Trees “remember” that they were shaken in the past.

Plants grown outdoors grow thicker and sturdier than those in greenhouses, even in the same amount of light. They face strong winds, heavy snow and other natural and man-made accidents.

In the example of a Larch tree, it even re-designs itself if it was attacked by caterpillars.

In the year after an assault, the tree remembers its experience and produces leaves that are shorter and stouter than usual. Their new design does not photosynthesize as efficiently as the original thinner & longer one, but it’s better at repelling pests. In the following years, the caterpillars, later becoming moths, will no longer find it a tasty environment and leave, and the tree will revert to normal foliage.

And then there’s the Aspen tree.

At first appearance, the aspen doesn’t look tough.

With its ghostly smooth and greenish-white trunks, long flat stalks that turns melancholic yellow in the autumn. It seems the furthest example from resilience a tree could be. Yet it flourishes where other trees, seemingly stronger and more equipped for resilience, perish.

Those unassuming cloning machines are one of nature’s most resourceful trees. Apart from their ability to bounce back after fire, they reproduce by asexual cloning. They generate copies of themselves and shoot up suckers through their lateral roots. This vast established root system proves itself effective in case of a forest fire. If the fire occurs in winter when the ground is frozen, or in spring when it is still wet, the roots survive and they can reproduce a grove of aspens within months.   

In Emulating nature, we need to up our game if we are to think in such agile and creative manner. Faced with challenges, we need to learn methods of self-renewal as well as self-restructuring, as well as find ways to connect our systems with that of the environment we belong to. We need to need to seem strong and powerful, we just need to trust our design that it will persist in face of disturbances.

(This is a short passage from a chapter I’m writing, in an edited book, about biomimicry.

Hang in there Cornelia, it’s coming 😉)

Services Designers use it daily. Market Research use it often, and many business owner use is intuitively.

Ethnography is about knowing people as they are. Understanding their thoughts, feelings and needs by listening, observing, interacting and analyzing.

Immersing yourself in people’s daily lives listening to their stories (and complaints) will provide you with invaluable insights, many of them are surprising or seem nonobvious. To the world they are doing a certain thing, but to them, they are doing it for unique reason. If you are able to crack that code into what is the “reason”, you might have the best insight on other more creative ways of doing “that thing”.

To get to that insight, you need to clear your mind from your own assumptions and focus on what people do, say, and think. Observe everything in their context and notice the location, the spaces between people, & the objects they use. Twitter was not invented by asking people if they wanted to share quick updates in less than 140 characters. It met an unsatisfied need based on ethnographic insights. Whether you like it or not, it’s now worth over USD $5 Billion.

A simple observational research framework is called POEMS. It stands for People, Objects, Environment, Messages and Services. You can examine these elements independently as well as in an interrelated system. Go to the field to observe or ask about people’s activities and objects they use. Pay attention to the environment, the location and what key information and services they interact with. Try to understand the context through PEOMS, immerse yourself in ethnographic research, and take notes of all your insights. Great ideas pop up suddenly and are very context-dependent. You don’t want to wait a minute only to forget that amazing idea.

Happy observing,

Randah Taher

We promise ourselves goals each year. And we reiterate many of them every month. Sometimes a weekly reminder pops up on our phones.

Yet we don’t complete them.

We feel disappointment. Ashamed sometimes. Mostly sad.

It might not be the sense of losing our goal accomplishment that wears us out, maybe it is the promise that we make each time, and each time we break.

So let’s not make promises we can’t keep. Let’s conduct experiments.

For the remainder of this week, pick an item from the list of things you’ve wanted to complete this year.

One thing only.

First, break it down so little that you have the first step sorted into getting things ready, or setting the space, or following up on with someone. This could be a habit to start, an action to close a project, or a relationship you wish to reconnect with. Just one thing. Write it down.

Next, create an anchor. This is a physical item that sits or stands or hangs in front of you. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you. It’s meant to be in front you where you see, smell or sense it daily.

Finally, for the next three days, make an effort to either start or continue this one little step towards the goal at the beginning or end of your day (the middle is always lost to chaos).  Promise yourself, that when the weekend comes, you remove the anchor and no sense of shame will remain if you’ve not completed the task.

This is an experiment, not a goal in itself.

See if it works. Let me know. I’m curious.

Randah

“Look for magic in the daily routine”, said Lou Barlow.

The small tasks at work that help us reach our big goals.

The few minutes we take to move around that help us stay fit.

The bookend routines of the day that helps us start and end on a high note.  

Day in and day out. We play with small pieces of the puzzle that will eventually complete a beautiful well-lived frame.

If we want to truly enjoy our lives, it’s the journey that counts.

The simplest rituals that we build intentionally. The daily creative moments.

This is where magic lives.

Your magician,

Randah

It is sometimes hard for us to celebrate our accomplishments.

Even small wins are overlooked by the promise that, if we keep going steady, we will arrive to our goals sooner than later. Yet, when it comes to our friends, we insist they take a break and enjoy the fruits of their hard work. For some strange reason, we think it’s better for us to freeze our fruits for later. And later comes with its own surprises.

Don’t miss the chance to pause and cheer. Take a deep breath. You’ve reached so far and have done so much.

Well done.

May this time bring much needed chance to rejoice. Happy Eid everyone.

A single word can build and preserve your creative momentum for the day.

A word like “confidence” could represent the meaning of…

“empowerment”,

“elegance”, or

“respect”.

Which one do you associate with the most?

What if the word-of-the-day becomes the criterion for making those random decisions?

A word like “adventure” will guide you in picking lunch, planning a work-related project, engaging in a team exercise or clearing up space. Compare that to a word like “prosperity”. What changes will that make on how you go through the day?

Now try it yourself. Pick a random word. Write it down & keep the note in front of you for the day. Choose with intention. What feelings does it evoke?

We are creatures of ideas.
We pride ourselves with knowing how to think differently and how to solve problems in different directions.
By our very nature, we are divergent.
We seek constant stimuli. We get our knowledge from things we see, hear, touch, feel, taste, or experience. We’re constantly bringing in information for our brain neurons to sort out, decide what to keep in our short-term memory and what to archive. For some, this is a thriving environment and a thrilling lifestyle. For others, it becomes overwhelming at best. This is the first part of embracing being “divergent”.

In your world, how many sources bring in the knowledge you seek and the experiences you enjoy every day? What do you pay attention to and what comes brushed under your brain rug?

(image source)

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, imagination is defined as “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality”.

The etymological origin of the word imagination “is having a picture in the mind’s eye”. Incidentally, unlike the dictionary’s date of reference for the creation of this word (14th century), the ‘mind’s eye’ term and that very definition of imagination was developed in the 10th century by the Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (also known by his Latinized name Avicenna).

As the most famous physician, philosopher, encyclopedist, mathematician and astronomer of his time, he described in his “Book Of Healing” the five mental senses we possess as: common sense, imagination, estimation, representation, and recollection. Explaining how the sense are related, Ibn Sina writes: “for all beauty which is suitable and goodness which one perceives, that one loves and desires, the principle of perceiving them relies on the senses, imagination (khayal), the estimative faculty, conjecture and the intellect”.

Ibn Sina wrote about creativity in general, but focused on the imagination and its affect on

self and other’s behavior. “The imagination of man can act not only on his own body, but even on others and very distant bodies. It can fascinate and modify them; make them ill, or restore them to health”.

Think about it for a few minutes. How’s your imagination affecting people’s health around you?

Creatively yours,

Randah Taher