Creative Culture: Human-Centered Interaction, Design, & Inspiration, reviewed

By Simon Cocking, review of Creative Culture: Human-Centered Interaction, Design, & Inspiration written by Justin Dauer. Available from Amazon here. 

The first edition of Justin Dauer’s 2017 book Cultivating a Creative Culture was written around a core concept: empathy, humility, and creativity at the office—permeating how we treat one another, support one another, and the collective influence upon how we create.?

It’s upon that last notion, “how we create,” where this second edition further focuses on the parallels between “making” and “interacting.” Process and practice. Design and culture.

We cannot preach outwardly about empathy for those we’re designing for if as designers, researchers, architects, developers (and on and on) we’re not supporting each other. The notion of being human-centered has an innate synergy between design process (and ultimate product) and office culture (and empathetic interactions). To the benefit of both dynamics, those touch points are identifiable and exploitable.

Creating with compassion in an environment fueled by compassion means we never lose sight of what it’s all about: people. Beyond functioning in this manner because “it’s the right thing to do,” quality of design work, loyalty internally (team) and externally (users), and product innovation are all benefits to reap.Join Justin as he demonstrates how putting humans first – in our design process and in the workplace – yields a successful end product and an endlessfountain of inspiration.

Creative Culture: Human-Centered Interaction, Design, & Inspiration, reviewed

There are some good images in this short and punchy book. The author has also thought long and carefully about what creativity might look like and how they can be encourage and support it. Their onboarding process is outlined and it is a thoughtful and interesting one. They have clearly mused on how to try and do this right and ensure that the new hires feel welcomed and inspired to remain and integrate with the company culture and the people within it. Having received some distinctly less than welcoming induction days we can all empathise with this strategy and salute Dauer’s attempts to do this better.

The book has a healthy and refreshing range of examples and anecdotes from non obvious sources including hipster joints in Chicago, highschool run pizza business training programs and the UK also. This makes for a thought provoking and interesting read as it is not merely a tour of the same old examples. The book is well paced and moves along quickly. The visual cartoon images work well and makes the book a handy sources of ideas and different ways to look at things. You could do far worse by picking this book up and spending some time learning from their hard earned attempts to create a more creative culture to work in.

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With a new foreword by Steve Portigal, author of “Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories,” and “Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights.”