l52 CHAPTER 7

THE BRAIN’S CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT SPIRAL

Blass (2005) suggests that designers and researchers should take advantage of
the brain’s natural creative process to achieve their ends and that understand-
ing brain function can provide insight into the nature of research, design, and
creativity. Therefore, exploring the brain even further must improve design and
research in practice.

The brain creatively makes sense of its context just as designers create
buildings, plans, gardens, and objects. Just as designers and researchers—both
involved with forms of inquiry—have a natural urge to solve problems, the
brain “has circuits that . . . want to work on problems” (Gazzaniga, p. 22), and
a left-hemisphere interpreter that “insists on generating a theory, even though
there is really nothing to generate one about” (p. 157). This drive for integra-
tion and coherence seems to represent a need fundamental to our well—being. It
helps us make sense of who we are in relation to that context—to define our
“self”. Acting and reflecting so that we can see order in the world around us
enables us to plan and make decisions—effectively to “design”. The diagram
below of The Brain’s Creative Development Spiral illustrates that When we clar—

 
  
   
  
 
 

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The brain’s creative development spiral.