Bend and Break and Recreate

If you're not getting the results you want, try breaking - or at least bending - the rules that guide your typical approach.

For example,

Don't immerse yourself in a stubborn challenge. Distance yourself from it.

Creating physical or psychological distance can help us find creative solutions, by changing how we mentally represent things. Distancing from a time (projecting the challenge into the future) or probability (assuming success is more or less likely) perspective can also increase creative thinking.

Learn more about how psychological distance impacts creativity here.

Don't work to understand the challenge. Work to understand the context.

Design thinking helps would-be problem solvers avoid solving the wrong problem by immersing themselves in the world of the user before defining the problem to solve. Reading context clues and observing interactions within the environment can uncover more powerful needs.

Find resources and references for designing discovery strategies here.

Don't meet or exceed expectations. Recreate them.

If you want more of the same, keep doing and thinking what you're doing and thinking. Not everything needs to change. But if you want different results, consider ways to crack open new possibilities here.

At COMPIO, we have been busy prototyping new ways to deliver our services. Stay tuned for updates on what we're learning as we bend and break the rules that have guided our approaches.