Bolder and weirder
How we should be making everything
I recently stumbled across this article about Lisa Hanawalt, the artist behind Tuca and Bertie, and BoJack Horseman.
The article leads with this line from her that I cannot stop thinking about:
“Art should be brave and potentially embarrassing.”
Because I think it might also be a very important lesson for designing experiences.
I am, with great gusto, waving the flag for us all to be bolder and weirder in what we build — to make more things that give us that good-scary feeling of holy crap is this maybe going to be too out there?
The best experiences are often the ones that are daringly specific.
It turns out, despite the lies we are all feeding ourselves about everyone else’s preferences, nobody wants boring. Zero people want the vanilla sloppity slop that your robot created. Or the business-formal, buttoned-up stuffiness that we tell ourselves is necessary. We, ALL HUMANS, crave the texture, the oddness, the humanness that only you, specifically you, can create.
It is brave to put yourself into what you build. To show your people, and the world, the intimacy of your passions, your nerdy obsessions, your strange sense of humor. To break the rules of expectations. To choose the edgy and the out there.
And the teens might tell us it is, in fact, embarrassing to even show that you care.
To which I say HUZZAH, LET US BE POTENTIALLY EMBARASSING.
We don’t make memories of things that are just as we expect. Why would our brains spend the energy on paying attention, let alone encoding, this thing that is like all those other things?
But the unexpected turns our attention on. Only if we are present can we have feelings. And feelings are what we remember, above all.
AI is an expectation meeting machine. Its whole job is to predict the next word, the next pixel, based on what is the most expected thing — the average and highest likelihood based on everything that has happened before.
I’m urging you to strive for the innate humanness that is unpredictability. That is not the average of all of history, but that has the ability to be singularly weird, and wild, and odd.
Do as my dear friend Christine Chung used to do, in the early days of encountering Waymo robot cars on the streets of San Francisco: every time she saw one she would run into the street and do the most unhinged thing she could think of. To train the robots that humans are agents of chaos.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
I want you to think of the experience you are building as art. And also, the process of building that experience as art.
Be an agent of chaos.
Make what you’re making brave and interesting and potentially embarrassing.
What you make will be better. And the process of making it will be a hell of a lot more fun than giving your AI a prompt and letting your brain turn to gloop.
Yours, embarassingly, Olivia
Upcoming Studio Shenanigans:
⚡️ [CLUB] Workshop: “Creative Gym; Unlocking the Artists”
📆 Wednesday May 27th, 9 - 10:30 am PT
What would change if you could unlock the massive creative potential of the people inside of whatever you’re building — be that your upcoming board meeting or your fourth grade classroom or your neighborhood potluck?
But telling people “Be creative!” or “You are creative!” is not the most effective strategy.
So I have two tools to help you unleash the exponential brilliance of your humans.
Join us for the next live Good Chaos Club Creative Gym: “Unlocking the Artists” — Wednesday, May 27th, 9 - 10:30 am PT.
Creative Gyms are our exclusive immersive workshops — one part new tool or framework to elevate your work, one part supported making time to push your projects forward.
Because your experiences deserve inspiration, and golden hours.
Join The Good Chaos Club for access to the live session, the downloadable tools, and the recording.
Plus, when you join you get access to all the other goodies in The Club — all the past recordings, our monthly inspo drops, discounted coaching, and early access and member pricing for upcoming studio offers.