NEVER throw your old writing away.

This is a talk that examines creativity and education that I wrote circa 2012. I was a teacher, song writer and design graduate student at the time. How authenticity can get lost when money is involved. 

The artistic process

How many of you who make things recognize the following familiar questions from people-- and if you're not creative I would like to argue that you just haven't discovered your creative talent yet.

Those of you who make stuff, (song or movie or painting or artisan customized bicycle or whatever)

Show of hands if people ask you– “where did you get the idea for that?”

Show of hands if people ask you, “how long did that take to make?”

OR EVEN “how did you do it?” And that's a big one isn't it?

People want to know about the process. I know a bunch of artists and programmers and metal workers and they have a hard time keeping track of their process. How much time went by? What was the journey of the project like? For me, when I think back on what I did to make that thing whatever it was, it's all a complete blur in my mind now. Honestly, I won't remember all the things I did to struggle my way through to success with this project, and I don't even want to think about it anymore because it was stressful. I was just glad I made it to the end.

When I was studying game development in graduate school, we were required to create a documented storyline of how our project was coming along and a lot of my classmates and I had a hard time with it. We would miss a step, forget to document a stage in the process and you couldn't see from the documentation how did we get from point A to point B to point C and on to completion. It tends to be hard to recall the process. It can be like traveling through a thick wooded forest. And then if you changed course, and you decided to change your illustration or 3d model, you would still have to map how you got to the point where you knew you needed to make a drastic change, what you decided to do instead and discuss why you made that decision.

So my creative process for sewing, graphic design and songwriting is a complete mess. I mess with these kinds of projects and basically wrestle it into success like a kid playing with clay. It's like trial and error. You get to see it look absolutely horrid half way through. You just don't stop believing and keep going. I had a vague plan and I pretty much just struggled through it until it began to take shape and then you smooth it all out.

I used to make these graphic design paintings in Photoshop and I'd save the way that it looked after working on it for a few hours, but I thought it looked hideous and I would never want to show that to anyone. It's so easy for beginning artists to look at their project, their work in progress and just think “this is awful and it's going nowhere.”

Bob Ross and the Amateur Painter

Try asking some successful artists-- musicians, painters, whoever-- “hey, when you first started painting, did you suck?” I dare you to ask some of these talented people. Some of them will say “yeah, I did suck. And I kept practicing and kept going and eventually I got to where I am today.” And those are the cool people. They are awesome folks and they're a lot more likely to be a great teacher to others. Because other people will say “no, I never sucked” and they're lying. Maybe they'd rather gloat in the idea that they're better than everybody else. They're only as great as they are because of their struggle with the art form, and they don't want to talk about it. They more than likely went through trials and tribulations but they think they should act like it never happened. They just want to seem like a natural but they probably were not coming out of the womb kicking ass at painting. Those people will probably not be very good at coaching you if it's your first time painting. Because they won't be able to empathize with you or they'll feel uncomfortable when they remember how much they used to suck. This goes for teachers who don't empathize with their students and give up on them.

Bob Ross was a talented painter whose optimism was contagious. His philosophy was that “anyone can paint,” and he made this very clear throughout his television show in the 1980's, the Joy of Painting. He was well known for his very calm demeanor, and he once swore that he would “never yell again” in his life after he left the Air Force. Fans worldwide enjoyed his show because of his calm voice. They would just watch him paint and listen to him talk-- according to his company's research, only 3% of their television viewers actually tried painting at home while they watched. Later in the season, his tone would change slightly as he would stress that “anyone can paint.” He would respond to comments from fans saying that they were not talented enough and once he read a letter on his show from a fan who tried to paint at home.

This brings up the question many asked about The Joy of Painting-- was the show really meant to be a tutorial? Did Bob Ross really think he could just show everybody how to paint by modeling his own painting process from start to finish? Ross did recognize that painting would take practice but very much undermined how much practice it must have taken him to get to his own level of skill. It's unclear whether or not Ross started painting before his years in the Air Force, and how many years of study and practice he must have completed. But he also taught classes and began his own company where Bob Ross official instructors would travel to workshops and teach painting in person with students. These workshops could hardly be called classes-- they were exactly like the Joy of Painting show where the scene was painted from start to finish and the students were expected to follow along with no previous experience.

Ross was a very well-meaning teacher who forgot what it took to get his artistic process down. His process was very intuitive if we can judge by listening to his narration of it while he painted live on t.v. Could Ross have done anything differently to help his students as they were struggling? Just watching him glide through the painting with ease really did not seem to work for a lot of people. Others did not realize that it was supposed to be instructional because the process was grossly over-simplified. Ross claimed that it was really all you needed to do-- just observe and practice. But he didn't talk about the practice or study so much as he just did it in an expert way for others to observe. He created the illusion that he never struggled over his paintings, which lead many to believe that he just had a talent or knack that they did not. If he meant to be a teacher, his teaching approach could be called widely unsuccessful.

What I find particularly interesting is his agitated tone of voice when he stresses just how easy painting really is. Instead of being there for his students in times of struggle, he just reiterates that “anyone can paint” and seems worried that someone would question that. He is happy to reveal his artistic process, but the problem is that he doesn't recount the issues that he may have had along his personal journey to being a famous painter who paints with magical ease. This alienates students who are struggling.

Personal Style and Experimentation:

Probably the reason that a lot of artists avoid design thinking is this. The downside at following a formulaic process for drawing is that you may stray from development of your own style. An artist has their own style. A lot of art students come out of certain art schools making illustrations that may be good, bad or so-so … but they all look like Disney characters-- Disney style. Because all the students were taught to approach illustration the same way. If you draw a dog-- you approach it the same way every time. If you draw a man-- you approach it the same way every time. When you mess around more, you develop your own style and what you accidentally discovered that feels great. So you do it again and you stick with it. And that's your artistic style.

Intuition v.s. Order

At some point though, you find a balance between planning and improvising the creative process. If you have enough knowledge of a craft, you become a better planner. How much you want to plan before you dive in and put paintbrush to canvas, is your choice.

Design brings a practical approach to creativity. Some people think of throwing paint around aimlessly as being creative. It is-- but design goes a lot further. It says you can actually come up with a creative idea or concept, plan it and make it into a reality. You have to use the right side and the left side of the brain. It says, “let's take your idea for something that is outside of the box thinking, and make it a functional thing in reality.” Sure, you can design a portrait composition in pencil on a canvas before you start painting. When you decide where things are going to go or the organization or composition of something before starting, you're getting closer to design. If you assign a certain amount of space to different parts of the whole project, you're thinking more along the lines of design-- like designing a floor plan if you're an interior designer.

When you have a design plan, you can then begin to construct with confidence. You can make a 3D object like a sculpture or upholster a 3D object with fabric. This takes a lot more attention to space, size and detail.

Why Design?

With design, you develop your very own formulaic process for how to do something-- anything. Illustration, animation, painting, writing, game design, interior design, etc. There are a set of principles that help you think in broad terms about how to plan before you put paint brush to paper. I used to think that design meant interior or fashion design and that it was something snobby or intimidating. What I found interesting is that design doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the tech world as we know it, or style, or fashion-- not necessarily, because that's a narrow way of thinking about it. With our growing industries in STEM, I think a lot of people are realizing the importance of design, but I think design can really be for anyone, you don't even have to be “great at math.” My confidence in math is not super high, but that's not a problem with design. Design has to do with trial and error and testing before you put paintbrush to canvas, so to speak. You create your own process, you test your own process and you remake and correct your own process. If you ever need math, it's a quick reference from the internet. For me, the lightbulb finally went off in my head in graduate school and I realized that design applies any kind of creative work. Design is for anybody. As a matter of fact, I bet anyone would be better at planning or organizing anything from their morning routine, to their entire life after taking a crash course in design. It just helps you feel empowered to get into details and plans so that you can do things right and be satisfied. I could use that, and couldn't we all?

Design Curriculum Proposition for Kids

Experimentation is key to style. It has to do with trusting yourself. I think it's personally empowering for kids and it's not just for “gifted and talented” kids. Kids love to think of ideas for things that could exist but don't currently exist. Even machines or places that could exist. I have worked with gradeschool kids in tutoring and after school programs for about 5 years. They definitely do already start to design and blueprint their ideas in drawings. In a classroom, they could start out drawing an imaginary thing, which kids usually love. And then for a design thinking lesson, you could just start asking the kids to tell us a little bit about their thought process. Like, why did you decide to put that there?

We already give building toys to kids like legos. A design activity would ask them to make a plan for what to build with the legos. It could be incredibly simple-- like 5 legos or less. But it would still be a breakthrough to simply ask them to make a plan before exacting it. I've seen a teacher do this in an after school program with tremendous success. It's not easy to convince other teachers that they could do this for their students though.

Design for the Education System

We teach kids games at school, and we create competition between them to see who is the best. How do we get the kids to be engaged and motivated so that they can learn. The teachers have to know the kids and the first time coming up with an activity is a test. It's a test to see how well the activity works out for the students.

Teachers are game designers this way because they all are burdened with the challenge of engaging, entertaining, encouraging, coaxing and tricking the kids into learning. A game is a system of actions that someone engages in. There are a lot of factors to consider in deciding whether or not it's a good game. It has to be a well-designed system. Testing the game with students allows teachers to improve the game and “make it work.” There is a process of trial and error in finding out what games will work best in the classroom. Games and activities have to designed with kids and the school curriculum in mind. How well they work depends on the following aspects:

• Does it teach the curriculum?
• Are the kids going to be motivated to play without getting bored, for the entirety of the time allotted?
• How do we regulate the activity with rules?
• How do we make it so that it's fair and all the students get a fair chance to learn and succeed.
• Is the reward system fair? Do the kids feel that it was fair? If they don't, they won't engage in it. They really will need to engage in the game in order to learn and grow as students.
• Can we play the game again and will it still be interesting-- can we add on to it for future rounds?
• All these questions are taken into consideration in the design of the activities in the classroom. Teachers spend hours (often outside of paid hours) to research, write and prepare these activities. I have worked at a reading tutoring program, a few after-school programs, and a volunteer-run kindergarten program in Honduras. I have friends who Teach for America or for public schools. In all of these settings, the same thing is expected of a teacher-- we are responsible for the day's activities and they can't just be any activity. The activity really has to be eventful and successful. Not only do we administer the activity with the kids, we have to design the activity. They spend hours on preparation time, and in public schools, they do not get paid hours for this preparation time. The teachers I know personally are stuck having come up with their games over dinner after work. Even if you borrow from another pre-made game, there's still research and modification that needs to be done to make it fit for the particular class.

Breaking the Rules

Game design for the rules of the game is a reiterative process. Kids learn how to break games, find a loophole, game the system and things like that all the time. Teachers add new rules to their games all the time, like San Francisco adds more “No U-Turn Signs” all over the city. When kids break my games, I applaud them, because indeed-- I never said they couldn't do what they did to break the game. They found a loophole. I once had a critical discussion with kindergarteners about how the rules to my very own dodgeball / soccer mash-up gym game needed to be amended. Once they made their way to the goal, it was too easy for them to score again, for some reason that escapes me. Nobody was in trouble and we just had a critical discussion about the rules and Noah's course of action and why it wasn't technically cheating. We then came up with two possible solutions about how to re-design the game by amending the rules.

Why Games at School

Engaging in a great game is a way for students to learn creative and critical thinking. Some teachers, and maybe this isn't their fault, don't bother with this kind of activity if they don't think their kids are well-behaved enough because it is exhausting. It may very well be easier to have the kids learn and memorize information than create a dynamic learning experience for them through well-developed activities.

The curriculum we teach at school is also designed to help students learn the knowledge they need to succeed. The standardized tests they take are designed to find out if the students are doing well at school. Whether it's English for second language, math, fine motor skills like crafts, gross-motor skills like gym games-- the teacher has to to set up the activity by the number of students and the content. They also have to plan the rules and actions that the student needs to complete.

If these systems don't teach the kids the knowledge they need and increase their performance, the teacher will probably have to deal with the consequences. The students suffer the most. Our goal is to help everyone to learn and succeed. If kids are burning out and dropping out of school instead of being enriched and empowered, then something is wrong. And no it's not always the kids. If the systems that we have designed to bring young people in this country an education are failing, then we are failing as a society.

Rote learning is where the teacher delivers information to students that they need to memorize. Maybe the teacher writes some information on the board, and the students copy it, or they receive handouts that they need to memorize. By contrast, higher order learning has to do with creative and critical thinking. These kinds of activities could be discussions or challenges that ask students to think for themselves. Teaching students to form unique ideas are a critical part of a quality education.

Games and Self-Confidence

What makes games more motivational than school or work? In a game, it's okay if you fail. Failure in real life is a lot harder to deal with than failure in a game. You might be thinking well, too bad because in real life you have to fail. And the conversation usually ends there.

In a game, you don't even have to play. Doubt that you will succeed in real life will take a huge swing at our motivation level. Why apply for a job if there's a high chance you won't get hired? Failing takes a huge swing at our self-confidence-- we may be afraid that we will lose time or energy trying to do something that we don't think we will succeed at. With that risk taken away, as people sit down to play a game, people feel a sense of motivation lifting off. In addition, opportunities to win reappear instantly after you fail in a game. In real life, when you fail, you may feel as though you really missed your chance. Giving it your best shot is quite a commitment and it makes you emotionally vulnerable.

Games help us practice our self-confidence and self-trust.

Design Thinking V.S. Rote Learning

Design thinking requires critical and creative thinking-- the opposite of rote learning. Rote learning is purely memorization in order to succeed at standardized tests, after which time, students tend to forget what they memorized to make way for new information. Only focusing on rote learning in public schools is a cheap form of education. This is because it's poor quality education and it's easier to grade tests. Teachers run the test sheets through a scantron which quickly gives the student a percentage that measures their academic progress. But the emphasis on creative and critical thinking is going away. Due to a lack of state funding, we are getting stingier and lazier with public education. More and more, parents are realizing this and putting their kids in private schools, which will probably continue to raise their tuition. If public school quality continues to dwindle, we will see just those who cannot afford private school attend public school, and the quality of public school will be at its worst. This will mean that a quality education will only be accessible to wealthy families. And that does not sound like a democratic country where we have equal opportunity or, where we have our morals and priorities in the right place.

Grading and Feedback to Encourage Critical Thinking

When I was in high school, a few of my teachers would grade their students' math tests with a little more effort and special care. These teachers would analyze the student's work, and give them partial credit for showing the correct logic in the work of the math problem. This was great for students because even brilliant mathematicians make tiny errors like forgetting to carry the one or move the decimal place. Giving credit to students for at least thinking critically and using their mathematical logic gave them a fair chance. It may be hard for teachers to grade papers this way, but I think it was well worth it. It encourages students to think critically instead of asking them to be perfect every time. It puts the goal of education in the right place. Students don't need to be perfect but they do need to have the right train of thought and understand the why or the logic behind the problem.

Design is everywhere

Any system of actions can be designed like a game. When you design a game you're thinking about motivation. The game has to be fun and the players have to be satisfied so it has to be designed to motivate them to continue acting within that system. So when you think of it that way, you can see game design everywhere. When you're thinking about rules and motivation, you have stepped into the world of game design. Today, private and advanced schools incorporate design into the curriculum. Graphic design is popular but it's a little more about software and art. Design is more about sitting down with paper and a pencil and planning and sketching. When I realized that, I found that design was really hear all along-- kind of like when Dorothy realizes that she could easily click her heels three times to get what she wanted the whole time. I had already been a designer of sorts every time I sketched out a plan of some sort on a piece of paper, I was already a good part of the way there. I think a lot of people think that design is some very lofty thing that's above their heads, and I think design can be really for anyone. A lot of kids would be more engaged in school if design was part of the curriculum, because many people naturally gravitate towards organization and creative thinking.

And finally, there is UX.

The purpose of UX research is to find out what it's like to use a product for a customer or a user or anyone who may have to use the product. The product could also be a service or a system. How is the experience for the consumer to use the product. What is the experience really like to use it?

For success to happen, a product or system is created, it is used by the target user and then the desired result is effected. So in other words, someone makes a product, it is used the way it's supposed to be used, it works the way it is supposed work and then the desired result is affected. Often times systems don't work the way they're supposed to work and the desired result is not achieved. The system doesn't help the users and it is not a beneficial experience.

This approach could be used for anything that involves a maker and a consumer. Let's take cakes. Let's say I think I'm great at making cakes and I open a bakery. For some reason, customers might buy my cakes once and then they never come back. For some reason, the experience of the customer is that the cake wasn't very good –obviously. If given the option, a person would never use a system or a product again if they did not have a good experience with it. And let's say I'm the baker and I can't figure out why I'm losing customers. UX researchers will go out and study and interview the customers to find out why.

In the world today, there are a lot of systems and products that are made for people to use and those people do not have any option but to use it. One of those systems is the public education system. Young people don't have any choice but to go to school, it's the law, and most do not have the money to attend a private school from kindergarten to twelfth grade and beyond.

If this talk were the subject of a UX researcher, the researcher might use a hidden camera to study random audience members and see how they react, what are their facial expressions, when do they seem pleased, when do they seem happy, are they too hot or too cold sitting in this room, does the audio PA system pop at all during the talk, etc. and this would all be a part of the user experience report. This kind of work is super important in any industry-- you made something for someone else to use, so how do they actually feel about it. This information will tell you how your business is really doing and what the level of performance might be.

UX for the Public School Experience

UX research can be conducted for the public school experience for teachers and students because the public school system consists of:

• activities and assignments : systems of actions
• grading and performance reviews for academic progress
• human interaction between students and teachers OR students and students
• a desired result for students
• a desired result for teachers

In a school, if we studied students, we'd have an accurate idea of how well the kids are doing and why. This would be the experience of sitting at a desk in a classroom, doing the assignment. A subject experiencing this environment should ask themselves the following to measure the quality of the experience:

• Do I feel motivated?
• How do I feel about the instruction?
• How do I feel about teacher feedback about my performance?
• When do I not do well or understand the lesson?

When kids are young, they have a very hard time expressing what's going on with their academic performance and why they're not doing well. It's easy to believe that it's all their fault, but still kids don't know how to improve.

Teachers and parents have a habit of telling the kids that their problem is not being motivated. They blame their kids for feeling something that they don't feel. It's our job as adults to help the next generation. It's the teachers job to inspire and engage the kids. It's the job of the curriculum makers to make sure the kids learn what is important in society. And it's the law-makers' jobs to prioritize funding for schools. It's all of our responsibility to provide good education for the next generation. So instead of telling kids that there is something wrong with them, we need to take responsibility for the education system that we have created.

If we don't, that would be like, if I am the baker at the bakery, and the customer comes in and tells me that my crossoints are stale and my bundt cakes are bland, and I just say, “you know what, I think there is just something wrong with your tastebuds.” It would behoove me to find out what is really going on. I should thank the customer for taking the time to tell me what it's like so that I can figure out how I am going to turn things around at my bakery.

If we had a UX study of teachers, we could find out if the teacher has everything they need to make a difference in these kids' lives. UX researchers could present to the Board of Education what is actually working well for teachers to make their jobs better and more efficient. The success of the teachers is closely related if not directly related to the success of the students.

If we know why we are failing and we still aren't doing anything to improve, there is only one explanation-- denial of the truth in order to tighten up on spending. We know classrooms are overcrowded and that teachers are burnt out because they're not getting paid enough and their classrooms are too big. I spoke to someone who claims that teachers are sitting on a goldmine in California and that the idea that teachers don't get paid enough is the biggest lie in California. But when I probed him further about it, he told me that teachers can't make a difference in children's lives. So clearly his point of view would be that teachers don't do much so they shouldn't get paid very much. If you expect quality instruction, then yes, the teachers would absolutely need to be paid a competitive salary. If the teachers aren't getting paid very much then they lose motivation and they need more support in order to perform better. This in turn greatly impacts the experience for students. Teachers actually shop for the materials for their kids and buy them out of their own pocket in the United States. No pencils or pens provided by the school itself in American public schools. That's how stingy the education system has become. The teachers I know are living in small, inexpensive apartments without a car because that is their financial status. They also use crowdsourcing like Gofundme.com to have science projects and other such things. Teachers are asking for charity. It will be up to average people out of the kindness of our hearts to donate to public schools because the state won't shell out the money. That's terrible. Obviously these teachers go the extra mile for their students, so it's obvious that they do deserve better pay. And we shouldn't have to rely on charity from people to fund important projects for the education of the next generation.

There will be less and less people who want to become teachers as time goes forward. What was once an honorable profession is now a lost cause in public schools. Isn't education something that everyone deserves? Who wants to live in a society where the vast majority of the population is undereducated? If you don't put your money in the right place, you don't think it's important. The top priority will be the highest funded. Why don't we value public education in our society? We don't care about the next generation? If the next generation are deliquents then the poverty rate in this country will rise. When we are educated, we rise in financial status. At the rate we're going, soon enough, a proper education will only be affordable by wealthy families. Or will students begin to take out federal student loans to fund their private high school experience because a public high school education will be degraded to an unacceptable level? The way public education is going is very dire.

My parents made sure I went to the best public school for elementary, junior high and high school. I'm worried that in the future as we see public education functions like art and sports getting cut, as teachers become more overwhelmed and have less energy to provide quality activities, I am worried that public education will be seriously downgraded in future years. The demand for private institutions will rise and families will have to cough up serious money for a decent education. Meanwhile, colleges and university tuition is increasing as we speak. Soon a quality education will only be attainable by the upper class.