Ep 63 Creativity: The good and evil of data, research, and brainstorming

In this episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates explores the delicate balance of integrating data and research into the creative process—a challenge that many creatives find frustrating. Discover how data, research, and brainstorming can become powerful allies when applied correctly, and learn the pitfalls that can stifle creativity if they’re misused. Stephen shares best practices to ensure that data and insights enhance, rather than hinder, your creative work. Tune in to master the art of blending analytics with imagination to elevate your projects.

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Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 63rd episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and all kinds of things that help to empower creative people. Now, be sure to subscribe to the show, so you get the latest episodes whenever they come out. And when you're there, take just a couple minutes and leave a review. Let everybody know what you think about the show. Today, we are going to talk about a subject that I have gotten a ton of requests for. And you know what I even recently did a poll on Twitter to talk about what my next show should be. And this is the topic that one. So today we're going to talk about how the hell do you work with data alongside the creative process? And I think the reason why I get so many questions about this because it is a really interesting and often really difficult time to be creative, because we've got more data that influences and affects what we do than ever before. Because on the one hand, that data gives us the ability to get insights that can make our work incredibly Effective and have such a bigger impact than it ever did before. But on the other hand, it's also extremely easy for that data to kill a team's creativity. And what I was described this as IS IT companies will go, I call it data blind. And what that means is that they lose the ability to think for themselves. Because what they do and all they do is trust the data and trust what consumers tell them. You see this because whenever you question anything, whenever you want to do anything original, well, the data says this, whenever you want to try to push the envelope. Well, whenever we did co creation, the consumers told us they want this. And the reality is, is that in my view, it doesn't have to be this way we can find a balance that I think that too often relying on data. It's reassuring. And to be totally blunt, sometimes it's honestly really lazy because what it does is it lets us off the hook. It lets a lot of those people in product and technology, in business, and even on creative teams be free from accountability. Because what did we do if we lost something it didn't go? Well? Well, all we do Was follow the data. And I think that's the thing is that we've got to do better, we've got to find a balance, we've got to fight for that balance, because it is something that's going to happen all too often and all too easily. So that's the thing is, in this show, we're going to do a couple things. One is we're going to look at what are, you know, the three basic forms of data that you can get? And that's in the form of just pure raw data in research and in brainstorming, what are the pros and cons for each of those? And then what are the best practices and even do some of the basics because I know that data can also get complicated for some people, because it comes in different forms have different phrases that maybe you are or maybe you're not totally familiar with. So that's what we're going to talk about today as we jump into the data. So if we're going to talk about data, we probably need to start with the basics because a lot of creative people that I talked to, don't know the basics. And I think that's a really big problem because if we're talking about it having this huge impact on our process. Well then we probably need To know some basic terms, we need to understand what people are talking about. And the two biggest terms that I see trip creative people up is the difference between what is quantitative data and qualitative data? And yes, you have to be a little bit careful with the pronunciation of each because they sound dangerously similar. But quantitative and qualitative are two different things. So quantitative data. Let's start with that. Now quantitative, I think is really the easiest one to remember. Because quantitative is just data in the form of numbers, I always think about it like quantity is a number our quantity isn't amount. So quantitative is then data in the form of a number. And what this really does is that the simplest way that I've had somebody explained it to me is that it really looks at the relationship between variables. And an example of that would be let's say that, you know, you want to see an what sort of effect advertising hats. So you're gonna have two different rooms where people are going to be doing things One room, you'd put a poster that would ask them to do something, advertise something, some sort of a message. in the other room, there wouldn't be a poster. And well, honestly, all that you're going to do is to watch the behavior in both places. And see how does the behavior change? What's the actual effect that advertising that that poster that that message had on people? And it really is just looking at how to use a hypothesis and then let the numbers back that up. So that's quantitative data. Qualitative data is then data in the form of words. So really is the opposite in so many ways. And that really looks at you know, how do we explore the meaning of people's experiences. And what you see in a lot of cases with qualitative data is that it is descriptive. It is something that describes what people's views are, describes them exploring something and that it really is something that's much more open to interpretation because it's not we put X number of people in a room and X number of things happened. No. See, with qualitative, it's a little bit softer. It's a little bit more open to interpretation, because it's more based in words. But so that's going to be the thing is, whenever you're going in and you're working with data, understand which one are you dealing with? are you dealing with quantitative and hard actual numbers? are you dealing with qualitative, which is going to be more descriptive? But from there, let's start to actually then talk about how do you work with this data in do it alongside a creative process because the reality is for me, data by itself is an inert, raw material. Data is simply an input, it should be an influence. It should be something that grounds you into what it is you're doing, because really, as we think about like, methodology, like design thinking, it's grounded in research. That's the Very first phase of design thinking now, and when we talk about data, I think in a lot of ways, it gets vilified by too many people, because I have always used it for my work. And I always think it can be tremendously impactful. So when you think about what are the pros of data, what makes it really good is that, you know, in this this case, it's one source of truth that shows real results and real behaviors. It shows you click throughs, it shows you how many times are somebody actually doing something in real numbers. And the reason why I think that's important is because it can become so easy for us to fall in love with our work. It can become so easy for us to overlook problems to say that no, no, we're the consumer, we understand what it is they're going to do. But we need to ground that in reality, we need to ground that in what is actually going on. And that is incredibly important. And I think that this is all the other real big pro for this is that so many designers just need that real connection back to reality they need To understand how their experience is being used, and how is it actually performing? because creativity is more complicated, what we do is more complicated it has to answer for more. I've talked about this in the past, well, this is how we can prove it. And data in this form becomes can become a wildly wildly powerful thing, if we use it correctly. Because if you want to talk about how the experiences that you're creating, why your team needs to be bigger, why consumers are flocking to your brand, why you need more funding and headcount as a result of that data is a fantastic place to start. Because that's what so much of this is, is it's us speaking the language of the businesses that we work alongside of, and we've said this before, this is where we get into trouble. This is where we get lost in translation. Because we don't want to speak this language. We don't want to lean into this because what we're afraid of is the opposite. And we're too caught up in the fear. What we're afraid of is it's going to show that it actually didn't perform well. What we're afraid of is that it's going to show that maybe we aren't as smart as we think we are Well, here's the argument that I would make is that even if that's the case, even if you do this and you're wrong, you're not going to be wrong for long. Because what you're going to do is you're going to take that data, you're going to learn from it, your work is going to get better, you're going to get better insights, it's going to get stronger. But what it's going to take is the vulnerability, the confidence, the openness to be able to let that data in and to see how is your work actually performing instead of just sticking your head in the sand and assuming that everything's great. But there are cons to this side as well. Because as we all know, the problem is and the reason why you have to be aware of what are the different types of data and how is it being used is that numbers can be manipulated to tell whatever story you want. This is the difficult part about this. It's the same way that in the creative process, if you want to if you come in with a set idea, you can manipulate a creative process you can manipulate design thinking to get the outcome that you want, data is no different. Because what you can do is that you can say I want to prove this now let me go find that data that proves this, just like with the creative process is just like with data, you have to make sure that everyone is being open and unbiased, to look at the numbers as they actually are not spinning them or slanting them. So they give you the outcome that you want, or that your product people want or technology wants or the business wants or whoever it is once, because you can do that. The same way if we want to, we can lead our creative process to get the outcome that we want. And I said this before, but the biggest con that I've seen in data, the biggest frustration in my career on data has been whenever you watch people, companies go data blind, they follow that data without question and I say time and time again. It is a huge, huge mistake. It is not a mistake in the fact that you aren't doing something that probably isn't right because yes, if you follow the data, what it does is it lets you react to what is actually going on the mistake and going data blind is whenever it becomes all consuming whenever it is the only input and it's the only thing that does adds the output of your work. That's the place where we go data blind, because at that point now all we're doing is we're making incremental changes to our business's usual product, we're never gonna find a leap, we're never going to find a big way forward, because we're just going to keep making an incremental change. And all we're going to keep doing is just doing what the numbers tell us. And then pretty soon what's going to happen is there's going to be some big meeting. And some executives gonna be really frustrated. Want to know why there's no competitive differentiation between our experiences somebody else's between our brand and somebody else's? Why are we making all these small incremental changes? What are the big leaps where those sort of things and that's the problem is we've gone data blind. And I said before, I understand why it happens. It's safe, especially in this time, whenever so much is at stake is easy to go back and say well the data told us so we have to answer for more we have to risk more. We have to push the organization's for more and then honestly if their organizations Can't get over that then we need to go find and work for different organizations who can get over that. Because they're going to inherently just wallow in mediocrity. It's gonna be mediocrity that's going to be supported by data. And everybody's gonna throw a parade because we can see how wonderful and how supportive our mediocrity is. But it's mediocrity, nonetheless. And that's really the problem. So how the hell should you do this? What should you do? How should you think about working with data? How should you think about getting these two things to work together? And the thing that I start with is, is what I've said so far, a few times. Data is just one dimension that you need to work with on any given project. It is an input, it is a reality. It's a grounding, but this is the thing is that you should start with the needs and the insights of people rather than leading with the data, because for me, it is that qualitative and quantitative that yes, Look at the logs from your website, look at the logs from your app, look at research studies, look at a lot of those things, but also go out and look at people find insights, find unmet needs, that's what you should be grounding this in, that's what we need to do is to make sure that it's just one of those dimensions. And you can gain insight through the combination of qualitative design research and exploratory data analysis. And the thing is that that can then validate the data results or what you think is the underlying behavior, with research on real people put hypothesis together, you know, go and look at the data and think, Well, you know what this can mean a couple different things. Let's go actually talk to real people and validate it. Don't go data blind and just take the numbers at face value, because that can be misleading. This hybrid approach can radically change your experience can radically change your creativity for the better and be a true differentiator. Because like I said, most of the problems that I see right now with teams fall on both parties that are involved The design team, the creative team, we need to evolve, we need to understand that this is a part of business, that business defines our success, that we cannot stick our head in the sand and simply think that this isn't going to be a factor for us, I can guarantee you that it absolutely is. The problem is whenever you stick your head in the sand, whenever you don't engage, that data is going to define your work, it's going to box it in, it's going to put it in a corner, and it's going to pave that road to mediocrity. Now on the other hand, we also have to then work with the business people, the tech people, the PR the product people because what we need to do is to make sure that they're also open minded enough that they aren't falling back into that safety net. I'm just saying, well, the data sets so. So both sides have work to do. This is not a case in any of these big issues that we're dealing with. We're one side is right and one side is wrong. Sorry, people. It's not that simple. Both of us have to step up and be accountable for being part of the solution. And so I think that is the start of just that. And now that's just the With the raw data of things that's just dealing with the raw output. Now, whenever we talk about research, research is something that I define as the methods and practices you talk you use to talk with real people, real consumers, real customers, real whatever it is in your process. I think that this is highly effective, but it is incredibly misunderstood and incredibly underused as a tool for creativity. Because the pros here are that research puts consumers at the center of your work. We've talked about this in the past, creativity design, these are highly highly debatable things that are open to interpretation, my opinion versus your opinion, what do I think versus what do you think? Should it be blue? Should it be red? Should it be up here should be down there should be bigger, should it be smaller on and on and on? Well, how do you take the debate the debate ability out of that what you do is you put the consumer you put a real person at the middle of that, because that's the thing is that it makes creativity a lot less efficient. By removing opinion of one thing versus another. And so this way, it allows you to put a source of truth into the process. It allows you to be able to go out to explore to understand the edges of where ideas should be, it lets you go out to understand what are the things that you really should be looking at, and to ground it back to real people. This sounds like something that should be so simple. This is something that I quite frankly, do not understand why we need to have a conversation in this day and age to remind people to remind companies that Oh, it's probably a good idea if you actually go back and put the people you're designing for in your process. I don't know when we became so self absorbed, that that became something that we need to teach. This is why we're seeing this resurgence in design thinking. We're seeing it because we seem to have forgotten that this is important. But this is the same part is it and we've I've talked about this in other shows, where if the whenever you look at research, it is not just Doing research to launch a product you should be thinking about this in four distinct ways. Because most people, what they do is they go through, they get a brief, they look at the data, they come up with a bunch of how might we statements, they do a brainstorm, they come up with a bunch of ideas. They do some rough comps. They do some high fidelity comps, they show those to executives, everyone gets very excited. comps are pinned up on walls, technology is shown they start to build it. And then we think oh, yeah, well, right before we launch this, let's show this to some actual people. That is the completely but backwards way of doing research. What you need to do is to embrace research around the concept of build to think build to think means that as soon as I have a rough idea, I'm going to start doing concept testing. Because what I want to do is to understand the boundaries, the patterns, the unique pain points, the edges of my idea how far can I push this before? I'm going to go past what a consumer will accept? How am I sure that I'm actually solving the problem that they asked me to solve? But that's the part is that right in the very, very beginning. We start doing research and Do it the entire way through the process. Because out of that initial build to think then we go into rapid prototyping. This is where you want to build to learn, we want to start testing initial hypotheses, then we want to figure out how do we build a communicate more live prototyping, of examining, how does this product fit into the market. And then finally, we want to do that alpha and beta testing. This is that build to launch model where we want to validate it at scale, we're going to look at the final high fidelity work to make sure that that actually is something that consumers can work with. This is more doing usability testing, as opposed to the beginning when we're doing concept testing. But all of this is research. All of this is part of the creative process. These two things should be inextricably linked. Yet somehow all that we do is either we do a focus group, we sit behind a one way mirror and have people basically look like they're auditioning for a TV commercial telling us how wonderful we are. Or we do it at the very end. And by doing it the very end, we're skipping all these other steps. And the problem is whenever we're not doing research throughout the creative process, we all know what happens. You get to the end Whenever you have this high fidelity work, and at that point, we've invested so much time, so much money, so much political capital, that even if we know it's going to be a bad experience, well, then we're not going to actually go back and do anything different because we've invested too much. We've gone too far. We can't stop and say, You know what, this is actually a really bad idea. So what do we do? We do what all companies do, you launch a bad experience. And then you set about the really, really hard work of rationalizing mediocrity. And I think that is the biggest problem is because we're putting ourselves in this place where we're not doing good work. We know that we're not everybody knows what's about to launch is not a great product. And yet we write the press release, we send out the internal memos, we have the launch party, we all stand around and celebrate this thing that we know is just not going to have any kind of damn impact on anybody. So that's the problem. But the con of this is that for this to work for this process to work for it to become intertwined, an essential part of our creativity. What that requires is a strong and talented team of researchers who you can be sure aren't biased, who aren't leading the research, who are your partners, who are the people that are coming in to help validate and challenge and look at your work to help push it forward. And then if they find something that can be better understand that they're coming back because they're seeing that as a real result. But that's the problem is that people can have agendas, people can be bias, people can lead this work in different directions, it can become a power struggle. Because that is also the inherent case is that with most design teams, they fall into one of three camps. They are design lead, they are research or strategy lead, or their account lead. If you look at different agencies, you'll get design groups, they will generally fall into one of those three sort of power structures. The problem is whenever everyone's equal, you have to have people that are truly talented who are truly selfless because if not, it breaks out into this just degenerating, debilitating power struggle where everyone is trying to roll for credit. It's trying to figure out who is the one who is responsible. Instead of just understanding that everyone has a role to play, everyone owns the idea. Everyone just owns the different artifacts of that process. So for me, the best practices whenever we talk about research is that creativity can be highly subjective. So use research to help ground that work. help settle any disputes with testing and with research on actual customers don't make it debatable. don't have that three week debate about what color a button should be or where it should be, or some other idiotic thing. And I know whenever I've given these examples, you've all thought of projects, you've all thought of people you may have thought of somebody who you had a meeting with yesterday, or you know that you're gonna have a meeting with today, where you're gonna have to go have that very same discussion. This is where research can help you Get a diverse group of people to test. So you have multiple perspectives, don't just go out and find people who you think are going to agree with you. Because here again, just like any creative process, you can lead the witness, you can find people who are going to be more prone to think a particular way. And that's why for me, whenever I do any sort of research, whenever I go out and look for insights, don't do what most people do, don't go find the average person, you're not going to find any insights, you're not going to find the breakthroughs that you want. What you're going to find is a lot of sort of just muddy opinions, and a lot of probably data that isn't going to be that compelling. What you want to do is to concentrate on the amateurs and concentrate on the professionals. They're going to generate the best insights, they're going to give you the best research they're going to give you the best unmet needs. Because if you think about it, if I want to go talk to an amateur The reason why I pick them out is because they've never done whatever it is that I've been designing before, so that whenever I watch them do it I I'm going to discover the basics. I'm going to see someone who is doing it for the first time. So I'm sure that I'm going to get fresh eyes, I'm sure I'm going to get a much clearer, much cleaner, much truer read on what do they really think about this experience. And then I want to go look for the professional, the professional, because these are people that do it all the time. They're the power users, they're the people that know all the shortcuts that have done all the workarounds, that know all of the tips and tricks and all those things that are really, really going to pull your idea apart, to see if it really truly works or not. And they're also going to give you a lot of insights you're going to watch to be able to see what those workarounds are to see where are those other insights? Where are those other things for you to work on? But that's the thing is to be able to go and find this don't just take the easy answer. Because again, all of this all of creativity is subjective. This is why it's so hard, which means it can be manipulated, it can be guided, it can be pushed, it can be enhanced, but that's the thing is that what you want to try to do is to embrace that concept. You want to break your ideas, find people, they're going to find the mistakes in them. So that then your work can get better. Don't just find people that are going to validate and agree with you. Yes, it feels good. Yes, it is wonderful to be able to think that okay, I did everything perfect. But it's not real. You're conning yourself, and you're selling your work short. And ultimately, and everybody's gonna suffer for that. So I think that's why, again, we have to take a slightly broader, slightly stronger view of what can research be and how does it actually work with our process. Now, finally, let's talk about brainstorming. Now, this is the one that most of us are very familiar with is the one that have these three areas that will really lean into and brainstorming is how do we start with research that leads to an insight that we can then go create multiple brainstorm starters, multiple different directions that we can explore, to have different approaches and different lines of thinking. And that's a key point there. Because here again, whenever you do a brainstorm, if you want If you have an idea of what you want this to be where you want it to land, you can guide it to that spot and you can get it to land there. But this is where we have to push for more because the pros here that we can create real inner innovation, we can create real differentiated thinking that will break with the traditional business as usual, we can create real organizational change. If this is done correctly, you can bring a lot of different groups to the table and overcome a lot a lot of long standing barriers and problems. Because this is the thing is that brainstorming is the heart brainstorming is the seed of inclusive design. How do we bring everyone to the table, leave titles at the door, be able to bring everybody into a place where we can then look at this and say, how do we have an idea? How do we have this insight and how are we going to solve it from a lot of different perspectives. Now here again, brainstorming with a lot of different groups is difficult. And again, this is the part I think with all of it. With all of ideation that kind of makes me banging my head into the wall here, people because what I see time and time again, people reach out to me, people stop me, people write me all these sorts of things. And they say, Steve, I want to be inclusive. Steve, I want to do this brainstorm. I really think this is great. It sounds really good. But whenever I did it, it was hard. People didn't agree. It made me work. I had to think about how am I going to get people through this? And my answer to them every single time is no shit. Of course, it's going to be hard, especially in the beginning, because you're trying to get people who all come together from a lot of different places from a lot of different walks of life, who think very, very differently, who see the world very differently. And to try to get them to agree on something. You need to realize that not everybody's brain is wired the way that yours is. My wife is the perfect example of this. A number of years ago we built our house. So you move into this empty shell of a house, and you quickly need to set about decorating it. Well, one of the things we did you know what let's just say shelves as an example, what we would do We'd go out shopping for shelves for our living room, and we'd walk into a particular furniture store, I would see these shelves, I would say that I love them, she would look at them and declare how much she hated them. So over the next series of months, I would slowly wear her down talking on and on about how much I love the shelves, I really think they're perfect. And finally, she would agree just to shut my dumb ass up. So we would buy them, I get them delivered, install them, and she would come home from work and I would triumphantly present these shells, which I knew would look fantastic to her. At which point she would also declare that she actually loved them. I would go a little bit crazy, my soul would die a little bit. But what I realized was that I had the ability to look at those shelves in the store and transpose them in my brain to be in our house. She does not have that ability. So now I need to do Photoshop comps or mock ups or other things to help her see that. But this is inherently some of the reasons why whenever we start brainstorming, doing work with people who aren't quote unquote creative, we struggle because they may not have all the abilities they may not be able to see things and project them into the future the way that we can. This Why doing sketching, doing a lot of these sort of things basing it in people, this is why this is so important is so that there's a shared point of view. Because if we don't do this, whenever we do brainstorms, we all come together. We had a great brainstorm. It was really productive. We had all these great ideas, we agreed on something, we went back, we started to design it, we showed it this exact same group. Well, then a very funny thing happens, when all of a sudden they all declare that that wasn't what they were thinking, this feels like something different. Why did that happen? Well, that's why because while we can see in our heads, maybe they can't. And so again, I think that this is where some of the cons come into play is that a lot of times brainstorming we can get in our own way. We want to be a little bit too precious and be a little bit too controlling. There are other times whenever again, doing brainstorming can be fantastic. We're coming up with tons of great ideas, but we also going to have those ideas become disconnected from what the consumer really wants. You can get this sort of creative drift where Yes, it's it's really great and it's really cool. And we really love this and it really doesn't solve the problem that we were were sent in here to solve. And that drift causes real problems because now we've fallen in love with an idea. That doesn't solve the problem. And that's the idea here is that, you know, we need to be open, we need to be inclusive, but we need to understand that it may be difficult at first, we need to understand that, you know, there's gonna be a lot of different opinions. But here again, this is why a lot of this stuff coming back to people is so important. So as the best practices around brainstorming, the thing that I will tell you is to ground your brainstorm in research, grounded in observation grounded in unique insight so that you're sure that you're solving things that people actually want, and that you aren't going off to simply crafting science fiction or big ideas, or things that aren't really going to matter to people whenever you launch them. And the other thing I would tell you to do is to go back, if you haven't done it already listened to Episode 18 of this podcast, because it goes through the seven rules for running an effective brainstorm. Those are the seven The rules that I live by on every single brainstorm, and I think you need to do that too. So if you haven't listened to it, or if you haven't listened to it lately, go back and listen to it again. But there's been one constant because I think as everybody thinks about data and research and brainstorming and creativity and how it's like oil and water, and how you know, they're so separate, why do they fight against each other? They don't. I think that what happens and what fights against each other is our bias, our laziness, our inability to think for ourselves, our inability to have a conversation and work with other people, our inability to have any confidence that we actually know what the hell we're doing for our job. And that's the one constant in all of this is the place we go to often is wrong. And the place that we go is a place where we forget where all this data comes from. People. This is why things like human centered designer So important, this is why they're making a comeback because this data comes from people, it's based on people, the numbers are not a solution unto themselves. In too many cases, we're losing that connection back to real people. Or we think that the data is a direction unto itself. This is when we go data blind. And the data becomes the thing that drives all of our thinking and it kills creativity. We need we have to start with this and remember that what we're doing is gathering insights for people gathering unmet needs, and that the data is there to lead us to those, it's to help us with those. It's to support those, but it's not the answer. And there's not an answer in any one of these. The thing here isn't that I'm not advocating one of these over the other by any means. What I'm advocating is that all sides need to Take a broader view, all sides need to understand that all three of these things, data and research and creativity and brainstorming are all intertwined. You need to be doing all of them, one should not come at the cost of the other. If anything, it should be more of a system of checks and balances. And bring everybody to the table, give them an equal voice, ground, your work in insights and unmet needs. Like you know what, honestly, data scientists can use sketches or prototypes to get user feedback, just the way product designers do, don't be afraid to iterate. Because that's the thing is that let these processes try to break your ideas. Because a pattern might lead you to look at the data in a particular way and then cause you to look at your pattern or your design in a completely different way. But the problem is, is that you have to start with a lot of skepticism you have to start with being really open because none of this none of this is bulletproof. Your data can be dirty, it can be missing fields, it can be indicating patterns that are off course, your research could be lead, it could be you're looking at the wrong people, you're looking at the average consumer, not the two extremes or you have a bias in there that's trying to lead you to an outcome. And brainstorming again, you could be trying to lead this to a solution you could be trying to dominate, you could be trying to close off other opinions, because it just makes it easier. But that's the problem here is that in most cases, in most times, whenever I see problems, it's because people are just trying to take the easy route out. There are pros and cons to each of these approaches. The best approach is to blend them all. We have to find that balance between creativity and data. We're being asked to use both more than ever before, but more than ever before those two seem to be at odds with each other. We need data so we can ground our work in real problems and have accountability for real results. That is the way that we advanced that is the way that we affect business. That is the way that we take advantage of the opportunity that sits in front of us to affect business in ways that we haven't seen since the Industrial Revolution. Just saying that it's pretty isn't enough. I have gone on about this ad nauseum. This is where the Pinterest in the dribbles and everything else are screwing us over. Because as designers, we just want it to be pretty. And look, it can be beautiful and elegant and lyrical, it can be something that is new and innovative. But it can be all of those things while still grounded in reality, while still grounded in data. But again, for the people that are on the other side of this. We need to make sure that we have the vision and the creativity to be able to create innovation. Because if we don't, then the same quote is going to get beaten down time and time again, the one where Henry Ford said that if he'd asked people what they wanted, whenever he was creating the car, he would have created a faster horse. It's the balance between the two. We can't go So heavy on the side of creativity that we create science fiction, but it can't go so heavy on the side of data that we don't go. We don't go anywhere. And so that is the challenge here. That's the challenge for all of you is to try to look at and figure out how do we take a more holistic view, a more rounded view? How do you see the other side of this equation? And how do you ask them to do the same? How do you have the strength and the vulnerability, to ask for help to be a part of that process, to go to somebody who is doing your research to go to somebody who's doing your data to go to your data scientist to go to whoever that is, and to sit down and ask them to explain to you what you don't understand. And then a miracle will probably happen that they may do the same for what it is that you do. But in either case, it's understanding that it's not about who's right. Because that is our real problem at the core of so many of these things is that I see these teams were one side needs to be right. The problem with that is that that is a recipe for obstruction and mediocrity, because whenever one side is right, the other side is wrong. And that's not what creativity is about. Creativity is about a lot of bad ideas on the way to one decent idea that we think that we can live with that we're going to work on and refine until time budget, political capital, patience, whatever it is, forces us to abandon it to the point where then we're going to do the best we can with it, launch it, and then forever, look back at it and think how it could have been better. That's the reality of the creative process. But understand that you need all of this and understand that that's the right way to work with data is this iterating loop back and forth of ideas and validation. So that's what I want you to try to do. That's what I want you to go out and try to work on. If you have any questions if you're really stuck if you've got a personality that you really aren't sure how to work with on this. Reach out to me I'm always here to help. I try to answer back every email I get every tweet every everything as quickly as I can. You can always Be able to just head over head over to podcast Stephen Gates calm. You can send me a question there. You can get the show notes, you can listen other episodes all that other stuff. You can go on Facebook, you can go on any social media go on Facebook type in The Crazy One podcast like that page. I'm answering questions there all the time. Hit me up on any social media, any of those sorts of things. Because I think again, this needs to be a discussion we need to figure out what are the best ways of doing this. And the best way that I found is a little bit of vulnerability goes an incredibly long way. So as always, if you liked the show and I said at the top head over subscribe to as you're sure you get the latest episodes whenever they come out whenever you're there. Do me a quick favor, leave a review as always, everybody down in legal wants me to remind you that the views here are my own. They do not represent any of my current or former employers. This is just me out here talking. And finally I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time always incredibly, incredibly humbled that all of you when it's been any time Listen to me Yammer on and so hopefully this helps, hopefully we can find a little bit more balance right hopefully This can be like the force and it binds the universe together. That's my nerd quote for the day. So on that note, hope this helps. Hope to hear from you soon and as always, stay crazy