Comprehensive, Anticipatory Design Scientist

In this post I discuss the formation of this framework and at the very end the rulesets for applying it to everyday work. Download The Framework as a One Sheet Poster

I originally designed this framework after I left R/GA – I was fascinated how Nick Law was hiring people with adjacent skills, letting them fall together without prejudice.

That principle – the falling together of minds – was the basis for Brand Development the trail blazing Brand Group at R/GA that I had the privilege to found. But I was gifted the brilliant Virgilio Santos and Andrew Chee by Nick and Chloe Gottlieb. My team were born from that open mindedness, I never would have had the vision to hire them.

At Brand Development I got to fuse my native thinking from Brand with the emerging thoughts from IxD. We were at the very beginning, no-one had really considered that UX was the natural successor to the responsibilities of Brand. This led me to write bit.ly/brandsaspatterns_ and begin my passion for connecting creative disciplines. Creating this visual map was a way of understanding peoples talents. Showing that no matter our craft we all have empathic abilities to consider strategy, tactic, system and story.

Over the years I’ve returned to Buckminster Fuller’s thinking on the comprehensive mind. Bucky called himself a ‘Comprehensive, Anticipatory Design Scientist’ or Comprehensivist for short. His foundational belief was that specialism reduced the effectiveness of society as a whole to take advantage of the opportunities that Earth provided. He assumed that comprehensive minds would have the necessary empathic ability to solve the large problems and to relate the solutions across all crafts and skill sets. If you want to read more about Bucky, I wholeheartedly suggest reading ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’ also check out BFI here: Buckminster Fuller Institue

Recently I realized Disney's creative framework, 'The Dreamer, Realist & Critic' mapped to the same chart. Though I added another modality, The Experimenter. The Experimenter represents the fluid ability to think and make in iterative cycles. Experimenting isn’t Dreaming, it also lacks the formal discipline of the Realist which is more closely associated with engineering a reasonable solution. Disney embodied the Experimenter when he created the Imagineering group. Although Imagineers occupy all aspects of the thinking modalities they fuse dreaming and experimenting most closely.

This framework is now ten years old. I have iterated it a few times in the last ten years, but much like Brands as Patterns, I’m beginning to realize that it is more relevant today than it ever was.

Applying the Framework
I intended this framework as a map to personal growth, hiring and the formation of teams.

For personal growth I used a set of qualitative questions to establish the area on the map that most represented my current state:

What have been your most successful projects?
What role did you have in these projects?
What were the pivotal moments in the formation of the project?
How does your role differ from your involvement in those pivotal moments?
Who do you work best with?
What roles most closely describe the people you work best with?
When do you most lose focus?
Which quadrants most closely describe where you excel?
Which quadrants most closely describe where you normally fail?

From this I realized that my abilities most closely map to Narrative forms of execution, but interestingly deeply systematic forms of strategic thinking. Up until that point I had been described as an over-thinker and a good storyteller.

More interestingly, when we mapped the team, I found I worked best with people who master Systematic Execution and who have a mostly Narrative process for explaining strategy. Together we occupied a much larger part of the map and we were able to complete a more holistic approach to a problem.

I started pairing people not based on their craft, but on their ability to process information. Two designers who process in the same way would naturally compete. Two designers who processed in complementary ways would amplify each other.

Of course craft skills are absolutely necessary in any work where the tolerance for deviation from the problem, to the concept and solution is low. Disney’s thinking modalities were the final essential jigsaw piece to the puzzle.

Disney’s thinking modalities where a way he could protect the beauty of any ‘possible idea’ from the laser beam focus of analysis and criticism. This approach is really well described and frameworks by Robert Dilts in his book ‘Tools For Dreamers’.

The process formed a room around each modality. A dreaming room would be an open space for all ideas to blossom without the destruction of criticism or the cognitive bias from subject matter expertise and employs the narrative strategic parts of the brain. The Realist room pushed to find out if the necessary technical dependencies enabled an idea to manifest, ‘could the idea exist?’. This uses the systematic and tactical parts of cognition. Finally the room for criticism, ‘should an idea exist?’ which employs mostly the tactical, narrative parts of the brain.

I added The Experimenter, because I realized that the Strategic Systematic mind isn’t represented in Robert Dilts original framework. But I had experienced and seen this ability in practice. Imagineering as a discipline exemplifies the ability to tinker, part dream part reality, building quick maquettes, temporarily fuse the world of the dream and reality without committing to either. Prototyping often reveals the beauty of the dream without the dependency of the eventual software environment.

Separating people from their craft and their position in a team is imperative when working together at different stages of the project. Reforming around each part of a process is necessary to get the most out of any team and helps each person contribute in a fulfilling way. Interestingly Pixar used a similar process when creating films, this is best described in Ed Catmull’s astounding book ‘Creativity Inc’. Criticism was hugely valuable to the creative process at Pixar but it was always confined to the screening room.

Within the Screening Room creative ideas, and progress were vociferously criticized, but the creative author was asked to remove themselves from the role of author and take on the role of the custodian in order to receive criticism as an opportunity to grow the creative idea. Title was also removed from the Screening Room, Ed Catmul’s voice was equal to any of the voices in the room, meaning that it wasn’t an imperative to obey the commands of the founder. At the end of the screening it was left to the custodian to either take, or reject the criticism from the creative process no matter the source.

Using a linear process to make thinking modalities discreet from each other, stops criticism from destroying good ideas too early, creating space for people with different brain types to observe ideas and create value from the group which unstructured ‘brain storming’ usually destroys. But it’s important to realize that the process doesn’t have to follow a linear cycle. Jumping from dreamer to critic can be valuable in thinning ideas before resources are committed. “Thinking until it hurts” pushing to understand the first principles of any problem begins with the basic critical mindset of asking why. Oscillating between "‘What if?’ and ‘Why?' get’s us to first principles more quickly.

Understanding that all people have the capacity to map across the breadth of mindsets prevents prejudice, creates eternal partnerships and highlights opportunities for personal growth. Using the modalities championed by Disney protects the sanctity of the idea, but respects the value of reality, engineering and criticism within the creative process. Mapping on the Comprehensive framework of Buckminster Fuller creates equality between minds and establishes a level playing field.

Observing the complex large problems that we face as humanity demands that we get the most out of each other and highlights the necessity of groups to work together to identify each problem correctly and promote the best solution and not just the least disagreeable outcome.

I use the framework to reassess periodically. It is my intention to journey across as much as the map as I can. Not for some hedonistic reason or self grandeur, I’m no renaissance man. But by traveling to the most distant parts of my mind’s potential I begin to create empathy for other kinds or thinkers and makers – to open space for criticism, experimentation and realism in the dream.

Ultimately it allows me to identify those people who I cannot live without and helps me honor their difference with the same reverence I give to my own skills.