The other weekend I gave a BarCamp talk about my dream to have a texture garden. I love touching things—especially things with interesting textures: furry, soft, smooth, fuzzy, spiky etc.

Yes, my friends do make fun of me for reaching out to furtively touch old ladies’ fur coats; people’s dreadlocks (just ask Pete); and plants. I love markets with exotic spiky fruit or conservatories with fuzzy-leafed plants and hairy-trunked trees.

I’m just as in love with how things feel in the physical world as I am with the virtual world. When I first got my iPhone, I just sat there watching the window bounce back by scrolling it too far. Later with my 3GS, I got the same enjoyment from watching the app icons dim by slowly sweeping them away to reveal the search UI.

I walked listeners through my thinking (in very broad brushstrokes) behind the design for the texture garden, approaching it as I might an interface design project:

• Brief garden history and analysis of other garden types
• User needs and objectives; my usecase “where can I touch plants with interesting textures”
• Constraints including location, climate, sunlight, soil quality, pests, boundaries and horticultural requirements (plant lifespan, perennial or annual, growth habits, context) and the zoological aspect, a rabbit named Stu and a tortoise named Thing.
• Interaction design with a matrix exploring the “texture wheel” centrepiece, and defining a potential userflow for moving through the garden with main touch points to consider for the interface design
• For the interface design, I drew a garden blueprint and showed a collapsed view of the varied-height plant beds which consider the best touching environment for the different types of plants (as well as the herbivore rabbit and tortoise)
• Lastly, I touched on the visual design with a rendering of the “texture wheel” centrepiece plant beds in SketchUp.

Partially to combat my recent RSI, and partially to try a less “designed” approach to design-talk slides, I revealed the narrative of the talk sketch-by-sketch on a large piece of craft paper.

As was its intent, this article got me thinking about criticism within my personal creative process.

Mine is a cycle where the pivotal moment is hypercriticism. Criticism happens throughout the process (I never stop being critical of my work) but it’s secondary except for one stage in the cycle where self-criticism is the primary activity.

So, I get excited, I start making stuff—I’m on a roll. Then, I burn out, my “creative tap” goes on drip and I get hypercritical. I hate everything I’ve made. I have to recharge, then get excited again… The recharging bit can be tricky—everyone has different methods of recharging. Mine is cross-disciplinary. I like to switch between something creation-based (ie. design) vs. interpretation-based (ie. classical music).

This cycle is usually within a one large project or a few short ones. I try and work my lifestyle around this cycle so it happens in the most efficient and useful way for the project(s) I’m working on—which means keeping my life fairly routine-free and subject to change.

This is the micro version. I recently noticed this exact same cycle happens on a mega scale too. The mega version seems to happen on a 6-year-ish cycle, and the self-criticism step can be downright depressing. It needs to happen a few more times before I have anything truly useful to say about it, except that recognising what’s going on helps.

I try and recognise my patterns because understanding a cycle like this can be a useful barometer; it reflects change in my emotions and opinions. The barometer is a rational yardstick for the things we seek in design: efficiency, originality, quality, longevity. Next time you start criticising, check your barometer and measure in context.

Slides from my presentation on Interface Magic I gave in Amsterdam last week.

Design for Conversion had a really interesting conference format, the attendees got to work on real-world design problems, which made for a really interactive experience.

Possibly the most fun was the speakers dinner the night before. We got to make our own meal in a ‘cooking studio’. Each team cooked a tapas dish and we all got to know each other. Delicious and awesome.

Team prawn salad: me, Arjan and Karl