Creativity is an innate human impulse, many people believe, something we're born with but too often 'grow out of' as adult lives make more and more demands. Fortunately for us, the creative drive continues to run strong in legendary designer Brendan Dawes. Habitually alert to the happy accident, and possessed of highly eclectic interests and a quirky wit, he has happened into his perfect career. Around this habit–call it a philosophy–of asking, 'Why does this have to be this way? What if . . .,' Dawes has built magneticNorth, an acclaimed Web and interaction design practice, based in Manchester, U.K.

In this unique book, Dawes invites readers inside a series of his personal projects to get a view of his process--his creative seeing, making, and playing. He encourages designers to look beyond the normal tools of their trade to find inspiration in the most unlikely of places: tubs of children’s clay, anonymous notes, household plumbing fixtures, jazz music, snow globes, fast-food take-out bags, airport departure gates, and more. Brilliant, original, and always grounded in the needs of users, Dawes shares both the techniques he has created and the key lessons he has learned in design: why comfort is the enemy of creativity; how mistakes can be celebrated instead of feared, and how to strip design to its purest and most powerful forms.

So why did I write this book? Well for several years I've been lucky enough to speak at various design conferences around the world about my thoughts on not just interaction design but also our relationship with technology and the things that keep me awake at night. Things like should we be worried that so called digital artifacts don't bare any visible 'scars' after being used, a lack of a so called 'evidence of use''? And while everyone bangs on about usability, what about the importance of experience, after all last time I looked I was a human with 'flaws' such as taste and emotion, not a machine making decisions based solely on efficiency. So I felt I had to get all this stuff down in writing.