Delta Thought Patterns: The difference between creative and technical minds

[This article concentrates on creative and technical individuals within an IT environment, but the theory can easily be applied to many other scenarios.]

Due to the simplicity of its underlying architecture, the early world wide web polarised form and function – websites were either works of art or performed some form of technical functionality.

With the advances that have now been achieved, graphically rich websites no longer have to merely be animated artworks, simply to be viewed without actually achieving anything.

Similarly, technical web-based applications are no longer confined to the realms of clunky-looking technical dialogues in a single shade of insipid grey.

One result this cross-pollination has had is in blurring the roles of teams that produce web-based content. Design agencies are increasingly having to deliver technical aspects within the solutions they provide and IT firms are having to add a creative string to their bows in order to meet the expanded expectations of today’s clients.

Managers and team leaders, used to overseeing a purely technical or creative group of expertise, now have to supervise and nurture a cell comprising multiple disciplines.

In most cases, the individual overseeing the group will have a background solely in a technical or creative environment. The challenge to the team leader is not simply to view their newly expanded team as numerically larger, but to appreciate the different needs within the group without introducing potentially damaging segregation.

Passed the same stimulus, the creative and technical mind will analyse and process the information in significantly different ways. Understanding the difference between these two mindsets will enable the team leader to avoid communication issues and utilise each member of the group to their full potential.

This is not to say that technically-minded individuals are incapable of creativity or that creative people cannot perform technical problem solving. Technical experts often need to think creatively when finding the answer to a particularly tricky issue. Creative artists also require technical ability in order to produce the visual output required of them.

There also exists that rare creature who spans both worlds and is able to be technically brilliant while very artistic.

But the majority of people working at the web’s coal face will either be of a creative focus or a technical focus, and the role and function that they excel in demands that the way in which they perceive input is the complete reversal of the other discipline.

Thinking of the single threads within a thought process as rivers, two distinct delta patterns can be applied to problem solving.

Divergent delta thinking (the creative mind)

This thought model takes a single strand of thought and then splits it into multiple new streams, all based upon the original concept. These new strands can also then diverge into an ever-expanding series of parallel thought streams.

A delivery company seeking a new logo will expect the designer to produce a range of options to choose from and will want all of these options to be distinct from their competitors and yet still encapsulate the concept of fast and secure delivery.

And when a second delivery company approaches the designer for a logo, then a whole new set of options will be expected that are different again, despite the identical requirement.

A writer of crime fiction telling a story of a detective solving a murder will be expected to produce a different plot to their previous works and also distinct from all other murder mystery novels that have preceded it.

Although there are times when the creative process produces convergence (a company will whittle down to one final logo, a novel will only have one ending) the majority of the time the creative mind is taking small amounts of material and expanding multiple concepts out of very minimal input.

The creative mind, provided with an image that has too much of the detail filled in, will simply expand the canvas at the edge in order to have room to explore and explode the concept further.

More often than not in web projects, the creative resources are brought in at the end as an afterthought, to ‘pretty things up.’ But creative minds do not just work well on visual aesthetics and can function just as well on exploring all manner of concepts and finding ideas from left of field that would have been left otherwise unexplored.

Too much input given to a creative mind 

will lead to an overwhelming explosion of output.

When presented with an almost complete project (or too much directive input), the creative mind will either start re-exploring the finalised concepts in order to put their creative mind to work or simply shrug and walk away from the project, pointing out that the project is almost complete and so there is little of value they can offer.

Convergent delta thinking (the technical mind)

Here a wide range of separate streams converge and keep meeting until there are the minimal number of streams possible (ideally one single stream.)

The technical mind seeks simplicity and efficiency. This is not to say that a technical mind is not capable of complexity. On the contrary, it needs to understand a vast amount of overlapping detail in order for its refining process to work as well as it does.

The technical mind seeks to understand all the details of a problem in order to produce the most simple and logical solution that will satisfy all requirements.

If a single part of the solution can be configured to solve five parts of the problem then efficiency dictates that this is more productive than producing five separate (yet similar) parts to meet the five almost identical problems.

The technical mind likes to componentise solutions so that a single part can be used multiple times within a project, but also so that this component might be reused for similar problems in future projects, rather than having to produce exactly the same code afresh when it is required at a later date.

Once again, just as the creative mind can be convergent, there are also instances of divergence in the technical thought process. A range of solutions may be carefully weighed before a single option is selected for a particular need. But, for the majority of the time, the technical mind is seeking to take vast issues of complexity and refine them down to the simplest form possible.

Just as a creative mind will be hamstrung by too much input, so a technical mind will not perform at its best when presented with too little information at the beginning of a project.

If not enough clear information is delivered for a technical mind to process and filter then the likely outcome will be that the brief is returned to the originator with a request for more details, or with a huge list of questions of attached.

The solution

Most IT companies do projects backwards. Technical people are brought in to question a client over their needs and will then write up a technical specification based upon this information.

A near finished system is then handed over to the creative department to have ‘a pretty face painted on it.’

The problem is that many clients are not fully aware of what solution they require and so there are often delays induced as the technical team go through a cycle of question and answer sessions until sufficient information has been extracted from the client for them to process.

Once companies begin to recognise both their creative and technical staff as the great thinkers they all are, and not just as UI painters and programmers, then a revolution in project efficiency is possible.

Creative minds need very little input to get working on a project and so brining them in upfront to extract information from the client can cut down on the Q&A cycles that are needed to extract enough information to produce a technical specification.

The creative mind can take the most vague of briefs and explode this out multiple times until a vast amount of concepts have been created without further input from the client. The client can then review the concepts from the creative department and simply cut out anything not needed rather than have to think up new ideas on a blank sheet of paper.

This cuts down on the amount of communication needed with the client before a project can commence and so reduces unnecessary delay. Obviously clear communication with a client is paramount throughout the lifecycle of any project to ensure the project is delivering the right solution. But often a client needs outside assistance in fully formulating the exact needs of a project and utilising creative thinking can be a powerful way of expanding the details of a solution quickly.

Once the full brief has been created, the technical team can then review the output, consolidating areas of overlap and flagging up any superfluous areas that are likely to create technical hurdles.

A round of interaction between the creative (blue) and technical teams (green) will then refine the details until the final solution is ready to be built.

While the technical team are finishing and testing the build, the creative team will already be out (alongside the sales people and project managers) and talking with the next client.

Creative and technical thought processes go far beyond visual ideas and problem solving in programming. Once companies grasp the fact that these thought patterns can be applied to all situations that their business face then their staff can be used to their maximum advantage.

Forget about the situation being a creative problem or a technical issue and start considering whether a situation needs expanding/exploring or refining/resolving and the right people will end up tackling the right tasks.

Nile River Split Pea Soup

(Why writer’s block is no laughing matter)

In most people’s eyes, writer’s block does not happen to real human beings. Writer’s block only affects caricatures of writers, outlandish characters in foppish hats banging their heads against the blank sheet of paper on their cluttered desk.

We can imagine a cartoon of Wordsworth, struggling with the first line to a poem; strewn at his feet are crumpled pieces of paper which read ‘I wandered lonely as a horse’, ‘I wandered lonely as a butterfly’, ‘I wandered lonely as a hiker’ etc.

A far more recent example of actual writer’s block afflicted J K Rowling at the height of Potter mania. Even among sympathetic writers it was hard not to raise a wry and mischievous smile at the picture of crying children picketing the gates of castle Rowling while the writer sat up in a high tower trying to recall the magic spell that would invoke the final chapter of the latest Potter tome.

The main reason for this light-hearted treatment of the condition is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding among non-writers of what writer’s block actually is. And the biggest problem writers have in trying to get non-writers to understand writers block is that they simply try to explain what writer’s block is. This might sound very logical, but herein lies the problem.

Imagine a seasoned cook was preparing Nile River Split Pea Soup and handed me a spoonful straight from the boiling pot, saying, “it’s still not quite there, what does it need?”

I would have to admit that I was clueless. Though I enjoy a variety of foods, I have never personally tasted Nile River Split Pea Soup and so would not be in a position to know what was missing from the recipe. Having never experienced this dish when the process had gone right, I would have no knowledge to draw on in assessing the process when it was going wrong.

And so it is with writer’s block. Most people understand ‘writing’ as the simplistic mechanics by which a person uses a pen or keyboard to construct letters and have no real tangible knowledge of the process that is creative writing.

The sum of most people’s experience of creative writing is when the teacher used to ask them on a Monday morning to write a story about what they did over the weekend.

So when people hear about writer’s block, their perception of ‘writing’ is that it is a purely mechanical effort and so the block must be some inability to perform the mechanical function. Much like a plumber with a hand injury or back strain might have to refrain from heavy manual work for a short time, so a writer (who can obviously still physically lift a pen) must simply be feeling lethargic and not really in the mood for writing.

And so most non-writers would therefore understandably feel less that sympathetic to a writer suffering writer’s block and simply shrug before suggesting they ‘take break and try again in a bit.’

So now let me paint a different picture.

Firstly, let’s dispel a few myths:

• Writers do not write in order to become rich (most are not and have to maintain secondary jobs to prop up the finances).
• Writers do not write in order to become famous (those that want to be are not and those that are try to escape attention and live a reclusive life somewhere remote).
• Writers do not even write because they feel they have a good story to share (though this one is partly true, this is not the main factor that compels a writer to write).

Most writers would write even if they knew in advance that nobody would ever read their material and that they would never make a penny from it. You would still find their old wizened body slumped over a laptop in a forgotten attic and have to prise their dead hands from the keyboard.

Imagine that you are walking down the street, minding your own business, when a strange thought or concept suddenly just pops into your mind. It might just be a name, or a place, or a piece of conversation (even an actual one you overheard earlier), or maybe it’s a question you ask yourself.

Initially you just put it from your mind, but later that week it comes back to you and then it keeps coming back to you.

And then it starts to grow.

Before long there are distinct entities with personalities that start to arise and there are places that start to exist that you cannot physically visit, but are more real than your own house. And all sorts of events begin to happen, many of which will even contradict each other.

And it is not very long until this concept has begun to invade your entire life. Even during a mundane activity such as washing the dishes you will end up with a character alongside or you might even end up washing the dishes as one of your characters.

You drive down to the local shops and find that you drive right into a scene from your concept. Whatever you try and do, everything is tainted by that small concept that has now expanded to fill your entire head. Even when you try to fall asleep at night, your characters chatting away among themselves keep you awake for hours.

Although this process is incredibly creative and produces vast amounts of material, there is no let up.

And that’s just a single concept. Imagine if you have several parallel concepts in your mind at the same time. Sometimes you might have characters from two different concepts in your head together. Often a character from one concept might ‘defect’ and decide they would work better in a different concept.

It is little wonder that a recent study concluded that creative mind’s mimic schizophrenia.

After a while you begin to forget important people’s birthdays and messages you were asked to pass on go straight into the ether. If you have understanding friends and family around you then it makes life a lot easier, but the majority of people will just see you as some odd, forgetful eccentric.

But there is a cure…

There is something very simple that a writer can do to regain their mind and exorcise the characters and events from their brain. In order to get a normal life back, all a writer has to do is write the concept out in full.

So a writer’s life is much like having a balloon (or two, or three) inflating inside your head. It keeps growing and you keep attempting to reduce the pressure by letting some of the air out onto paper (or a laptop screen nowadays).

So now we can return to the subject of writer’s block.

Writer’s block is not where the balloon stops inflating, far from it. Writer’s block is where the writer feels unable to get the concepts down in a way that they feel satisfied with and so the concept stays in their head regardless. It’s as if the characters in your head read what’s on the page and turn their noses up at it. In this situation, a writer will often give up and stop writing for a while, as bad writing can be very frustrating and can crush a writer’s motivation to write.

But the balloon keeps inflating. The concept keeps getting bigger and more complex and the more space that your concepts occupy, the less space there is to try to keep a handle on the rest of your life.

This is why writer’s block is no laughing matter. It is not a simple inability to write, it’s the maddening fear that the mental balloon inside your head is never going to stop and something inside might just burst.