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The art of unlearning
How letting go of the familiar can help product designers become more creative.
Kids are more imaginative than adults. Not only is this pretty commonly observed, it’s scientifically proven too. In 1968, George Land conducted a longitudinal study where he tested 1600 children’s ability to come up with new and innovative ideas. He initially tested four to five-year-olds and retested them at ten and fifteen years. Results showed that this ability dwindled from a staggering 98% at four to five years to 12% at fifteen years. The same study in adults showed a mere 2%.
Why? Well, as we grow, we become experts in convergent thinking.
Researchers widely debate creativity, but they often recognise originality or novelty as one of its key elements. And this originality is a product designer’s super-weapon. A weapon that’s powerful yet elusive. Similar to Land, there have been other research that show creativity reduces as we go through life. We fixate on finding ‘the right’ answer (a.k.a convergent thinking) and cling to it rather than exploring possibilities. While this doesn’t kill our creativity, it certainly suppresses it.
As product designers, we engage with three elements frequently— standards, patterns, and people.
And for the sake of efficiency, we tend to prescribe to standards, stick to patterns and make generalisations about people.
However, in our pursuit of innovation, these usually beneficial thought styles could be subtle barriers to our creativity. And hence, unlearning becomes an invaluable skill for designers.
Unlearning is not about forgetting. It’s about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm. When we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. When we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.
Unlearning standards
Dogmatic vs Agnostic
Product design blends the arts and the sciences. Digital experiences and user behaviour can be predictable yet vary across contexts and change…
