Artists go through three core stages in the art making process. They observe, sketch, and create. In many ways it is analogous to product development. Let’s look at those steps and find insights for product development, ideation, and management.
.
Artistic Observation
Artists are keen observers of the internal and external world. They observe, listen, dive deep and wonder. They collect inputs from nature, from other artists, and from within themselves. They gather ideas that interest them, speak to them, and awaken the spirit. They research the things they love and notice patterns, often making unusual associations between familiar objects.
One way to consider this creative process of observation is to observe life on two axes – a horizontal axis of things we have to do and a vertical axis of things we love to do (that give us a spiritual experience). The intersection of those points often leads us to new insights. This intersection is recognised as important for product owners as the emotive response we get from a product experience, for many products, can be as important as what the product delivers from a functional point of view.
Exploring this intersection is what I call “finding”. It leads to creative questions which open up new perspectives. One powerful perspective on this process is from Pablo Picasso : “I do not seek, I find. It is a risk, a holy adventure. The uncertainty of such ventures can only be taken on by those, who feel safe in insecurity, who are leaders in uncertainty, in guilelessness, who let themselves be drawn by the target and do not define the target themselves.”
For product owners and product managers what can we learn by defining our products and services on those two axes? Are we creating an experience that addresses the things that must be done and the search for some additional charge out of life?
As product owners and product managers, do we have diversity in the way we observe our market, our customers and prospects, and the user experience? The diversity of observation is important – to look not only at the point, the line, and the surface, but to also observe colour, textures, and form. Out of diverse observations artists find novel targets for expression.
.
Sketching
Observation leads to finding targets that can inspire creative expression. At this point most artists sketch. There are many different ways to sketch. Dmitry Kuznichenko whose art is presented throughout this website, uses a variety of techniques. One powerful technique he uses is to set short time limits (5 to 10 minutes), use a pencil and rubber, and create ten or twenty representations of ideas in under 2 hours. Each time he completes a sketch he learns more about which perspectives work and what forms capture the essential ideas he wants to communicate. At the end of that process, he has a map of ideas and often selects the best ideas and starts again around those themes.
ach of these sketches, is in my view, analogous to a minimal viable experiment (MVE). For product developers and product designers, artists can teach us that developing a lot of MVE’s perhaps provides opportunities to create better minimal viable products (MVP’s).
Consider the task of creating ideas in volume, in short bursts. Consider setting some specific ideation tasks and targets in any product development exercise. For example, in any given observation of need in a marketplace, develop a minimum of 20 ways to explore and shape that product idea. Prioritise those MVE’s using a framework that links with your initial observations, and then create another 20 ways to shape and describe how you can express that idea in a market based experiment.
Consciously (or unconsciously), the artists MVE’s link back to their observations and sometimes the MVE’s press them to ask new questions about what they observed. If you have 10 minutes and want to see how Dmitry Kuznichenko uses differentiated observation to create wonderful art, look at this video “what inspires art” . It might challenge the techniques you use for observing your market.
Following intense observation, artists often find new patterns and relationships.
This also has merit for product owners and product designers. After creating many minimal viable product experiment ideas, should you go back to your original observation points and try and look at them again with a more diverse lens? This is a much harder thing to do than to accept your initial observations. It creates dissonance and product owners who do take on an intensity of observation can often be accused of losing focus.
Great art sometimes happens by first ideas or by accident. We look at it and it seems to flow naturally out of the artists brush, pen, or chisel. But it is more likely that the art that ignites you emotionally and intellectually, has been through many-many small and roughly sketched iterations, based on repeated intense observations.
.
Creating
The artist spends a lot of time preparing the tools and materials required to bring their ideas to life. A great skill artists have is a keen awareness of the type of tools and materials they need, to create their own styles of expression. What is often unseen is how much time artists spend on refining their tools and materials. For example, an artist I know has created 50 shades of green in small bottles. Why? Purely to build an understanding of how to mix colour. She may use 20 kinds of brushes to sample the right brush to use for grass as opposed to leaves. Dmitry, will often find special weaves of paper or canvas that will allow him to express his creative ideas in the right context. Some materials support rapid creation, some support layered creation.
Like artists, product owners and product managers can access an almost endless set of tools and materials to support product testing, product building and product branding. Being aware of what is available and trying different tools and materials is an essential part of the art of being a product manager. In a separate blog post I will review some of the tools that are currently available (but more product management tools are being created every week!).
If you have ever been into an artist studio what you often observe is the artist creating many works around a similar theme. They have sketched and sketched and now are directed to bring their ideas to life. “I saw the angle in the marble and carved until I set him free” Michelangelo.
There is an acceptance of the inevitability of failure in these studios, so volume again matters. Artists fail at the final stage (often). But out of failures also come works which will speak to us and inspire us. This requires a quiet and powerful form of self acceptance “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Artists live an incredibly insecure life and yet this seems to empower their creativity. By making the unknown known, by following the messages they found through observations, inspiring works have the potential to emerge.
There is an important message there for business owners and product owners around the word “potential”. It can be impossible to achieve results by forcing outcomes. Product managers and product developers may find more meaning in their marketplaces by embracing insecurity. I have been with many teams and businesses whose OKR’s are shaped by outcomes and perhaps that needs to be more measured. Inevitably it can undermine the need to do more exploring, to actually make certain tasks of the job insecure and poorly defined, to allow product leaders to work on making the unknown known.
For example, consider how that might affect the creation of MVP’s and testing them in the market. There is often a tendency to try and prove the MVP, rather than focusing the MVP on exploration rather than outcomes.
Summary
Gustav Klimt said that “Art is a line around your thoughts.” Next time you look at a piece of art consider the thinking that supported the creative outcome you are looking at. Then also consider that artistic creations and product creations are really born from the same stuff. Product owners can find inspiration in how to observe, ideate, and create, by looking at art and imagining what the process to create it was. Why don’t you start now and look at this artwork by Dmitry Kuznichenko – the form, the color, the brush strokes, the movement, and the strange combination of life figures and emotion. Then look back at the previous two works in this post and I think you will appreciate the steps a skilled artist takes to create the “effortless” expression of joy you see below.
