Constraints: Thinking Inside the Box

This Blog post was origionally posted by me on the Head London Blog

We tend to think that creativity thrives best when constraints are removed, when in-fact the opposite is true, creativity thrives when people are challenged by constraints, that inconvenience forces people to be inventive, innovative and creative.

Constraints provide us with the opportunity to get rid of everything that is irrelevant and focus on the matter in hand. We can break things down into their component parts and by doing so concentrate on the things that really matter, with this we can stop worrying about what it is we are designing and get on with designing the solution to a specific problem.

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”
Igor Stravinsky

In 1977 Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, co-authored; A Pattern Language. In this book they chronicled 253 archetypal patterns, from big high level patterns relating to the layout of regions and cities. Right down to the details of fixtures such as door knobs, and other embellishments. These patterns can be used together in an infinite number of combinations.

The idea was that ordinary people not just professional designers, could design their own houses, streets and communities together with their neighbours and families, within a set of guiding principles, adapted to the preferences of those people. These principles do not mean that every design will be the same only that there are a set of core constraints that make a design successful.

From very early on in their education, art students are taught to copy and study famous artists, not to mimic them but instead to look at the artists style from many angles, to find the essence of what it is that makes the artists work, and in turn learn what they, themselves, can do within those constraints.

During Life drawing classes at art college, we were usually asked by our tutors to do a series of exercises each placing different constraints on our approach: from drawing with a time limit of a few seconds, to restrictions on the drawing tools we could use. These constraints always led to much more rewarding results than just being left to our own devices.

(Image: Stone Room by Andy Goldsworthy at Yorkshire Sculpture Park - Creative Commons Flickr)

The sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, creates astonishing works of art using only the items he finds while out walking, such as twigs, leaves, rocks, snow and ice. He was once quoted as saying, “I think it’s incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole”.

Famous Artists create great works not necessarily by working unbridled, but, by placing constraints on the style, medium or method they use, exploring in depth what can be done within the constraints they set themselves.

In an interview in the late 1960s, Charles Eames famously stated, “Design depends largely on constraints…Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognise as many of the constraints as possible (and) his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, size, strength, balance, surface, time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.”

Despite the obvious constraints of designing for mobile devices, we have embraced the challenge of designing engaging experiences for them. The limitations of what can be done on a mobile device helps us to concentrate on exactly what is important when using an application, and prioritise what it is that should be included.

Luke Wroblewski argues that the constraints in designing for mobile should be the starting point for all web product offerings rather than the traditional route of designing for desktop experiences first. Acknowledging the constraints of the mobile screen size, and performance helps us to focus on what users care about, and what their core actions will be.

At Head we approach projects in an agile way, we work in short, typically 2 week iterations, focusing on solving specific ‘user stories’. At the beginning of each iteration we choose stories that we will design collaboratively between the UX and Visual design teams. We then work alongside the development team as they build. This constraint of time speeds up development and helps us to quickly see how good a new concept is, as each iteration provides us with a working and stable prototype. This gives us the opportunity test and to fail so, where necessary, we can come up with a better solution.

Designers need to live within real world limits, they need to recognise all the constraints that effect the problem they are trying to solve. Each problem has its own unique set of constraints and the success or failure of the project depends on meeting those constraints.

So, instead of freaking out over constraints, let’s get over it and learn to love and embrace them.