Are you looking for ways to give yourself a quick zap of creative power? Are you wondering how creativity can be applied to GIS analytical work? GISuser.com just published my article on the subject if you would like to read more. It’s a longer piece than usual but it will be worth your time!

Expert Feature – Creativity Not Just For Cartographers: Geo Analysts Need It Too

A skeuomorph is a new design that still retains a function and/or appearance of the old, physical object that it replaces. In the old object, the function and/or appearance was essential, but in the new design, it is just a relic – according to the Wikipedia entry. (However, it may be argued that design that seems to have no “useful” function does indeed – it has the useful function of transitioning the user from the analog object to the digital object.) For example, window shutters on new homes that you can’t actually use are physical skeuomorphs.

Skeuomorphs abound in the digital world. One example of a digital skeuomorph is the scrolling or flipping that an ebook reader employs – which is of course a relic of paper books, but which serves to make the ebook easier to use for those of us who are accustomed to paper books. Wired* reports that Flipboard gets rid of this skeuomorph and uses, instead, a center-pivot approach that they assert reduces eye fatigue. Another example of digital skeuomorphs are icons used in many types of software that represent out-dated or physical objects such as the floppy disk “save” icon, or the trash can icon.

Applying the concept of the skeuomorph to map design, what relics of print maps do digital maps still retain? What completely new design features are present in digital maps that we couldn’t do with print maps? Let us know. There’s got to be a lot of them. My contribution to the discussion:

Some people – ahem – complain about the overuse of pdf files on websites. For example, organizations often publish pdf maps instead of creating interactive maps. Whereas the map key could be dynamic, it is static. Whereas the user could have zoomed in and out easily, we have, instead, a static resolution and non-existant scale-dependent rendering. Pdfs, then, can be a type of skeuomorph. However, while the posting of pdf maps online has many flaws, it does have the benefit of being easy to understand for those not familiar with digital maps.

*Clive Thompson: Retro design is crippling innovation

To be extremely successful, you must be creative. Not the kind of creativity that compels people to put together scrap books or to arrange their bulletin boards just-so, but the kind of creativity that allows you to solve a problem with an uncommon solution. Your solution doesn’t have to be completely new and unique, but you’ll know it is a creative solution if it takes a certain amount of guts or audacity to explain it to people. Here are just a few creative solutions on my radar this week:

1) The idea of working out while working isn’t something I came up with myself, but I’m the only one I know personally who does it. Thus, it took quite a bit of research to figure out what was needed and how/if it would work. (By the way, yes, it does work. I cycle about 3 hours / day at about 7 miles per hour – slow – while working.)

2) According to an article this month in Fast Company magazine, someone offered free piggy-back rides to anyone who would “sign up today.” Okay, so we aren’t so sure that’s going to work out, as I certainly would be less inclined to sign-up (!) but I’m assuming he knew what his audience would think was funny and was successful with it.

3) The Stanford d school reported recently on student’s responses to the directive to describe each process design mode in one sentence. I like these: “Enter someone else’s world, observe and listen for an hour but design forever” and “Battle of egos: Pow! Pow!”

I know what you’re thinking: creativity means putting radioactively colored sticky notes up on the whiteboard.

Okay, so maybe it does sometimes. But the biggest two things you can do to boost your creativity are 1) give yourself a few minutes to one hour of free-time (Richard Branson used to walk around his garden to think, for example) and 2) do a quick creativity exercise such as putting together a few legos or solving a puzzle online.

Don’t be fooled, though, most creative ideas are met with criticism. If your idea is being criticized, it has to be met head-on. Is the criticism warranted? One way to find out is to think about whether or not you would have said the same thing. If it is something you would never say to someone, then you can bet the criticism is unwarranted.

A guy named Elbert Hubbard once said…

The only way to avoid criticism is to say nothing, do nothing, be nothing

Here’s a website you may not have seen: GIS humor, run by Kelly Sparks, aka @GISRocks.

My favorite may be the entry that points to the Onion’s headline, “Midwest Discovered between East, West Coasts.” It doesn’t appear that Kelly has updated the site since May 2011, prompting me to wonder if we need to do some more funny GISy things for her to write about.