We had a great (!) discussion in the session I hosted about constraints as incentives for creativity.

In particular, we talked about constraints from a design perspective (UX, knobs/dials/formatting), in the arts (conventions about song length, minimalism in architecture, etc.), and "real-world" constraints (human and financial capital, deadlines).

What am I missing?

Below are links to a few of the quotes and sites I mentioned. Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the awesome thoughts.

I think an interesting dimension of constraints/creativity is the notion of generativity. A major goal I strive for in the design of systems (i.e. constraints) is to maximize generativity, which is a unique balance between control and uncertainty. Jonathan Zittrain has written a lot about this (e.g. dash.harvard.edu)

Different media have different constraints and the same media may be used for different goals and audience. Here I'm leaning towards the artistic/sensorial aspect of creativity, but the arguments are general enough for other fields as well, in my experience. For me it comes down to: promote to what? Audio, video, images, text have no real unique 'apex' unanimously shared by people. Sure, some trends are popular and some are niche but so many different things have been done and all have some following. Some are constrained, but that doesn't even indicate the genre or style. It's just a method of creating. Even artist, content creators react differently to the same constraints. It's so hard to generalize the effects of a set of constraints...

...this in arts, but in more technical fields thing are a bit less nebulous ! think. Time seems to affect everything. Too little and people freak out and brainstorming is short. Too much and there's more of an endless discussion group and revision sessions than real face-to-face exchange of ideas AND ways to put them into practice. If you have some sense of rush things get done without sacrificing quality and originality (and mental sanity?). Almost the same for budget. Some projects drown in the dead ends of endless options and possibilities. Some starve because have none. IF (!) you are clever you can make some feats a là Mac Gyver with little. If you can swim in a pile of resources you can be a Spielberg. What kind of creative are you?