Now I can maybe explain what I do...

I've always searched for a way to explain what it is that I do, because it's more than just what it seems on the surface. There's always been an enormous element of creativity to it, and this was what I used to explain it yesterday.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” – Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1995

For the longest time I wasn't connecting the dots of the sum total of my experiences, or perspectives, and then I started applying the same principles of design and creativity to working with people, especially people who are struggling. I simply flip the theory around and apply it just the same...the better your creativity, the better your understanding of the human experience.