Creative Focus and Design Teams

The Information Age has mutated.  Focus is a serious challenge.  Creative focus, in a design field with multiple masters, technical challenges, environmental concerns, a construction industry that still builds as if its 1940, and political land mines at every turn is tough yes.  But add to that, multiple avenues of information access, vying for our attention like jumping Donkey in the movie Shrek…

“Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

Was design always this complex?  Was creative focus always this elusive?  I don’t think so.

The holidays were consumed with mulling over the increasingly complex conditions we design within and how we might organize our design teams to effectively respond.  How might we work together to avoid the kind of complexity that today leads to complications and confusion?  I returned to the office and waiting on my desk was "Change By Design" by Tim Brown.  And inside I found his answer.  (Thank you Doug Thornley for your generosity!)

As Brown tells us creative effort is challenging in and of itself,

“…unlike more analytical methods, design thinking taps into intuition as well as rational thought. You can’t put your process into boxes and check everything off, and that is one of the challenges of any creative methodology.”

But also, in the past, some people tried to define design methods as purely creative — as if just “getting out of the box” were enough — that’s what we did when we fine tuned the charette process.  It was our way of making lightening strike.  (See previous post)

Brown goes into depth in making sure we understand the subtleties in managing the creative process.  He confirms that design thinking still occurs in groups, and that large teams are still typically employed to tackle large and/or complex projects.  So here’s the difference.  Large teams, when present, usually don’t arrive to the project at the outset of the project but at the beginning of the implementation phase.  The inspiration phase, as he calls it, by contrast requires a small, focused group whose job is to establish the overall framework of the project.  In our words, the parti.

His example of the film industry was a the most fascinating parallel in the book.  The “preproduction phase” of almost all major films consists of, say, a director, writer, producer and production designer.  That’s it.  They develop the basic concept.  As Brown indicates, “Only later do the ‘armies’ arrive.”  During the pre-production phase, this small, focused team acts not solely as “artist-creators.”  They find not only the “idea” but also drill down to begin outlining the key implementation strategies, schedule, locations, props, etc.

And interestingly, near the end of the pre-production phase, there is a “read-through” of the script that includes the whole cast, heads of departments, financiers, producers, publicists, and of course the director.  This, in the architectural world, would be the internal “kick-off” meeting except, in Brown’s film analogy, much inspiration and preparation has preceded it.

Looking at other creative fields I found that the music industry handles the creation phase of projects very similarly.  Their pre-production phase is when the recording artist spends time creating and refining musical ideas and then produces a “demo” to evaluate if those ideas have legs.  This reduces time and money wasted on large production teams and expensive studios.  The goal being to enter into the recording phase with the most promising ideas already established.  Much like the film industry Brown tells us about.

Maybe we should create a pre-production phase in architecture; one that combines the goal of serious idea generation with the typical pre-design tasks already established by the AIA and then add the implementation planning that these other creative industries use.  Given the complexity we are finding in the field of architecture, it’s worth a try.

And Brown warns us.  Do not to give into the temptation of thinking that complex problems, or projects, require more brains to solve.  Expanding the pre-production team more often than not “leads to a dramatic reduction in speed and efficiency as communications within the team begin to take up more time than the creative process itself.”  (Have you ever experienced this?)  Beware; he tells us, this is when you know your process is in trouble.

Comments

[Greg Zielinski]

I attended a very interesting lecture by Joshua Prince-Ramus of REX (formerly OMA's NY Office) where he discussed, among other things, the importance of this "pre-production" phase on their projects. Written into their contracts on every project is an extended period at the beginning devoted solely to research and problem definition, what they call the "search for root problems and first principles". It may be a luxury that comes with starchitect status to find clients willing to pay for this work, but as you point out, such up-front labor pays off in the form of improved efficiency and better solutions down the road. Furthermore, as we generate more innovative solutions through this process, the more likely we are to attract clients interested in innovation and willing to pay for it.