost—in time, money, and effort—of generating new ideas by instantaneously revealing untold options.

How Can Designers Spur Creativity?

What are the key conditions for optimal creativity? They lie in the balance between familiarity and novelty, according to neuroscientist and adjunct professor at Stanford, David Eagleman.

A short read. Really short.

CURIOSITY

The creative process is fabulously unpredictable. A great idea cannot be predicted

In this episode of McKinsey's Quarterly Interview: Provocations to Ponder, Jony Ive, the former design head of Apple, talks about what it takes for the creative process to thrive at any company.

Jony: "I love working with people who are curious. I can work very closely and very effectively with anyone who’s curious. One of the benefits of working closely with a large number of people who are curious is that you learn as a community. There’s this incredible power when you discover and learn together. At the end of a group project, I look at two things: I look at what we made, but far more important, I look at what we learned."

5 habits to increase your curiosity

Curiosity not only drives artistic and scientific pursuits, but also introspection and personal growth. To be more curious, determine what intrinsically motivates you, how to ask better questions, and how to make curiosity its own reward.

Can we cultivate more curiosity in our lives? And if so, how? Read on for 5 habits to increase your curiosity

The power of curiosity: Unlocking growth, relationships and conflicts

There may be a secret to continuously growing throughout our lives. A key ingredient that leads to a rich, successful life with deep impact and high-quality relationships. Curiosity.

That’s what the president of Birkman International, a behavioral assessment company headquartered in Houston, believes, and she has reason to know a thing or two about what makes us tick.

“Always withhold judgment, be curious and assume positive intent,” she says.

Brainstorm Questions Not Ideas

Start brainstorming questions. Getting together and listing every question you can think of about a problem, a process, or a situation is uncomfortable at first, and then in very short order enhances collaboration, decreases risk and puts you on the path to being a learning organization.

Whether you’re confronting a lack of clarity or a wellspring of curiosity, getting it out in the open contributes to shared understanding and shared goals, and is far more efficient than pretending mutual understanding. You can fire up the Mystery Machine and investigate together.

UX

Google on what makes good foldable and Pixel Fold apps

Read about Google's three design principles to “make the most of the extra screen space on large screen Android devices”, and peek at five apps that employ these important design principles for foldable devices.

TOPICAL

Adobe Rules on How to Use ChatGPT, Other Generative AI Apps at Work

Adobe employees can't use personal email accounts or corporate credit cards when signing up for AI tools, like ChatGPT. They should also opt out of allowing AI apps to use their data for machine learning training, and never share personal or non-public Adobe data, including financial information. These restrictions are part of Adobe's internal guidelines for using generative AI tools at work, according to a company-wide email from Chief Information Officer Cindy Stoddard.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

For the first time in 3 years, the next newsletter may be a week late as I enjoy summer break.

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