What role does intuition play in your creative process?

When you use design thinking tools, you bring intention to the way you approach your creative work. Sometimes, that mindfulness can feel like the opposite of intuition. Along the way as I learned design thinking, the question pops up now and then. What role is intuition playing here? Am I trusting my gut enough, letting go of control, allowing the magic of creativity to happen?

It’s an important question as we wrap up our conversation on design thinking. Yes, these tools are powerful. Yes, if we invite others into our creative work sooner we will have greater perspective. Yes, if we fail faster, we will succeed sooner.

And.

And, as you use these tools, there are moments when the right thing to do is to let go. Throw the system out the window. Follow your intuition and see where it will lead you.

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A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

In this season of Creative Lift, we’re exploring how Design Thinking might apply to the craft of writing. If you’d like to explore these tools and mindsets further, check out our Skillshare course, Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character, at this link.

EPISODE LINKS:

Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

Like this episode and want more? If so, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d follow and review the show:

How do you move a project toward completion? How do you know a creative project is done?

This season, we’ve been talking about Design Thinking, and today’s episode focuses on our penultimate topic: Iteration. There are two truths I want to be sure I underline today.

First, when we hit this stage in our creative process we’re not in the final stretch. We’re just beginning the messy middle. Making it to those anticipated words, “the end,” will require cycling back through the problem-finding and problem-solving stages of design thinking many more times.

And second, when we do return to those stages, we will not approach them in the same way we did before. Further down the road, ideation happens in a smaller possibility space, taking into account the decisions that have already been made. Picture a loop that gets smaller each time you cycle through this trial and error process.

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A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

In this season of Creative Lift, we’re exploring how Design Thinking might apply to the craft of writing. If you’d like to explore these tools and mindsets further, check out our Skillshare course, Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character, at this link.

EPISODE LINKS:

Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

Like this episode and want more? If so, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d follow and review the show:

How do you feel about creative feedback?

This is a tough question for me, because often my mind responds one way and my heart responds another.

But even that either/or frame falls short of sorting out the complex feelings I have about feedback. And complex feelings bubbling under the surface are a sneaky culprit of creative roadblocks. Since Creative Lift is all about uncovering the core of roadblocks so we can more easily play our way to the page, today’s episode shines a light on the tricky feedback question so that we can explore it with our eyes wide open.

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A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

In this season of Creative Lift, we’re exploring how Design Thinking might apply to the craft of writing. If you’d like to explore these tools and mindsets further, check out our Skillshare course, Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character, at this link.

EPISODE LINKS:

Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

Like this episode and want more? If so, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d follow and review the show:

You’ve probably heard the question somewhere before: Are you a plotter or a pantser? But, have you ever considered the possibility that you might not be either of these, in fact, you just might be a prototyper?

This season on Creative Lift, we’ve been talking about Design Thinking, and how to use these powerful mindsets, tools, and strategies in service of our creative work. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about what a prototype might look like for writers and other narrative artists, and the potential for prototypes to multiply your creative effectiveness.

If you decide you want to try out a prototype yourself, check out our Skillshare course, Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character, at this link.

LISTEN IN:

A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

EPISODE LINKS:

Skillshare Course: Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

Like this episode and want more? If so, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d follow and review the show:

It’s a question I’ve heard so many times: Should I make this choice or that one? The creative process is filled with decisions large and small. We need a compass to guide our decision-making so that we can confidently move forward in the direction we mean to go. But when we’re traveling uncharted territory, what kind of compass can guide us? In this episode, we’ll explore one way to define our creative target and to boost our energy and flow.

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A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

EPISODE LINKS:

The Five Whys Activity

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

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Design Thinking starts with empathy.

If we were making a widget or any solution to meet an external user’s need, we’d want that empathy to begin with the people for whom our solution was designed. But what about art? Is it a solution? And if so, who is that solution designed for? The artist? The audience?

I do think that art is a solution. For me, first, art is a solution to a question that will not let me go. Through the process of making the artwork—whether it’s a story, a live production, an illustration—I have the opportunity to wrestle with my question. And by the end of the process, ideally, I can come to a place of peace, even if I don’t find a complete answer.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss where empathy can fit into our creative process, and why including empathy as part of our work can boost our creative confidence.

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A huge thank you to Alex Doherty, who records and edits Creative Lift.

EPISODE LINKS:

The Five Whys Activity

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman

Like this episode and want more? If so, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d follow and review the show:

The more original, the more interesting, the more important your creative work is, the harder you have to work to craft the bridge between what’s in your mind and the person on the other side of the conversation. Too often we ask ourselves to do that work in the echo chamber of our own heads, thinking we’re protecting our ideas. What if, instead, we’re building bridges to nowhere, because we haven’t taken the time, or maybe we’re even afraid, to study the landscape on the other side?

Design Thinking offers artists a way to study that landscape, and in this season of Creative Lift, we’re going to explore what that approach might look like, keeping in mind both sides of that bridge—your own innovative vision AND the eventual audience for your work. Today’s episode kicks off our exploration with an overview of what Design Thinking is and how writers might make use of its tools and mindsets.

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EPISODE LINKS:

IDEO U: Insights to Innovation

d.School Starter Kit

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While it may be more obvious to play while brainstorming new ideas, play is also valuable throughout the other phases of the creative process. Play is the trap door into the creative process that plunges us into the hard things before we know they are hard, so that our natural courage shows up when we needed it, and so we could prove to ourselves what we are capable of doing. Ideating isn’t the only hard thing. Every part of the creative process poses challenges.

In today’s episode, we’ll explore strategies for mining the mess that might pile up during a brainstorm with a puzzle-solving mindset to find the gold. Next, we’ll use critical thinking tools to figure out where and how those chosen pieces might best fit into your overall project.

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How seriously do you take decisions? Do you hover on the edge of decisions as though you’re paused on a diving board, anticipating the cold impact of the water? Or do you plunge on in, but pop out again nearly immediately, letting yourself change your mind over and over again?

What does decision making look like for you? And how does decision-making play into your creative practice?

In today’s episode, we’ll consider a variety of decision making styles and play with the idea of making educated guesses in those situations where we don’t yet have an answer. 

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