Bridging the Gap Between Creative and Technical Types

Commentary by: Karen Torok, Project Manager

When asked to write my first article for the Hanson newsletter, I was at a loss for a good topic. Technical project management, my specialty, isn't exactly the most exciting subject matter. I doubt that people want to read a whole article about all the absolutely fascinating things you can do with a well thought out project plan. So, I went to a creative person, who happens to be a writer, and asked for a better idea. She responded quickly with “Bridging the Gap Between Creative and Technical Types”. At that moment the gap was bridged.

I've been thinking since then about whether the “gap” between those considered creative types and those considered technical types really exists or if it's just a perception we've fostered for convenience sake. Because creative people take a different approach to tasks than a technical person, many technical people assume that creative people don't think logically or follow any kind of process. Likewise, the process a technical person takes when designing a software application or piece of code may seem rigid and inflexible to a creative type.

However, I believe that even the most creative people have a method to their madness, so to speak. If you watch them create a user experience from scratch, they are in fact thinking very logically and moving through a set of possibilities until the final combination of visual elements emerges. They research their ideas looking for inspiration. They plan the visual elements that will appear on a page as well as their importance and relative size and placement. Once all of these elements come together the final experience is implemented.

When you sit back and think about it, this is not all that different from the manner in which a technical person approaches the design and implementation of a new software solution. The technical person thinks through the possibilities in terms of designing the structure of the program, researching similar programs for reusable structures and ideas. Many times a visual representation of the structure of the program is created using modeling techniques such as UML (Unified Modeling Language). This process is actually very creative and is very similar to the process that a designer goes through to map out the structure of a Web site or Web page. Once the structure is defined, the technical person then implements the solution in a manner consistent with the experience defined jointly by the project team.

The primary difference I find between the two groups is how success is measured. The creative type measures the success of her work by very subjective measures, such as how the observer feels after looking at the work. The creative type wants to hear that her work inspired someone, or transferred the proper emotions and tone. The technical type is more interested in very objective measures, such as whether the correct piece of information was pulled up in a specific field of a form.

So, is there really a “gap” between creative and technical types? In many places there does seem to be a perceived gap, but I do believe it is truly a perceived gap and not a real one. So how do we effectively bridge this perceived gap and realize how similar our work processes really are? The answer lies in teamwork. When we begin to function as a true team and work hand in hand, we diminish the perceived gap. The most successful teams are a combination of both creative and technical types, each with unique skills and perceptions. One of the easiest ways to foster this atmosphere of teamwork is to create working spaces that encourage cooperation and allow for the exchange of ideas without many barriers. Mix up the office space so that people are not grouped by their function, but by their ability to learn from their neighbor.

Another way to encourage teamwork is to assign both a creative and a technical person to each task and make them jointly responsible for its outcome. When issues arise where one team member, for instance a programmer, needs another's assistance completing a task such as figuring out how to lay out a form on a Web page, don't ask the Web designer to lay out the page and send it to the programmer after the fact. Send the programmer to the designer and have them work on the layout together until the programmer has what he needs. If this kind of cooperation happens regularly, the two sides will begin to appreciate each other's work and realize that there is more common ground than either ever imagined.