Constraints to get things done.
Kathy Sierra has an great post about constraints and creativity at Creating Passionate Users.
Constraints can be your enemy, but when it comes to creative breakthroughs, they can be your best friend.
Big ass budgets and tons of time don’t necessarily produce better products. Some of the most addictive games, for example, are extremely-constrained programs like Tetris. Contrast that with a full-motion video, 3D realtime graphics, surround sound console game. Yes, they’re apples and oranges, but Tetris and some of other “old-school” (which meant old tech) games are often more fun than the movie-studio-budget games from the big companies. My secret hope is that developing games for mobile phones will put a huge constraint on developers — just like the old days — and bring back some of the creativity it took to make something fun without relying on all that media and processing power.
Reminds me of a what Francis Ford Coppola said about the famously expensive and drawn-out production of Apocalypse Now: “We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”
One final quote from the CPU post:
This blog and many others have talked about constraint-driven creativity a lot, but I wanted to emphasize again that it’s not just about inspiring (or forcing) creativity, it’s also about getting something done.
I need to put that somewhere I’ll see it often. Thanks, Kathy.