My first Android App: FantaGen

UPDATE: FantaGen has added many more generators since its first release. Some fun, some serious and all very expressive.

I made FantaGen - a fantasy name generator to experiment with exploring cultural spaces with random generation. There are other generators so I aim for FantaGen to stand apart from the competition by being more comprehensive and more expressive.

You can get FantaGen from the Play Store

These types of generators are good for a bit of harmless fun but they do have a serious side to them. You can use the generator to help break some writer's block.

There are two cultures that have strange names: Simptee and Star Spirits. These were based on a simpler generative name system from a now abandoned interactive fiction project. It made sense in that story to have characters with names that weren't always the same. I thought the names were kinda cool so into FantaGen they go. Code recycling is good.

There are tons of fun image-based generators doing the rounds at the moment. These usually take the form of having the reader build up a name by looking up alternatives based on letters in their own name or their birth month. While these are fun for a single lookup, they don't give much variety for doing 10 random names at a time. My own feeling of these is that 26x26 alternatives is simply not rich enough when the user can see ten items at a time and refresh every half second. Significant extension to the generator is needed to add enough variety to be interesting.

I'm particularly proud of Fairy Names and Star Spirits. Fairy names uses both vocabulary words and syntax variety to create fun diversity. When I can picture the character that goes with the name then I think the effect is good. The Star Spirits mix both words and syllable combinations to represent their angelic like culture. The syllabary is fairly restricted to match how I image their angelic language to be so the word-based titles help to create the variety.

The Roman name generator combines a syllabary with some real Roman names based on research. The syllable based names are most likely anachronistic nonsense. Though it would take much more work to do a historically accurate Roman name generator given how complex their naming patterns are. In particularly I don't handle the gender very well at all: Claudius / Claudia, Julius / Julia. I would like to do more name generators based on real cultures since that ties into my semantic web interests.

Speaking of interests; this project also represents an interest I have in generative creativity. I want to be doing actual research into generative graphic design tools once my PhD is complete.

FantaGen is free and always will be. I have plans to continue extending FantaGen. As the list of generators grows I can see some ripe experimentation in how to navigate that space to keep things fun. I'm open to suggestions for new generators too.

Design Demons: The Creative Demon

An earlier post gave an overview of the design demons: Creative, Critic and Pragmatist. This post takes a closer look at the Creative Demon.

Each of the demons has their own levels of ability and influence. Ability is the strength of the demon in their specialisation. Influence is how likely the designer is to listen to demon. Each demon‘s talents are better suited for different parts of the design process therefore a designer should train themselves to minimise the influence of each demon and instead judge when their advice is most appropriate. A designer should also seek to develop strength in each of the each of their demons so that the overall team is stronger.

The Creative Demon is strongly related with the right side of the brain. It is the lateral thinker that comes up with the original ideas. Many of the Creative demons ideas are impractical, but one should not discourage the Creative demon from making them. When somebody has Designer's Block then their Creative demon is tired and out of ideas (see the Creativity section for help). The Creative Demon gets enthusiasm and rewards from coming up with many cool ideas. This makes the Creative demon very useful during the concept stage of the design process but a distracting influence during the development and production stages. However, the Creative demon can be useful during problem solving that can happen during production. The Creative demon's favourite word is Freedom.

The underdeveloped creative demon can come up with only derivative ideas occupying a limited range. A person with a underdeveloped creative demon but with strong execution skills will be very good within a small number of visual styles. This person will follow tutorials on the internet on how to produce some effect in popular software.

The strength of the Creative demon can be improved through stimulation and exposure to many different ideas. Inspiration is the life-force of this demon and it must be constantly replenished. Viewing the design works of others, visual art, music, culture and new experiences all provide inspirational fuel. Increasing the visual knowlege of the designer makes their creative demon permanently stronger. Also the act of creation in itself - especially when creating with others - is the equivalent of sending the Creative demon to the gym.

The noisy creative demon will continue to distract the designer way past the time concepting is completed. A noisy creative demon will always interupt with a completely different approach while the designer is trying to develop and produce an already selected idea. This can pull the designer off track and if they are seduced by their Creative demon's voice then they will always come with something new instead of finishing what they have started. This can delay the execution and delivery of a project.

A noisy creative demon can be taught to speak only in turn. Until the Creative demon knows to only speak in turn or when something is very important, the designer should move deliberately through each stage of the design process. At the end of each stage the designer should force themselves to make a decision that is not reversible without a second opinion from a more experienced colleague/friend. This should eventually train the Creative dragon to be noisy and quiet at the right times.

A strong creative demon is important for a designer to produce works that go beyond the mundane and ordinary. Working to improve the Creative demon will give long term benefit to the designer.

Designer Work Style.

Nearly 20 years ago I was in a management paper and learned that workers exist on a continuum between the consistent 9-5er and the inconsistent burst worker. It is no surprise that creatives are burst workers. A person whose natural tendency is to work in bursts but who has learned to fit into the 9-5 paradigm will have significant swings in productivity and motivation during the workday. It's almost axiomatic that the more creative a person the less consistent they are.

Designers rise to the challenge of completing deadlines but can become easily exhausted. Much of our training of designers instils into them the primacy of the deadline above all else and this reinforces the burst personality. For the industry this is helpful in that it helps "get projects out the door" and the downtime is necessary for rest, recovery and reflection. The danger is that overwork is much more difficult to detect and burnout is a real risk.

Burst work is fine when project are of generally short duration (i.e. not months or years) and deadlines are not daily. But as our deadlines extend (larger projects particularly web and development) then burst working is less desirable. IT has the "deathmarch project" where the deadline is far away but everybody is pushed into overwork to make it and larger design projects carry the same risks.

My own experience is that there are very few designers who find the consistency of 9-5 easy who are also great visual creatives. The consistent 9-5ers are normally competent and reliable but lack that creative spark or flair. They may be great technically and/or quite good visually but they're likely never going to win a creative award.

Don't knock them because their consistent workers are an important part of a design team. Not only do they handle the routine jobs more accurately and with less frustration, they also provide a yardstick of "normalcy" to their peers. They remind people that families are waiting, the sun goes up and down and the tides go in and out. They are living examples that despite our obsessive tendencies towards our projects and deadlines that there are more important things.

Burst work could be why we place so much emphasis on professionalism - particularly punctuality and attendance. Just to try and counter-act the tendency towards relying on burst work instead of proper planning. Perhaps this is the Confucian balance to the natural tendency of designers. The Confucian education principle here is that education often involves strategies for handling imbalanced tendencies. "Be more aggressive" a passive person and "Be more passive" to an aggressive person. In this aspect design is pragmatic: we need to work together at overlapping times in a team and we should do that when our clients are active (i.e. the working day). It helps our socialisation to even loosely fit a working pattern common in our culture.

There is a danger: if we do successfully turn these normally naturally burst workers into consistent 9-5ers then we may kill what it is that gives them the creative spark. Mindless consistency is the enemy of creativity. Therefore a mixed burst-consistent approach might provide a compromise; the creative bursters are allowed an equivalent but more irregular schedule provided they meet deadlines.

This is just another of those things that makes design hard: the right amounts of consistency and burst, unbounded creativity and creative pragmatism, obssessiveness but with perspective maintained. And this provides important decisions for employers building a team: it's often not just about the skill set, but how their work-style fits the work you do.

Say Hello to Your Design Demons

Based upon more than a decade in graphic design education I have a working theory called “Design demons” to explain the psychology behind the design process. In a previous post I looked at how design schools grades matched particular designers. Design demons more specifically looks at how the personality of the designer relates to the design process and therefore acts as a basis for giving individualised advice for designers to develop themselves.

There are three primary demons in the designer’s mind that each battle for attention. These are the Creative, the Critic and the Pragmatist. The label demon was chosen because these are powerful forces that can both help and overwhelm. Each demon has a different level of loudness, ability and affinity for a stage of the design process.

The Creative demon is the divergent thinker. Full of enthusiasm, curiosity and ideas this demon always has a positive attitude: “Wouldn’t it be cool if .... “ The Creative demon is the wellspring of new ideas. The Creative demon is at their best during the early “Concepting” stages of the design process though the Creative demon can have a role to play in later stages for problem solving. However, if the Creative demon is always coming up with new ideas then the project will neither be polished nor finished on time.

The Critic demon evaluates ideas and judges them. A strong Critic demon enables the designer to choose their best concepts and refine them further. The Critic demon decides when an idea is good enough to pursue further. Therefore the Critic demon relates to the Development and Refinement stages of the design process. An overly negative Critic demon will trap a designer into constantly going back to the drawing board. A poorly developed critic is unable to make decisions.

The Pragmatist demon is the taskmaster. This demon watches the clock, the budget, the ability of the designer and other available resources. The demon tells the Critic demon to stop being so picky and to move on because the deadline is looming. A weak Pragmatist demon will miss milestones. An overly safe Pragmatist demon will only allow easy to produce, safe ideas to progress. The Pragmatist is most useful in the feasibility and production stages of the design process.

Developing ability in each demon is part of a good design education. For beginning designers they will learn to listen to each demon in turn as they progress through the design process. More experienced designers can allow all the demons to speak at once.

Example of Design Demons 1: Often highly creative people struggle in graphic design programs because their Critic demon is too weak to rank concepts and the Pragmatist demon is not strong enough to keep an eye on the clock. Right up to the last minute their loud Creative demon will be feeding them with crazy off-the-wall and impractical ideas. These people can become successful designers by reigning in the Creative demon and allowing the other demons room to develop.

Example of Design Demons 2: Sometimes a designer can get stuck in a loop where the Creative demon cannot come up with anything to satisfy the Critic demon. This is either a sign that the Critic demon is too loud and the Pragmatist demon needs to make the Critic demon choose something that is “good enough”. Or, it could be a sign that the designer needs additional help in developing ability in the Creative demon.

My hope is that thinking in terms of Design Demons helps educating designers and gives a framework for designers to self-evaluate their strengths.

Concepting: A how to guide

Creating concepts (or concepting) is the most creative part of the design process. During this phase designers will explore widely looking for a diverse range of potential solutions. Done properly, good concepts lay the foundation for great work at the end of the process. Good concepts executed well are the ultimate aim. Poor concepts will fail even if the final execution is good.

Experienced designers will abbreviate the concepting phase – sometimes skipping concepts altogether and going straight into refinement. An experienced designer may also concept directly in their minds. Doing this successfully depends on the creative skill and experience of the designer and is something new designers will trouble doing. One reason for skipping paper concepting is the pressure to deliver to tight deadlines – though proper concepting need not take much time. When an experienced designer feels uninspired they can fall back into using a more methodical approach to concepting.

Concepting should be preceeded by research. The more familiar the designer is with the client, their industry and the target audience then the less research is needed.

Work on paper. Stay off the computer during initial concepting because the computer is not fast enough. The computer screen is low resolution compared to paper so often stacking concepts side by side is difficult and takes effort. Even with a drawing tablet there are just too many distractions.

Draw ideas quickly as they come. Hold the positive aims of the project in your head. Switch off critical thinking and do not worry about the project’s constraints and boundaries for now. Good concepting lets the poor ideas, the clichés, the unoriginal and the mistakes out onto paper so that they don’t mentally block the designer. This allows the designer to break through into the truly original ideas. Quantity of concepts has a better chance of producing some quality concepts then over-thinking during this phase so focus on drawing any idea that comes. Let the hand and subconscious be creative.

If the designer maintains the constraints/boundaries in their minds during concepting then they will concept ideas that fit too comfortably within those boundaries. This will result in small ideas that are unambitious and safe to the point of uselessness. It is better to have a big idea and then modify it to fit the boundaries then it is to try grow small ideas into big ideas. Find the concepts most appropriate for the audience and tweak them to fit the boundaries later. (see Pushing Boundaries)

Once intial concepts are on paper then they can be critically looked at to eliminate the poor concepts and select the best ideas. Most jobs will require selecting a few concepts for the client to choose from. In this case select the strongest different ideas – not the ideas that look the best. If the ideas are not strong enough then it might be necessary to rewind the process: more freeform concepting or even more research.

Concepting need not take long. It can be done in minutes on a napkin. Ideally concepting should end when the designer has strong concepts but there is never an unlimited amount of time in the budget. What elevates a designer’s creativity above that of the average person is being able to come up with high quality ideas in a limited time-span. This is something that improves with experience.

In summary: research, concept on paper, suspend critical thinking, focus on quantity, select the strongest ideas.

(Read other eturnerx articles on the Design Process and Creativity)

Creativity needs Imagination and Execution

The importance of creativity in design cannot be under estimated. Without creativity design becomes shallow copying that produces solutions that do not fit the problem. Creativity is both originality and appropriateness. But how does creativity relate to execution?

Another word commonly used for creativity is imagination. Imagination is both the ability to come up with original thought and the ability to think if a particular solution will be an appropriate solution to a design problem. The thing that links imagination to reality – the actual production of a piece of design – is execution.

Execution is the ability to take an idea and produce it for real. Good execution utilizes skills that are developed and honed over many years. The uninitiated will call somebody creative if they have an ability to execute ideas (great at drawing, good at Photoshop, good at painting). Often a person gets the “creative” label even if their imagination is low.

It is possible to be highly imaginative but have poor skills to execute. An idea is useless without execution but the imaginative-high/execution-low person can still be successful if they can find others to complement their weakness. For example, junior designers can provide high-execution ability to an imagination-high art director. The relationship is synergistic because both art director and junior designer create better design solutions than if they each worked alone.

The most successful design is that which is both a highly creative concept and is executed well. Audiences these days are so used to good design that poor execution (even with good concepts) are generally dismissed so both concept and execution must be good. A designer who is weak at execution mix for a particular project (e.g. not a web-coder) should consider employing somebody who is good, or accept that they must take longer to learn the skills necessary to execute well.

So far, this article has implied that imagination comes first then execution follows. However it works in a more synergistic fashion. Often creativity occurs when execution is underway – that is once an idea has been realised then the designer’s imagination sees further possibilities (the creative horizon extends). The systematic design process has parts that use intuitive rather than rational thinking. This suits designers with ability to execute because they can devote more time to the idea and less to the muscle mechanics of executing the idea, so therefore the idea can be bigger. An example of this is that someone skilled at executing web design will often do their concepting work directly in HTML/CSS code.

Always start with highly creative concepts and worry about the ability to execute later. Fitting a design to execution will result in small ideas that do not challenge (and thus extend) the designer’s technical ability to execute. Think of execution ability as a pragmatic boundary that should be pushed.

Inspiration: The how to guide

Designers work best when inspired. The muse myth externalizes the source of inspiration as something divine and therefore something at the whim of the gods/the universe and thus beyond the control of the individual. This mythic viewpoint also assumes that inspiration is beyond teaching and training. This attitude is just wrong.

Inspiration for designers is the motivation to create. A designer who is feeling uninspired feels both unmotivated and uncreative. Things that are inspirational both motivate us to create and make us think creatively. Inspirational things give us the imagination to see original possibilities and the motivation to realize those ideas.

In low-inspiration situations the systematic designer can fall back on the design process and hope that jump starts inspiration. Just forcing themselves through the process can unlock creativity and create the momentum to motivation. However the design process benefits from inspirational flair, so what if the inspiration block remains?

Focus on fixing the motivation first. Low-energy levels will reduce motivation so fix that by sleeping, eating, going for a walk or waiting for illness to pass. Do whatever it takes to get the brain active again. Deal with any negative emotional issues and distractions. Then focus on the benefits of completing the task at hand. Motivation is about positivity so visualize what completing the task will enable you to do. Complete a goal? Afford a night out with friends? A new toy?

Sparking creativity is about working the imagination. Reboot imagination by playing “what if” scenarios in your head. Think of two seemingly ridiculous ideas together and imagine how they could be related together. Look at images and pick parts of them and think how they could apply to your project. Technically inspiration can be found anywhere, but designers often find inspiration in nature, the surrounding environment (take walk), the fine arts and the work of other great designers. Being around other creative people can help you get into the right modes of thinking.

Inspiration is the mindset of curiosity, imagination and wonder. It is a space where all things are possible and all ideas have great outcomes. Expose yourself to new things, explore your imagination and wonder “what if”. Cultivate these things and inspiration will come.

MAYA and Creative Horizons Theory

Industrial designer Raymond Loewy pioneered the concept of the best solution being the Most Advanced Yet Most Acceptable (MAYA). The concept looks at appropriateness from two angles – the first being how advanced the idea was then limiting that by what the target audience would find acceptable. Loewy said “The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm.”
The best designers exercise high MAYA, that is they have their advanced ideas but know when to allow acceptability to limit that idea. Once an idea was in the public space then what is acceptable to the public expands because they have been exposed to new ideas. A famous example is the Beatles who started by releasing fairly safe popular music but became increasingly experimental as their fame allowed.
As always, when concepting ideas always start with creating the most advanced ideas first. During concepting boundaries” (and “Yet Acceptable” is a boundary) must be relaxed or overly safe ideas will happen. Once the concepts are created then the “Yet Acceptable” constraint can then be used to filter the concepts. The essence of the MAYA ideal is to be touching the “Yet Acceptable” boundary, not to remain safely within it.
Creative Horizons Theory (CHT) suggests that most people can only see a single horizon away from their present set of ideas. CHT also proposes a set of creativity labels for each horizon step away from the status quo (Copy, Derivative, Cool, Visionary, Crackpot). Both MAYA and CHT say that a solution too advanced will be unacceptable to its audience. CHT further suggests that an idea too far from the status quo is based on conjectures and assumptions about the solution that are more likely to be wrong the further from the status quo they are.
When you have your next wild idea consider using the lessons of MAYA to making the idea more immediately acceptable by walking it back a few Creative Horizons. Once the revised idea has been accepted then the true vision will have a better chance.

Pushing Boundaries

Graphic designers are always encouraged to push the boundaries. What does this mean and how do we do this successfully? Pushing a boundary means testing a pre-conceived limitation on the design project with ideas that ignore (or modify) that limitation. Any constraint or boundary may be pushed provided that it increases the appropriateness of the work.

A graphic designer must understand the boundaries of the project. Boundaries include: client preferences, budget, time, designer skills, what is appropriate for the target audience. Some boundaries can be quantified (deadline and budget) while others are more nebulous (client preference). Most boundaries will require client buy-in to change. A change in budget or a deadline could have legal ramifications if not agreed to by the client.

Beware the lenient boundary – this is where a client has given more rope than they are honestly prepared to accept. For example: The client says “we don’t want to look like other widget companies” then starts critiques with “doesn’t look enough like a widget company”. If this happens then note how your understanding of the boundary has shifted or be prepared for many rounds of revisions.

Another boundary is the limitations of visual thought in the designer. Initial concepts are often cliché and follow the trends of the day. Visual research is great to inform a designer but inform does not equal copying or direct derivation. Following the design process helps designers break free from the boundaries of initial thoughts.

Concept ideas that are bigger than the constraints set by the boundaries. Targeting a design for the boundaries results in work that is too safe. It is much better to have to scale a big idea downwards to fit boundaries than to scale a small idea upwards. At a minimum a scaled big idea will still contain a suggestion or vision of the bigger idea. Usually the process of scaling the idea will help a designer just which of the boundaries can be pushed. “Status quo plus one plus one” thinking can be useful in imagining concepts to become larger.

A tip in pushing visual boundaries is to temporarily relax boundaries one at a time then try concepting with each relaxed boundary in mind. Concepting becomes a matter of asking “What if that boundary was further out? What ideas are now possible?” Relaxing boundaries is a brute force way for out of the box thinking because it makes room for the designer to challenge the box itself.

Related articles: Creative Horizons Theory, The Wow Factor

Creative Horizons Theory

An earlier post introduced the concept of status quo+1+1 thinking. This new post attempts to clarify the idea further and to also discus status quo+1+1 in the context of a grander theory of creative thinking called Creative Horizons Theory.

In status quo+1+1 thinking it is important to evaluate what the world will look like after the first +1 improvement. What has changed? Once that has been extrapolated then consider what the new needs of the client/audience are. What is the next +1 improvement that can be done from that point? This cannot be done with a proper empathic evaluation of how the world would change. It requires the ability to temporarily suspend the confines of this reality and replace it with a new reality – all from the perspective of your client/audience.

So what happens when more +1s are added to the process? This is the beginnings of what I’ve termed Creative Horizons Theory. Imagine that the present headspace of the world is the status-quo. There is a visibility problem because thinkers with new ideas only “see” so far from the status-quo into the infinite idea space. This limited visibility is the Creative Horizon. With the power of imagination and thought humans can place themselves at the Creative Horizon and then see further – potentially to a new horizon. The process can be repeated.

The danger is that human thought and imagination cannot accurately place itself where the world would be if it were at the new horizon – at best we are educated guessers. So, the further out a thinker goes – the more horizons they extrapolate to – the greater the danger of inaccurate thinking and the more disconnected the idea becomes from reality. Also the ideas that are too far out will be harder to explain and are more likely to encounter conservative counter-reactions.

There is a taxonomy of labels that is useful to describe each Creative Horizon leap:

Status quo: Copy
Status quo+1: Derivative, Obvious
Status quo+1+1: Cool, Original
Status quo+1+1+1: Visionary
Status quo+1+1+1+1: Crack-pot, Madness

The wow factor: Creative thinking and solving latent desires

We all have had that moment where we saw something and automatically generated a “Wow” in us. This can happen when that thing made us realize it solves a problem that we did not know that we had. The cool comes from doing what we did not realize we needed.

Asking a target audience or client how to improve something gives only “status quo plus 1” type responses that are a only single evolutionary step beyond what they have now. Doing those things is not going to knock anybodies’ socks off. The results will be good but hardly revolutionary because the improvements are all rather obvious.

One way of achieving “the wow” in design work is to solve for latent needs. Latent needs are needs that people did not realize that they had. An easy hack to discover latent needs is to imagine if the user or client had the improvements that they originally asked for then imagine how their desires would then change and then guess what they would ask for next.

This kind of “status quo plus one plus one” creative thinking takes an understanding of your client and audience but appears as genius if you can pull it off.

UPDATE: An explanation of the creative theory behind status quo+1+1 thinking.

Appropriateness: Creativity in Graphic Design is Different

My earliest memory of design school is being told by my tutor Chris Gibson that creativity cannot exist without boundaries. Without boundaries a piece of work is not creative because in a boundary free environment anything was just as good as something else. Until then I had always assumed that creativity was all about originality. Fitting boundaries is about being appropriate.

We can resolve these two differences in defining creativity. Consider that creativity is both comprised of both originality and appropriateness. Most creative endeavors (such as the fine arts) value originality above appropriateness. Graphic design values appropriateness above originality. One is not totally without the other in practice; there are expectations on what is appropriate in art and expectations of originality in design. In fact, there are legal minimums (copyright) and cultural expectations (copycat) that suggest a certain level of originality is required in all graphic design.

The systematic tradition of graphic design education emphasizes the design process. This is because the design process gives multiple opportunities to evaluate the appropriateness of proposed solutions against boundaries in order to improve the appropriateness over time. Fine Art approaches to teaching emphasize originality – finding your own voice, uniqueness and inspiration.

Fully understanding the real constraints that affect the appropriateness of a piece of work is the foundation of successful graphic design works. Some boundaries are concrete and easy to quantify e.g. budget and deadline. Many boundaries are not that obvious and can only be discovered by considering the message, media, target audience and client. This tells us that that appropriateness is specific to culture and not just the physical constraints of the world.

The over-riding consideration of appropriateness in graphic design is that a message is understood with maximum clarity by a target audience. All other appropriateness considerations should be secondary.

Design Thinking is more than just creative thinking.

I read a Donald Norman article titled "Design Thinking: A Useful Myth" which discusses the use of design thinking in management circles. While I generally agree that the term Design Thinking has become watered down to almost uselessness, I did disagree with some parts of the article.

The myth? That designers possess some mystical, creative thought process that places them above all others in their skills at creative, groundbreaking thought. This myth is nonsense...

The phrasing "above all others" is a strawman - it is obvious that this cannot be true. Creatives in general do have attributes that will, on average, have them produce more creative results than somebody who is not a creative. One way of looking at this is by using Bloom's Taxonomy. Creative people just spend more time at the higher levels of Bloom's, so are just more experienced in those modes of thought.

...we have had breakthrough ideas and creative thinking throughout recorded history, long before designers entered the scene. When we examine the process in detail, what is being labeled as "design thinking" is what creative people in all disciplines have always done.

The big difference in design thinking versus other creative modes of thought is the design process. The exploration of a solution space that following a systematic approach to design allows is going to be more thorough and produce higher quality results than a creative stab. It is the iteration of cycles of Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation that make the process more than traditional creative thinking. There's a good book on the topic: "How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified" by Bryan Lawson.

Traditional creative thinking values originality whereas design thinking favours appropriateness. The originality versus appropriateness thing is a bit more yin-yang in its relationship than polar binary opposites but the focus of design thinking is very much in appropriateness.

Yes, I have a search theory model for how design thinking works -design thinking, as encapsulated by the design process, that is basically a human form of a genetic algorithm.