5 Pitfalls to Avoid When Judging Creativity: Timing the Test
3. Timing the test.
Creativity requires the kind of relaxed attention that allows one to be “in the flow.” Sometimes that comes quickly, but it often takes time to tease out new ideas from the many mundane ideas that pass through our awareness.
Consider the new TV reality show: Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, where aspiring artists are pitted against one another in timed competition to create works of art of a particular type in 12 to 14 hours. This brings the shocking juxtaposition of our on-demand lifestyle to the world of culture.
While some professional art fields (industrial and graphic design, for example) require production on a schedule, the constraints of the TV show’s production schedule make the artistic products more like art school test projects than actual works of art. It must be frustrating for the artists on the show to have to set their artistic goals to what can be achieved in the time available.
On creativity tests, as well, the fact that you’re being timed can be an inhibition to creative production. Certainly, one cannot wait forever for a creative idea, but putting pressure on test takers is not conducive to the most creative solutions. If you have to limit the time that is allowed to solve a problem, make the amount of time provided ample so that test-takers are not rushed.
5 Pitfalls to Avoid When Judging Creativity: Assessing creativity with a tool that looks only for divergent thinking
2. Assessing creativity with a tool that looks only for divergent thinking.
Creative thinking makes ample use of divergent thinking, so it makes good sense to consider it when trying to assess creativity. When creativity tests were first devised, test designers were looking for ways to measure the ability to think “far out” as a way to counter the effects of the convergent thinking training we get in school. Fluent divergent thinkers can come up with lots of new ideas. They may not all be good ideas, but they can think up dozens.
When a creativity test asks for as many uses for a paper clip as you can think of, it is calling for divergent thinking. But, for an idea to be truly creative, it must be novel and useful, while attractive enough to encourage adoption. Few pencil and paper tests of creativity actually consider all three dimensions of creative production. A test that merely counts the number of new ideas (as some do) is not a good way of judging real life creativity.
5 Pitfalls to Avoid When Judging Creativity: Assessing creativity with a tool that looks for the one right answer.
This week, we’ll be exploring some problems with creativity tests. Each day, I’ll post one of 5 pitfalls I find with many tests of creative ability. Please offer your opinions to keep the conversation flowing.
Here’s a problem and pitfall to be aware of:
1. Assessing creativity with a tool that looks for the one right answer.
There are many tests for creativity on the Internet. Some may make you feel good about your abilities, while others can be depressing. Some common creativity tests, like the famous 9 dot problem, have discouraged test-takers for years. This problem is a quick little parlor trick that used to be seen in magazine articles, purporting to test your creativity, but now has made its way to the Internet. These tests look for a clever answer to the problem through insight, the ability to quickly see a pathway to the answer. Even some scientifically based tests of creativity use “insight problems.”
The problem with these tests is that, just like on a traditional arithmetic quiz, there is only one correct answer for the problem. This is the kind of convergent reasoning that we are taught in school. But creativity, by its nature, looks for multiple opportunities and many ways to “skin a cat.” In real world creativity, one is asked to broadly imagine divergent possibilities, try a few, and come up with one or more that will work.
These insight problems test convergent thinking, while claiming to help in locating divergent thinkers. Think twice before using these for anything but the clever amusements that they are.
Good Design is Good Business
Last week when Apple’s market capitalization actually passed that of Microsoft, financial analysts all over the world took note. Back in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the position of the company was at its low point, and it was unclear whether or not the company could stay afloat. Now it is a tremendously successful technology giant whose products are valued all around the world. Besides the financial analysts, another audience should have been taking note of Apple’s success, and cheering. Designers and engineers should be beating the drum for this news since it is yet more evidence that good design is good business.
In business decision after decision, Jobs has strategically valued design along with other important factors of product success. Not only are their products designed in well-crafted and elegant ways, even their commercials and their retail stores express the same values. Whereas Microsoft products have become commoditized, becoming ubiquitous and indistinctive, Apple products have built their capitalization by going for a smaller market share but high profit margins. They have consistently married technological advances with design advances stressing a savvy user-interface to create products that are unique trend-setters. And users have been willing to pay for the cache.
When Steve Ballmer discussed the future of PCs at the D8 conference last week, he showed that Microsoft still doesn’t get it. He talked about PCs having various new “form factors” in the future, but concluded that PCs will still be PCs no matter what they look like. Design isn’t just what the product looks like from the outside. It starts inside, even conceptually, to create a device that is at its heart, truly something new. Without that realization, Ballmer is probably correct: Microsoft’s idea of PCs will continue to be as it is today.
People will pay that extra premium for the product that feels good, looks good, and helps them express their own values and sense of themselves. Good design truly is good business.
Destined for Success?
Lately I’ve been reading a couple of books about how successful people grow up to flourish and show their creativity, while others do not. These two books that have some similarities, but also some important differences.
They’re both written by journalists who excel at making scientific information accessible to the general reader. They both treat the subject of personal achievement in society and how it emerges.
- Both David Schenk’s The Genius in All of Us and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers advocate the virtues of practice, perseverance, and steadfastness. Both debunk the myth of the gifted loner who by her special gifts is easily able to surpass all others. And both stress the importance of societal supports for creating a level playing field for achievement.
- Both also devote significant attention to the Louis Terman “genius studies,” their results (disappointing) and their methodological shortcomings (among them the selection of participants, and defining giftedness as intelligence.)
- Another similarity is in the fact that both push back on two different types of “predestination” theories that attempt to explain success and failure. Schenk’s book is an extended essay debunking the notion that genes alone (or even genes and experience) combine statically to determine ability. He maintains (and documents his point of view with a section of backup resources that amounts to about half of the book) that it is the dynamic interaction between the two: nature and nurture, plus the efforts of the individual through practice and self improvement to overcome weaknesses and strengthen abilities. Gladwell is so interested in the social and cultural aspects of the nurturing of talent that he nearly suggests that the poor and under stimulated have very little chance of success in modern life. This point of view is nearly as discouraging (or excusing) as the pure genetic explanation of success and achievement.
Outliers emphasizes how idiosyncratic, simply lucky, events can affect future success. In an interesting section he makes a case for the importance of date of birth in the emergence of the talent of hockey players. Gladwell puts an emphasis on all of the aspects of the environment around the achiever to make his point that it isn’t intelligence alone, or even pluck and perseverance, but having ability, being at the right place at the right time, and having mentors or others to support and encourage you that make the difference.
Schenk, likewise, points out the importance of having familial, cultural, and societal support for those persons able to create outstanding work. He gives tips for parents, teachers, and for individuals with a passion, for strengthen and developing that ability.
After reading both books, I developed a few takeaways from the two that seem important to me:
- Whatever your level of ability, trying hard is important. Both books stress how important is the passionate practice of your favored activity. Especially for people for whom many pursuits are easy, the notion of trying hard on something is not immediately apparent. But for truly outstanding results, many long hours of practice and trying hard are essential.
- Giftedness as an explanation for achievement has outworn its usefulness. There are too many people whose promise of giftedness has not been manifest in their creative products or their life achievements for those termed “gifted” to rest on their laurels, or for those not so classified to be discouraged or give up. The proof of one’s giftedness is not in one’s abilities or scores on an exam, but rather in one’s products: what one actually makes, does, or achieves. But, at the same time, until all children are given the support to help them pursue and develop their passions, attention to gifted education is important.
- There is a persistent and increasing value accorded by the world in general to both the concept of creativity and the value of its practice – in child-rearing, education, management, and invention. Though we may not all be termed “gifted,” we may all make of our lives creative expressions of our values and our passions. We may even become gifted through our own efforts.