For David Kelly, creativity is deciding what problem to work on next.
David Kelley has a knack for creation. With it, he's envisioned, shaped, and produced an eclectic range of things. Those new-fangled toothpaste tubes that stand on their own? Credit Kelley and his design teams. Ditto more than 50 products from Apple Computer (including its first mouse), plus ski goggles, watches, phones, and medical instruments of every shape and function. But this is no solitary genius, calling to the muse from behind shuttered doors. Every product that's ever spun out of Kelley's head bounced off the heads of engineers, designers, psychologists, and artists at Kelley's IDEO design firm in Palo Alto, California.
Wired:
Who are your heroes?
Kelley:
My heroes are inventors: Chester Carlson, who invented xerography. Edward Land, Leonardo da Vinci, of course, and Thomas Edison. That's why I got into engineering. That's what I thought it was. But they don't teach engineering in college, they teach math. And that was my big disappointment, finding out that engineering was not about making things.
Is Raymond Loewy also a hero?
Not for me, I'm not a designer. Although I'm sure he's a hero to lots of people on staff here.
Does that mean you don't think about design when you create a new product?
It's a balancing act, really. How much art and how much function go into a product depends on the product. If it's a pacemaker, the art element is way down. But if it's a pair of ski goggles, the art is really important.
What are some other considerations?
Well, of course, design for assembly and manufacture is way up there, except for when we're doing movie special effects. For instance, we designed the whale for Free Willy. The animal rights people wouldn't let a real whale perform the antics needed for the movie. Our whale is 25 feet long, and it can leap, spin, and swim. Everything looks real, even the way the eyes move. The whale's eye was tough to make.
Is there any type of product you particularly like to work on?
We like working on medical devices. Half of our projects are medical, because the social value is more satisfying than, say, a toy. And we like advanced technology, where the icon for the concept or the task is not yet defined.
What role do you play in the invention of a new product?
Well first, it's important to say that this company has designed about 2,000 products in the past two years. There's no way I could have been involved in most of those - only in the ones that interest me. Second, I divide the creation process into four parts: understanding, observing, visualizing, and implementing. For me, the most exciting is to visualize, but I don't do that anymore. Now I spend all my time understanding. And that's the most intellectually stimulating. Each time we get a new client, I have to come up the curve to understand everything about them.
Can you give me an example?
Okay. Say we get a client who wants to make the next great toaster. So I first have to understand the history and the state of the art of toasters, with pictures of every toaster through time pinned to my walls. That gives me the whole gestalt of toasters. Then I go into people's homes to learn how they really use toasters. We may think we know, but we probably don't. And that's where most of the good ideas for a new project come - from understanding and observing people engaged in a certain task. Certainly, you wouldn't come up with the present way of programming a VCR this way.
Is that how you spend most of your day?
I go to the brainstorm sessions, and that's the most fun I have all day. Brainstorming is the ultimate way we do things around here. The rules are "deferred judgment." In other words, if someone comes up with an idea you think is dumb, you aren't allowed to say "It won't work." You have to think of a way to improve that idea so it will work. We teach clients how to brainstorm. In fact, we tell clients how to organize themselves to be more creative, though we can't insist on it.
Have you ever seen anything at a client company that's made you angry?
What pisses me off is the lack of appreciation that engineers have in the world. Companies value lawyers, they value management consultants and advertising guys, but they treat technical people like cattle. Engineers are hard-working, loyal, and sort of humble as a group, so they don't stand up for themselves. Smaller companies usually understand. Larger companies have trouble not treating engineers like a commodity.
What excites you about what you do?
What excites everyone here is variety. We've done six or seven pen-based computers, ski goggles, fishing reels, the Avocet Vertech (skiing) watch, blood analyzers, electrical chargers for the GM electric car. It's all exciting because it's all creative. Creativity is a big part of our natural life.
What, do you think, is creativity?
I used to think creativity was designing a product to solve a problem. Now I think it's deciding what problem to work on. It's a question of fit.
