One of the central concepts of many eastern philosophies is that two contradictory forces are always in balance. The part of this concept that is most striking to me is that balance is not a single point, where each opposing force is offset by the other at a neutral fifty-fifty ratio. Instead, it is the concept that at any point, the two forces create a whole regardless of the strength of one force relative to the other. The Chinese yin-yang symbol is perhaps the most well-known and poignant visual example of this concept.

This Article by Josh Ulm, Vice President of UX Design at Bluescape, originally appeared on the Bluescape Software Blog and we think our readers will find it interesting. Remember your last brainstorming meeting? Everyone at HQ gathered in a conference room and your colleagues in London, Sydney, and Tokyo dialed in to participate, right? A lot of notes were scribbled on the conference room whiteboard. Someone wrote them down and promised to send them in an email to everyone, but he missed a couple of design sketches. When that meeting was over, the next group walked into the conference room and erased everything you wrote on the board so they could use it for their meeting. Rinse and repeat. Let’s face it: creative work is inherently quite messy. That’s what makes it creative.

Creativity for All. That was the positioning statement for this years’ Adobe Max in Los Angeles. The evolution of creativity and technologies that come out of that were on display everywhere and it was an action-packed nonstop tour for three days. The vibe was great, and the passion was contagious.

One of my favorite sayings is, “The only constant is change.” Even those things in our lives that seem permanent, like a mountain range on the horizon, inexorably change on geological time scales. Business processes often seem like those mountains, unchanging, constant, and implacable. Yet, successful businesses operate on processes that are more like a river carving its way through a mountain valley, their courses evolving to flow along the most successful path.

Rarely, does one size fit all. This is especially true when it comes to creative technology solutions. It goes without saying that every unique tool has both strengths and weaknesses, but every tool is also preferred by different creatives for different reasons. Some of these reasons are based on organizational needs, UI, roles, or even simply what the user is used to. The idea of a collaborative creative tool that works for everyone seems like more of a dream than a reality.

Intuitive, simple to use devices and software are everywhere in our life. Perhaps you get up in the morning, and the first thing you do is grab your smartphone, or your home assistant may read you today's weather and news headlines while you stop in the kitchen for your morning coffee. Great user interfaces and experiences (UI's/UX's) are like the mullet of the technological world, smooth presentation and ease of use in the front, but many-layered complexity and chaos in the back.