Design in itself is creativity. So you don’t have to make art or express yourself in your work to make it creative, which we’ll talk about a little later.
In fact, design only becomes truly creative when it is approached with the purpose of using it as defined. As a way of deliberately solving a clearly defined and understood problem.
The creative aspect of design does not come from pushing the boundaries in order to promote something, or from changing style in order to stand out.
In fact: one of the worst problems a designer can face is trying to innovate for innovation’s sake, or demanding that they add creativity to the problem they’re trying to solve, just to add a little brightness. These efforts are rarely successful, simply because the trade-off between trying to come up with something that stands out is usually an increase in the cost of creating it.
This helps explain why so many smartphones look and function the same, or why so many of the most popular apps look the same, too:
“App fatigue is a real thing. Most people are tired of jumping between too many apps and learning to use a new interface after each new download.”
Many may see this as a “lack of creativity” in these well-designed products. However, this similarity allows the designed object to achieve the purpose for which it is intended.
Studies repeatedly show how changing things for the sake of changing themselves is detrimental to the designed object. People struggle to adopt a product or use an app because the creative components have made usability difficult. The Nielsen Norman Group, for example, noted “inconsistency” as the second most common mistake in software development:
“Remember the rule of thumb — differences are complex. When users have expectations about how something will behave or where they can access it, deviations from those expectations cause confusion, frustration and increased cognitive load as people try to figure out the problem.”
It’s like designing a chair without the part you’re sitting on. Different, yes, but ultimately not very usable. And this is where creativity begins to crumble.
To be creative, you first need two things: novelty and usefulness.
If the thing you develop is unique but useless, we call it creative (for example, art tends to be more unique than valuable). Or, if what you’re working on is useful but not unique, it’s just “status quo.” Design can easily go to the “status quo” because its purpose is to solve a problem, and the problem itself is usually about creativity, not execution.