RE: Does UCD sabotage creativity?

George Olson answers in an article on boxes and arrows.

Long and short of it... Getting insight from users and validating designs
against users doesn't mean one abdicates _designing._ There's a value in
user-focused design and a value in vision-based design, the question is when
each is more appropriate. Thanks, George. :-)

Often we take direction for conceptual development from user research such as ethnography (and less so from focus groups or misguided user testing). It takes a great deal of effort not to get coralled into a certian way of attacking a problem when under the influence of a behavioural study.

I'm specifically interested in lateral thinking techniques which enable us to step outside what we think users can comprehend, with the view of stepping the resultant idea back toward something they will.

It's all too easy to become scientific about creating products as the discipline of interaction design matures. We not only seek more and more validation from scientific methods but also seek direction for conceptual development from them too.

In my opinion it's all about striking that balance between left and right hemispheres of the brain. What techniques can help maintain that balance?