Cost of creativity
To calculate the cost of creativity, or the lack thereof, we first have to define creativity itself. What is it? Searching for the answer in literature might confuse you even more. According to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Peter Meusburger (yes, that is impressive), there are over one hundred different definitions of creativity. Over the last decade, the research has reached some general agreement that, as Michael Mumford puts it, creativity involves the production of novel and useful products. However, this is just describing the end-result.
If, instead, we look at creativity as a process, we need to move past the first, most obvious idea. Then, go past a couple of probably novel, but basically useless ideas – one or two ideas that are great but not applicable to the project at hand. Then you have to test, refine, turn it upside down and get real honest feedback from the brilliant minds around you. And if some of these brilliant minds are involved from the beginning, you might actually save time with something I describe as the "Ricky effect."
I was working on a design for an intricate subpage, but no matter how much I moved things around, changed colors, layout, typeface, contrasts, etc., it didn't give me the right sense of balance. Even worse, the information lacked a clear sense of prioritization. (In my next article, I will return to why prioritizing your site is a must for conversion). I asked for some feedback from my colleagues. Ricky, one of our Art Directors, glanced at it for just a second before saying, "Have you tried putting a line beneath the headline?" I hadn't. So, I did and the rest… is not history… but certainly a live site!
Should I have been able to catch this myself? Possibly. Probably, eventually. But how much more time would it have taken? And given that time, how much more would it have cost?
Having the right people involved at the right time is crucial for the creative process. Bad ideas are put to rest as fast as good ones come alive. In the intersection between the minds of people with the right talent for the task, magic often appears. And it can appear fast. With more people scrutinizing the details, you catch incoherencies and illogical sidesteps in time, thereby saving valuable hours in the end.
