Our Story: A decade of iterative curriculum development

Creativity in Research is the collective effort of a team of researchers and educators – Nicola, Amanda, Anja, Sebastian, and Adam – who came together at Stanford University with a common interest in creativity training for researchers.

We met at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute for Design (“the d.school”), an institute focused on teaching creative problem solving through design. When we each converged on the d.school, it was focused on building the creative confidence of Stanford students through solving external problems like alleviating poverty. While research students participating in these courses might gain skills that complemented their domain expertise, for many of them, it was hard to translate those skills to their scholarly research. This was a sharp contrast to our own experiences, which suggested that the techniques being taught for innovation in other fields could be useful in research practice. We adapted the d.school’s creativity pedagogy to the academic and scientific challenges faced by researchers every day. Thus, what was initially called the Research as Design project – RAD for short – was born in 2010.

Beginning with our initial pilot with six students (read: “arm-twisted friends”) in March 2011, we’ve taught RAD classes and workshops at universities and conferences on five continents. The format has varied from two hour taster workshops to more traditional multi-week classes. We published an investigation of how senior scholars use creativity in their own research and a formal evaluation of the curriculum in 2014. We’ve worked with fabulous students from many disciplines and career stages, hearing about their triumphs and fears, and giving them concrete techniques to address their struggles.

We now live across the world. Each of us is a practicing researcher. But we remain passionate about sharing our deep understanding of creativity in research and helping other researchers develop creative confidence.

Team

Nicola Ulibarri

Nicola Ulibarri took a class in design thinking at the start of her PhD studies, hoping it would accelerate her research. Inspired by this experience, she co-founded the Creativity in Research project to adapt design thinking for busy researchers. She is now an assistant professor in Urban Planning and Public Policy at University of California, Irvine. Her research and teaching combine approaches from environmental planning, public administration, and water resource engineering to investigate the interaction between people, infrastructure, and the environment. In her free time, she enjoys daydreaming about tenure and catching up on everything on her to-do list.

Amanda E. Cravens

Amanda E. Cravens was introduced to human-centered design in a former life as a web editor and information architect. She co-founded the Creativity in Research project while earning her PhD in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, when she realized how much her past experience as a web design professional was influencing her scholarship. Amanda’s own research examines how thinking, learning, and decision-making function from the individual to the institutional scale. She is currently a research social scientist for a U.S. federal agency. Amanda does her most creative thinking during the daily walks on which her New Zealand sheepdog Mighty insists.

Sebastian Kernbach

Sebastian Kernbach, PhD, is a lecturer, project manager and researcher at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University. He is a Guest Professor at the African Doctoral Academy and the Central University of Beijing. He has worked with and consulted organizations such as Art Basel, Interbrand, Xerox, Swiss Re, the European Central Bank and others. His interests are knowledge visualization, storytelling, creativity and life design. He founded the Visual Collaboration Lab and the Life Design Lab and is co-author of the award-winning book Meet up!.

ANJA SVETINA NABERGOJ

Anja is a co-founder of the Creativity in Research project at Stanford University and a member of the Advisory Board of the Stanford Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions. She teaches graduate classes and Executive Education programs at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and the University of Ljubljana. She is committed to helping others reach their creative potential. Her experiential teaching approach combines findings from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology with the goal to inspire leaders in companies and research labs to change their mindsets and create work environments that are conducive to innovation. Anja blogs and consults at www.anjasvetina.com.

ADAM ROYALTY

Understanding how design can lead to personal and organizational transformation drives Adam Royalty's work. As the Lead Design Research Investigator at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (a.k.a. the d.school), Adam has taught multiple design thinking courses and has worked to deepen the creative capacity of organizations in over a dozen countries. Adam also founded the Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio, which amplifies peoples’ problem-solving capacity through design.