Creative Science

Yes, you can be a evidence-driven and creative at the same time

Welcome to The Design Loft (Issue #38).

This issue we’re going to look at the matter of applied creativity in the context of evidence-informed environments and the perceived tension between what we know, what we’ve done, what’s unknown, and what we can make.

Let’s start with two questions comparing scientists (including health professionals or anyone who regularly relies on scientific knowledge to do their work) and creatives (which is anyone who draws inspiration and guidance for their work from sources that are not based on scientific knowledge) :

Can a scientist be creative?

Can a creative be scientific?

The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic yes.

No is the answer I often hear from creatives and scientists (or doctors, CEO’s, marketing directors, designers, and more).

In this issue, we explore the bridge between science and creativity.

The Creative Scientist

Scientific inquiry is a creative practice in that it requires new ways of seeing, thinking, and working with constraints. These are the same conditions that frame a design challenge. Just like design, we’re undertaking a systematic application of ways of seeing, making, and applying knowledge about the world toward answering a question or creating a means to address a problem.

The difference is more in the manner in which we use tools and view constraints. But the fundamental character of a scientist’s work is to generate something from what they have in front of them. They have to sift through existing evidence, identify gaps, design a study to fill those gaps, execute, analyze and deliver some means of sharing and transforming whatever insights into meaningful, actionable communications about that research (even if it’s basic, non-applied research — it still needs to be actionable in the sense that it has to be considered).

This is the same thing as designers.

The Scientific Creator

What about creators? I teach at a leading art and design institution and know firsthand the challenges that those who see themselves as creators may have with scientific work. The concepts, statistics, tools, and culture seem alien to many of them. The truth is that the same goes for the scientists I teach and train when they think of what makes someone creative.

But design (and art) and science have a long-established tradition of working together. Many great artists and designers use scientific understandings to inspire their work, inform the creation of things, and to frame the problems and solutions that they seek.

Kara Pecknold, formerly of Frog Design, wrote about how she became a better designer through her exposure to and understanding of scientific concepts. Pecknold works and writes on regenerative design and on matters of designing for ecosystem health. She realized that it was nearly impossible to do great work without understanding some fundamental points about the environment, nature, and how systems come together.

This is applied systems thinking, grounded in science from different traditions:

Questions about extinct species, indigenous subsistence techniques, plant associations, and fires expand the cast of stakeholders beyond end-users and clients to include ecosystems and more‑than‑human neighbours. Life‑centered and more‑than‑human design frameworks explicitly argue that designers should treat rivers, soils, species, and future generations as entities that designs must consider and sometimes “speak for.” This shift can change briefs from “increase engagement” to “reduce resource use per task” and evaluation metrics to include ecological footprint, not just NPS or revenue.

Pecknold refers to twenty questions posed in the work Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz, which was developed by Leonard Charles, Jim Dodge, Lynn Milliman, and Victoria Stockley and published in Coevolution Quarterly 32 (Winter 1981). This list is less an exercise in scientific inquiry as it is place-making and framing. This activity is meant to ground us in what’s around us to understand the world we wish to influence or understand.

Creatives, just like scientists, ground ourselves in where we are to seek how to move forward with our creations (what’s in need of exploration, expression or solutions). Scientists do the same to ask questions about how and what to study (what’s in need of more understanding).

Don’t let a fear of what you think the other (science/art & design) is to prevent you — as a scientist or as a creative — from embracing and learning about what the other is and does. Chances are, you’re already doing some of it. Chances are also that if you’re able to bring these together, you’ll create more health than you could without it.

Thanks for reading.

References:

Charles, L., Dodge, J, Millman, L., and Stockley, V. Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz. Coevolution Quarterly 32 (Winter 1981): 1.

Photo by Aleksandr Barsukov on Unsplash