Comments on Modeling the Creative Organization

erin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

I do agree that we are hardly the only creative ones in any organization – but at my company we are called the “creative studio” and our role envelops everything from ui to ia to interaction to graphic to brand to programming DESIGN. Our primary role is to be creative. That’s not to say that we also don’t contribute to defining products and strategy or to say that our Product Manager’s aren’t creative and don’t have good ideas. I do not believe that just because we are called that, that we are relegated to creating fluff or decoration. In my experience, through much education and having champions at the executive level, we are equal partner’s at the table along with the Product Manager and the Technical folks.

Nathan Shedroff — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

Just one thing to add to an otherwise great piece. Can we please all stop calling ourselves the “creative” ones? Once you’ve been in a small, diverse company that has to make ends (and the books) meet, innovate processes and solutions, and generally rely on everyone to be bright, you figure-out pretty quickly that we have hardly cornered the market on creativity. It’s pretty damned selfish of us, not to mention inaccurte. We are no more creative than anyone else better be in a company, including engineers, producers, managers, adn the most creative of all (at least in our case, the controller—read “accountant”).

Furthermore, it’s a box we allow ourselves to be put into and constrained by. The marketing and business folks refer to us as the “creative” people because that way they don’t have to understand what we do, we don’t have to explain it, and they can conveniently write us off in terms of participating on any level in the company beyond “wacky” and “intuitive.” Believe me, it’s a boss. If you want the CEO to listen to your needs and follow your advise, you won’t get anywhere trading on your purple hair and your fashionable clothes. You better be articulating your value in terms he or she is understanding.

At vivid we named our group very early (1993-ish) the Experience Group because that’s the part of the development needs we were most responsible for. It didn’t prevent engineers or other developers from playing with us nor did it box us in by being too vague, too flaky or too presumptuous.

listless — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

Creative Organization? Sounds similar to the Fifth Discipline. Have you ever read anything by Peter Senge?

For a start:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm

(disclaimer: I am not in any way shape or form associated with anyone at the abovementioned website, or with Mr. Senge or any of his associates. I just think he has some really interesting theories.)

erin malone — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

Thanks Brad. You make a good point. These models were developed with a lot of discussion across the various groups. I spent considerable time discussing options with the head of the user research team, with the art director, with the brand design lead as well as the head of the support organization. I didn’t speak too much about this in the article, but it definitely was circulated and iterated several times with feedback from the various groups that would then have to work and thrive within this structure.

It was through these discussions that we decided to elevate and recognize as separate roles, the roles of information architect and visual standards.

Brad Lauster — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

Thanks for sharing this Erin.

I suspect that organizational issues are the cause of most Design group’s problems with effectiveness and lack of power, especially within large corporations such as AOL Time Warner. I hope your article spurs more discussion of these issues in our community.

I was surprised that you didn’t mention discussing the re-organization with the designers who were to be affected by the changes. As a user-centered designer, I expected that sort of inquiry to be part of your research. Perhaps you’d be willing to discuss this?

Thanks again for the article. Cheers!