Susan M. Weinschenk's Blog, page 4

100 More Things #159: DAYDREAMING ENCOURAGES CREATIVITY

Now that you know about the three brain networks that are involved in the creative process, there’s some related research to be aware of.

Some of this research focuses on daydreaming. Daydreaming refers to the thoughts and images people have when their attention turns inward—when they’re in default network mode.

Most scientists today use the term “mind wandering” instead of daydreaming. This is probably because the term “daydreaming” has taken on negative connotations.

Rebecca McMillan (2013) wrote about the history of research into daydreaming. The first scientist to study daydreaming was Jerome Singer, starting in 1955.

Productive Vs. Pathological

Most psychologists in Singer’s early research years thought daydreaming was nonproductive and even pathological. Singer was the first researcher to claim that positive constructive daydreaming was normal, widespread, and is what most people are doing up to 50 percent of the time. And he was the first researcher to make the connection between daydreaming and creativity.

Singer actually divided daydreaming into three types: positive constructive daydreaming (wishful thinking, creative thoughts), guilty-dysphoric daydreaming (obsessive thoughts and fantasies), and poor attentional control (an inability to concentrate on the task at hand). Only positive constructive daydreaming is related to the default network.

Note
Daydreaming can be intentional or it can happen without you realizing you’ve slipped into it. You can, however, tell when people are daydreaming: their pupils dilate and they blink more (Romain Grandchamp, 2011).

Getting Over The Bad Rap Of Daydreaming

Despite the research about the importance of daydreaming to creativity, many people are still uncomfortable with the idea. Many of us grew up getting into trouble for daydreaming, because the adults in our lives took it to mean that we were not paying attention.

And, as adults, many of us work in corporate cultures that also say it’s not OK for us to sit at our desks, stare off into space, and “do nothing” for a while. It might actually be the most productive thing you can do.

Takeaways

Don’t be afraid to daydream. It will heighten your creativity.When you work in a place that discourages daydreaming, share the research on daydreaming with the people you work with and with your supervisor.When you’re working on a creative idea or solving a problem, set aside specific time for daydreaming every day until the solution or idea comes to you.

100 More Things #158: INDUCE AN AHA MOMENT

We’ve all had the experience: you’re trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea. You’ve been sitting at your desk, or discussing it in meetings, but you haven’t come up with a solution or the right idea. Then you step away—go for a walk, go to lunch, do some housework, or go to sleep (engage the default network)—and suddenly you have an aha moment. The answer comes to you in a flash. Why does that happen?

So far this chapter has discussed the first two steps in the creative process:

Setting the problem or idea with the executive attention network.Stepping away to engage the default network.

The aha solution comes from the third network involved in the creative process: the salience network.

The Monitor

The salience network constantly monitors everything that’s going on in your brain. It monitors the stream of information coming in externally from the senses, and it monitors the executive attention network and the default network. The salience network monitors it all. It compares all the possible alternatives that the default network came up with against the problem or idea set in the executive attention network. When it finds the best (most salient) alternative, the salience network brings that idea to consciousness, and you have the aha moment.

The salience network works best if you’ve asked a clear question or posed a clear problem or idea in the executive attention network, and if you’ve stepped away and stopped using your prefrontal cortex so that the default network has been engaged.

Three Networks Working Together

People who are productively creative follow a process that includes these three networks. Your creative process may be specific to you, but to maximize your creativity, be sure you’re using the three networks. Here’s an example of the process:

Write down your initial ideas in a notebook or draw a picture of the problem you want to solve. It doesn’t matter what the format is as long as you spend some concentrated time focusing on the problem. This is the executive attention network.Step away, whether it’s to take a walk, listen to music, or clean the house. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you step away. This is the default network.Be prepared to grab the aha ideas when they come. Because the salience network does its work behind the scenes, you don’t have to do anything in particular to get it to work.

Takeaways

Your creative process should include time to concentrate on the idea or problem.Your creative process should include time to step away.Always carry a recording device or pen and paper with you, because you never know when the salience network will do its work and provide you with an answer.When you’re problem solving or working creatively with a team, follow the same steps as you would for solo problem solving.

Our Top 5 Most Popular Posts

We are always interested in which of our blog posts are the most read. Below is a list of the top 5 from reviewing our analytics of the blog.

I thought the post about all capital letters and whether they are inherently harder to read would be in the top 5 and it is. Always a controversial topic! I also thought the post about dopamine would be in here.

But I was surprised by a few, for example, one of the posts (#3) was actually the very first “100 Things” post that I wrote and posted on the blog in 2009. It was the beginning of the “100 Things” journey that eventually led to my book 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People.

Hope you enjoy checking out these top 5 from the last few years:

#1: A 2nd Edition of one of our books

2nd Edition of 100 MORE things every designer needs to know about people

#2: Evaluating photos

15 Questions To Ask Yourself When Evaluating A Photo

#3: About Inattention Blindness

100 Things You Should Know about People: #1– You Have "Inattention Blindness"

#4: myth that Tall capital letters are harder to read

100 Things You Should Know About People: #19 — It’s a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read

#5: How dopamine makes us seek more information

100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information

Which are your favorites?

100 More Things #157: TO BE CREATIVE, ENGAGE THE BRAIN’S DEFAULT NETWORK

You’re at work, it’s after lunch, and you realize you’re sitting at your desk, staring into space, and not thinking about anything in particular. Your brain is, relatively speaking, at rest. Your mind is wandering. What would your brain activity show at this moment?
The default network engages when you’re not doing anything in particular. You could say that it’s your brain activity when your brain is at rest, but the truth is that there’s a lot of brain activity when the default network is operating.

Randy Buckner, a neuroscientist at Harvard, first wrote about the default network in a 2008 journal article. The default network was discovered accidentally. Researchers were studying the brain activity of people who were given certain tasks to do. Some participants in the study were told just to sit and think about nothing in particular as part of a control condition in the experiments. Initially this data was not even analyzed, but some researchers began to notice that there was quite a lot of brain activity in certain areas when people were supposedly not thinking about anything in particular.

The Brain Isn’t Really At Rest

Even though the default network was initially considered brain activity during a resting state, the brain is actually just as active—or more active—in this state than when it’s working on a specific task. Researchers now think of this not as a resting state, but as more of an internally focused state.

Continued research on the default network shows that it’s active when people are exploring mental simulations—when they’re preparing for events that they think may happen, before they happen. When people run through simulations based on their past experiences, when they think about the future, when they imagine alternative scenarios, and when they think about the perspectives of others in their situation—it’s this default network that is active.

Note
The default network includes inner parts of the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, as well as some regions of the parietal cortex.

The Default Network’s Role In Creativity

As noted earlier in this chapter, the creative process starts when you focus on an idea or a problem with the executive attention network. The default network is involved in the next step in the creative process. The default network runs through alternatives for the idea or problem you’re trying to solve.

The default network does simulations, goes through your memory to look for things that you’ve experienced in the past that might be relevant, and imagines possible alternatives ideas and solutions.
The default network is critical for the creative process.

It’s important to set the idea or problem in the executive attention network first, but then you have to stop using the executive attention network. The two networks can’t operate at the same time. You need the default network to look for ideas and connections, and run through possible alternatives. If you keep concentrating on the problem or idea, then you’re using the executive attention network and not your default network. You have to step away if you want to be creative.

Why stepping away makes you more creative

How do you stop the executive attention network from working?

Go do something else. Take a break, especially one that doesn’t involve concentrated thinking. Go for a walk, weed the garden, take a shower, or clean up the house, and then your default network can activate.

Note: Take breaks while writing

I get a lot of exercise and a clean house when I’m writing a book. I’ll start working on a new chapter and then have to go do something else. I take a walk, do some yoga, wash the dishes, or do laundry. This book is no exception!

Takeaways

Once you set the intention or ask the right question of the executive attention network, the next step in the creative process is to stop thinking about the problem or idea so the default network can engage.When you have a problem to solve or need a creative idea, take a break and do something that requires little or no concentrated thought.

5 Things to keep in mind when designing for humans

These are not the only things to think about when designing, but these 5 are some of the most important principles:

Not everyone is like you — we tend to design things that we like and that make sense to us, but unless you are exactly like your target audience (you won’t be), designing for yourself won’t necessarily work for everyone else. You have to get to know your target audience, design for them, and then test to be sure. People are easily distracted — it’s possible (and likely) that when people are using what you’ve designed they are not even paying that close attention. They are talking with someone, or walking through an airport, or thinking about something else. You have to evaluate your design from the point of view of a distracted human. People make mistakes — no matter how carefully you’ve designed your product people will make mistakes. Prevent as many as you can, but also be forgiving — make it easy for them to back up and make changes. Too many choices = no choice at all — People like to have lots of choices, but if you give them too many choices they won’t choose anything. You have to find a balance between enough options, but not so many that no choice is made. People gate out information they don’t need — Just because you put something on a screen doesn’t mean people “saw” it.  People only pay attention to what they need to know in the moment and forget everything else. Don’t assume that seen = remembered.

Remember: the more you know about people the better you design.

100 More Things #156: CREATIVITY STARTS WITH THE EXECUTIVE ATTENTION NETWORK

You may associate creativity with being loose and free. You may imagine a painter having no plan and throwing paint at a canvas to see what happens. You may imagine a composer sitting at a piano and letting his hands wander up and down the keys to just hear what sounds might come out. Exploring your tools or instruments now and then in an unconstrained way is probably a good idea, and may at some point help you to be more creative, but this isn’t the process that leads to creativity most of the time.

Research on the brain and creativity tells us that the first step in creativity is to focus intensely. Whether you’re trying to solve a problem at work or create a new musical masterpiece, being creative starts with focus.

Brain Networks, Not Structures

When most writers write about the brain (including me), they tend to write about particular brain areas, for example, the fusiform facial area for processing human faces, or the parts of the brain that process sound, or emotions. Vinod Menon and Steven Bressler (2010) started writing a few years ago about what they call “large-scale brain networks.”

Instead of thinking about particular structures in the brain, neuroscientists, following Menon and Bressler’s lead, are now looking at how different parts of the brain are networked together, what each particular network does, and even how the networks interact. These brain networks are a critical part of understanding the neuroscience of creativity.

The Executive Attention Network

The first network you need to know about is the executive attention network. When this network is active, you’re concentrating. And it turns out that if you want to be creative, then the first thing you need to do is activate the executive attention network. Creativity starts with intense focus on an issue, idea, or a problem. This is when you set your intention for the problem to be solved, or the creative idea to be worked on.

Note
The executive attention network includes part of the outer area of the prefrontal cortex and some areas at the back of the parietal lobe.

Ask The Right Question

To use your executive attention network to help you creatively solve a problem or come up with a new idea, make sure you’re focusing on the right problem or idea.

You can get so caught up in the problem you’re trying to solve, or the creative idea you want to come up with, that you focus immediately on the solution. But before you focus on the solution, you have to ask the right question. If you don’t start with the right question, then your executive attention network will be focusing on the wrong issue.
Here’s an example from one of my clients, an online clothing retailer. “We have these videos that show some of our most popular apparel items,” the client told me. “How can we get people to watch more videos at our website? If people watch the videos, they’re more likely to buy the product, and so we want to know how we can change the product page so that the videos display right away and automatically.”

That’s an example of not asking the right question. If we didn’t stop and ask, “Is that the right question?” we might have come up with a creative solution like having the videos start as soon as the customer gets to the product page. But is that the best, most creative solution?

There are several other questions that might be better to concentrate on, for example:

“Why aren’t people watching the videos?”

or

“Are there other design changes we could make that would increase sales?”

When you’re trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea, make sure you’re asking the right question. Don’t assume that the question at hand is the best or right one. Give the executive attention network the best question to concentrate on.

Takeaways

To spark your creativity, ask yourself a question or set your intention. This will activate your executive attention network. Be specific about what you’re going to work on.Make sure you’re asking the right question. Spend time crafting the question so your brain networks will be solving the best problem or giving you ideas for the best outcome.

100 More Things #155: EVERYONE CAN BE CREATIVE

Creativity isn’t a trait that some people have and others don’t. Before I explain why that’s true, let me first define what I mean by creativity. If 100 people looked at the same abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, many of them might say, “Oh, that artist is really creative,” but not everyone. If 100 people listened to music by Philip Glass, some might say, “That composer is creative”, but not everyone would say so.

What if 100 people went to a fashion show? Would everyone say that the clothing designers are creative? Or what if they saw a graffiti artist’s work on a wall—would they say that the artist is creative? What about people who design technology? Are they creative?

There are many possible definitions of creativity. We probably won’t agree entirely on the definition or on the results. However, here’s a definition I’ve put together that I find descriptive and useful:

Creativity is the process of generating new ideas, possibilities, or alternatives that result in outcomes that are original and of value.
Here’s why I like this definition:

Process—The word “process” is in the definition. So, creativity isn’t a trait that some people have and other people don’t. There’s actually a creative process that you can follow.Outcomes—Just doing the process isn’t necessarily being creative. If you follow a creative process, and by doing so you end up with something, that’s an outcome. Being creative means that you have something when you’re done.Original—The definition includes the word “original.” Being creative isn’t just copying what somebody else did. When you’re creative, you end up with something unique.Value—When you’re creative, the outcome is of value to someone. It doesn’t have to be of value to everyone, but it has to be of value to someone.

Even with this definition, we may not necessarily agree on who’s creative and who’s not. But the definition gives us a place to start talking about creativity, and a way to evaluate whether or not a particular activity is creative.

Myths About Creativity

Let’s clear up some myths about creativity:

Some people are “naturally” creative and other people aren’t. It’s true that some people spend more time in creative activity than others. But brain science is clear about the fact that there are creative brain states that can be turned on by some fairly simple actions. This means that everyone can learn how to be more creative.Creativity means creating “works of art.” Being creativity doesn’t equate only with creating fine art, such as painting a landscape or writing a symphony. There are many ways to be creative, and creating works of art is just one way. Creativity includes many things, for example, cooking, programming, interface design, and problem solving.Some people are left-brained (analytical) and others are right-brained (creative). My PhD research was on the right and left halves of the brain, so I can get pretty involved in a conversation about the subject. The human brain has two hemispheres: the left and the right. It’s a common misconception that the left side of the brain is all about being logical and analytical and rational, and the right side of the brain is all about being intuitive and creative. That description is not accurate.

Here’s a summary of what’s true and what’s myth:

There is a left and a right side of the brain, and it’s true that there are some brain structures on one side that aren’t on the other. For instance, the ability to speak and to understand language is on the left, and some spatial awareness is on the right. However, it’s simplistic to say that when you listen to music, you’re listening to it only with the right side of your brain. Even people who don’t play an instrument show activity on both sides of the brain when listening to music. (Although those who play an instrument show more activity in more areas of the brain than those who don’t.) It’s simplistic to say that the right side is the creative side.The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right halves of the brain. Information (nerve impulses) passes through the corpus callosum very quickly. So even if something started on one side of the brain, it doesn’t stay there very long.When people say “I’m a left-brained person” or “I’m a right-brained person,” they’re actually not referring to sides of the brain. They’re referring to styles of thinking, learning, or processing information. There are different ways to process information, but they don’t correspond to specific halves of the brain.

So if these aren’t true, what is true about brain science and creativity? The rest of this chapter describes the research on the brain and creativity as well as the implications for what you can do to stimulate creativity in yourself and others.

Takeaways

Don’t worry about being right-brained or left-brained. Everyone can apply what they know about brain science to be more creative.You don’t have to be “artistic” to be creative. You can be creative no matter what you’re doing. For example, you can creatively solve a problem.

100 More Things #154: PEOPLE CAN FEEL EMPATHY FOR MACHINES

People’s interactions with machines are moving beyond anthropomorphism and trust. People are now encountering situations in which they’re developing social relationships with machines and robots.

Kate Darling is a research specialist at the MIT Media Lab. She conducts research with a dinosaur toy called Pleo that looks like a baby dinosaur. Darling has people interact with Pleo first on their own, and then she asks them to do hurtful things to Pleo: hitting him, holding him upside down, holding him by the neck, and so on.

Pleo makes distressing noises when people do these things to him. Darling finds that people don’t like to hurt the toy, even though they know it’s not alive and can’t feel what is being done to it.

Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten (2013) used an fMRI machine to study empathy toward machines. She had people watch videos. Sometimes the video showed a person being treated roughly or harmed, and sometimes it was the Pleo toy being hurt.

The same areas of the brain were active when people saw the person or the Pleo being treated poorly.

Confiding in an anthropomorphic robot

BlabDroid is a small, simple-looking robot that asks questions (in a voice that sounds like a small boy), and films the interaction. BlabDroid tells you what button to press to get started, asks questions, and then films the interaction. The questions include:

“If there was no money, and no law, what would be the first thing you would do?” “What is the last risk you took?”“Who do you love most in the world?” “When do you feel the most nervous?” “What are you the most proud of?”“If you died tomorrow, what would you regret the most?”

You can watch BlabDroid in action at https://areben.com/project/blabdroid

A creation of Alexander Reben, BlabDroid is remarkable for eliciting open and vulnerable responses from the people it talks to. And BlabDroid is just a box made out of cardboard with a smile on it.

Takeaways

When you’re designing the interface of a social machine, realize that people are likely to feel empathy and be willing to talk openly with the machine or robot. Think ahead about how you will handle issues of confidentiality and privacy.When you want people to feel empathy, make the machine a little bit like a human.Don’t ask people to do things to machines or robots that they would be uncomfortable doing to another person (for example, acting threatening or violent).

100 More Things #153: PEOPLE TRUST MACHINES THAT HAVE SOME HUMAN-LIKE CHARACTERISTICS

How do you design interactions between people and machines when the machines are now doing tasks that humans used to do? What do people expect from these machines, and how do people react to their design?

Anthropomorphism And Trust

Adam Waytz, Joy Heafner, and Nicholas Epley (2014) wanted to know if giving machines more human-like qualities would increase the amount of trust that people had in the machine. They tested how anthropomorphism would affect trust. They define anthropomorphism as:

a process of inductive inference whereby people attribute to nonhumans distinctively human characteristics, particularly the capacity for rational thought (agency) and conscious feeling (experience)

The researchers’ idea was that if a machine were seen to be more human, then it would be seen to be more thoughtful, more mindful. They hypothesized that people trust people who are more thoughtful, and so they would trust machines that seem more thoughtful, too. Thoughtfulness is something that people attribute to other people. If people think an autonomous car or a robot reading x-rays is just a “mindless” machine, they won’t trust it as much. Conversely, if the machine seems to be “thinking” more like a human, then people will think the machine will be better able to control its own actions— it’s being mindful, not mindless.

In their experiment, the researchers used a driving simulator and engineered the simulation so that there was an accident in which participants were struck by an oncoming car. The simulation made it obvious that the accident was caused by a human driver in the other car.

Participants were assigned to either a normal, agentic, or anthropomorphic condition:

In the normal condition, the participants were driving, with no automatic features from the car.In the agentic condition, the participants drove an autonomous car. The car controlled its own steering and speed. Participants in this condition were told what was going to happen, and how and when to use the autonomous features.In the anthropomorphic condition, the participants drove the same autonomous car, but in addition to being told what was going to happen and how to use the autonomous features, the experimenter referred to the car with the name Iris, and referred to the car as a “she.” A human voice was also attributed to the car. The voice spoke at certain times during the simulation, and gave the instructions.

Participants in the agentic and anthropomorphic conditions first drove on a practice course to try out the autonomous features. Then everyone in all the conditions drove the course.

Participants in the anthropomorphic condition blamed their car less for the accident than did those in the normal or agentic conditions. Participants in the anthropomorphic group rated the car as having more human-like mental capacities than people in the agentic group. They trusted their car more, and showed a more relaxed heart rate when the “accident” occurred.

Beware Of The Uncanny Valley

Some humanizing of a machine makes people more willing to trust it, but how far does that go?

Anthropomorphizing entails acting like a human, but not necessarily looking like one. People who design robots have to be careful about what’s called “the uncanny valley.”

The uncanny valley is the idea that as things, particularly robots and animated characters, become more realistic, they eventually hit a point where people find them creepy and nonhuman. This is due to small inconsistencies, for example, the skin texture or the reflection in the eyes may seem a bit off. People unconsciously notice these things because these are attributes that they observe daily in interactions with others.

The uncanny valley theory originated from Masahiro Mori, while working with robotics in the 1970s. An article of his from the 1970s was recently translated into English (2012).

Mori’s theory was that people’s reactions to robots range from lack of connection to comfort and connection to alienation, depending on how lifelike the robot is. If the robot is a little bit like a person, then people will feel empathy and connection. But if it becomes very human-like without getting past the “not quite human” feeling, then people’s reaction turns to revulsion. Figure 53.1 shows a graph of the relationship between people’s comfort level with the robot or machine compared to the degree of human-likeness. The place where the comfort level dips dramatically is the uncanny valley.

FIGURE 53.1 The uncanny valley.

Research by Christine Looser (2010) shows that it is the deadness of the eyes that makes people feel that the robot is not human and that it is creepy.

The uncanny valley exists for robots, machines, and animated characters.

Takeaways

When you design an interface for a machine that’s doing tasks that humans usually do, build in some human-like (anthropomorphic) characteristics.Don’t design a machine or animation that looks and acts exactly like a human unless you can take it all the way.

100 More Things #152: CELL PHONES NEARBY NEGATIVELY AFFECT PERSON-TO-PERSON COMMUNICATION

Imagine that you’re sitting in a restaurant with a friend and he takes his smartphone out of his pocket, turns off the sound, and puts it off to the side, face down, on the table. He doesn’t touch it all through the meal you have together. He doesn’t look at it, text with it, or even glance at it. Can the mere presence of the phone change your relationship with him?

The answer is yes, and not for the better!

Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein (2013) studied how the presence of a cell phone affects the way people communicate with each other.

The idea from social psychologists is this: Because people use their mobile devices to stay connected with people who are not in close proximity, it’s easy to build a conditioned response to the device and think of it as “everyone else.” When the device, for example, a smartphone, is sitting on the table at the restaurant, it is representing the rest of its owner’s social network. In a way, his whole social network is actually at the restaurant.

The smartphone will therefore trigger thinking about other people and other events outside the immediate context, which will in turn divert attention away from the experiences that are occurring at the particular time and place.

Some of this may occur consciously, but some of this “not being present” occurs unconsciously. Social psychologists, including Przybylski and Weinstein, theorize that these devices can, therefore, have a negative impact on person-to-person relationships.

To research the idea, they ran two experiments. In the first experiment people who did not know each other were assigned to pairs, asked to leave all their personal belongings outside the room, and then told to “Discuss an interesting event that occurred to you over the past month,” for 10 minutes. For half of the pairs, there was a mobile phone (not belonging to either person) on top of a book. The book was on a nearby desk, but not in the direct visual field of the participants. The other half of the pairs had the same room setup, but without a mobile phone.

After the 10-minute discussion, each participant individually filled out forms to measure things such as relationship quality, closeness, and positive affect.

The pairs that had been in the room with the mobile phone felt less close to each other, and rated the relationship lower than the pairs in a room without a cell phone present.

In the second experiment, some of the pairs were instructed to discuss their “thoughts and feelings about plastic holiday trees” (casual condition). Other pairs were instructed to discuss “the most meaningful events of the past year” (meaningful condition). The surveys were the same as in the first experiment, except some new surveys were added to measure trust and empathy.

When the mobile phone was in the room participants gave lower ratings on all the measures, including the new trust and empathy measures. But this effect was stronger in the meaningful condition pairs than the casual condition pairs.

The researchers concluded that simply placing the cell phone in the room interfered with the formation of a new relationship, and that the negative effect of the cell phone was stronger during a meaningful conversation.

Establishing Project Relationships

Although this research may not directly apply to the designs you create, it certainly can apply anytime you meet with clients, stakeholders, users, or your own team. Think about all the meetings you have. Sometimes people ask the group to turn off cell phones, usually to avoid interruptions or distractions. You may want to not only have people turn off their phones, but also put them away. This will make it easier to establish and/or deepen the project relationships as well as establish and increase trust.

Takeaways

When you’re establishing a new relationship with someone, don’t have a cell phone in view.When you’re trying to deepen an interpersonal relationship or get someone to trust you, don’t have a cell phone in view.When you’re in a meeting, model the behavior by not only turning off your cell phone, but actually putting it out of view.When you’re running a meeting, ask everyone to turn off their cell phones and put them out of view.