Expanding Your Creativity With The Hierarchy of Imagination

Based off Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, Patti Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination is represented as a pyramid progressing from the base of reactionary behavior with little or no imagination (since Reflex is involuntary), then proceeding upward to Problem Solving, then Creativity, and finally the pinnacle of “completely unrestrained” Imagination. It is a very thought-provoking and useful model, and I wanted to share this with you!

The Pyramid of Success?

In this article, we learn that she had help in developing her model from her colleague and mentor John Maeda who understood imagination as “a gift that can be opened when one has some degree of safety and agency” – the same conditions we need to open the gift of play.

Maeda also mentioned that he “sincerely enjoyed how this model felt in [his] mind”, and that piqued more of my interest in seeing how various designers tick. The execution of a theory being grasped by someone else – based from a clear mental model of why “teaching creativity doesn’t work, but expanding their imaginations might work better”.

With all of this in mind, I strongly believe that designers can try to better cultivate creativity and make full use of it. However, the hierarchy should not be interpreted as disparaging jobs in which little creativity or problem solving is expected. For example, someone who is working in the Reflex category should not be expected to proactively solve problems or provide creative leadership.

As this model and Brennan’s article mentions, you can’t teach creativity per se, but you can expand one’s imagination, and being able to broaden one’s visualisation is vital for creativity. Likewise, good product management and product marketing professionals can translate their empathy towards what customers are going through into well-defined products and clear, relevant, engaging messaging, and content.

With that, I would certainly hope to integrate this into more of my future projects, and allow the hierarchy to help with my thought process – all the way to the conception of the end product.

Being imaginative is a gift that you can open when you have some degree of safety and agency. The rest is up to you.