By now, most of the people I talk to about my profession have moved past the idea that designers are quirky little oompa loompas that sit around waiting for inspiration to strike.

In many ways, this is a relief. Demythologising the design process helps build respect for and understanding of our work. Pesky “creatives” that have been giving us a bad name can no longer give the excuse that they’re not “inspired” enough to come up with an idea.(Come on people, the game is up.)

The idea of “inspiration” is largely a misinterpretation — plucking an idea out of thin air is probably impossible.

Ideas come from somewhere: whether from instinct, from the back of your mind, something you’d heard once, some connection you’ve formed between A, B, maybe C.

It feels like it came out of nowhere because you’ve already forgotten what A, B and C were. Sometimes you can even end up plagiarising someone else’s work without even knowing you are (a surprisingly common phenomena called Cryptomnesia). The lightning strike of inspiration is often just your brain remembering something you’d forgotten you knew. Think about it — doesn’t it feel the same? You get a moment of “Oh wait. Yeah!”. Only in one scenario, you misinterpret it as something new that came from nowhere.

Inspiration is tricky because it feels good.
It feels like the right way to do things.
But it’s not.

Because you can’t remember how you came up with the idea, inspiration is hard to reproduce. Waiting for inspiration is always a gamble. I remember being a student, yelling bloody murder at my absent muse as deadlines mercilessly marched towards me. Waiting for ideas is an unsustainable and unreliable work process.

Designers know this. As a result, some very clever people have come up with some very clever processes that help stimulate creativity.

Whether it’s modelling, sketching, collage or interpretive dance, the general trend seems to be: keep doing things, and the ideas will come. (Interested in these exercises? Read conceptual blockbusting for some interesting ones). A lot of these build on Edward de Bono’s famous concept of “lateral thinking”, which encourages you to churn out all the ideas you can think of, because when you have quantity to choose from, you’ll be able to refine some into quality ideas.

All of these theories are sound, and invaluable to many design processes. Especially in “sky’s the limit” situations, having some structured starting point for generating ideas is absolutely vital.

That being said, there are situations when you need to have a different approach. And while I respect and frequently use the approach of “do something until you find the answer”, there is something that has been worrying me lately.

Sometimes I can’t help but feel that thinking as a design process
has fallen from grace.

Now this is just a personal misgiving, so feel free to correct me if I’ve gotten it all wrong. It’s just a feeling that’s slowly been creeping in. It’s not that people don’t think anymore — obviously almost everything a human does requires some level of thought — it’s more that time spent sitting around thinking, as a step, seems to have gone out of fashion.

When someone at work asks you what you’ve been doing,
it’s hard to reply: “I’ve been thinking”.

Their reactions range from confusion to disappointment to a knowing wink that says “Don’t worry mate, I’m hungover as well.”

The problem is that taking time out to think about something looks very unproductive. It can look a lot like waiting around for inspiration. It can feel a lot like it too. But the context is different.

In my process, thinking often comes after the research stage. Its the referee’s whistle of “stop looking for information, and start processing it”. You take time to understand a problem before trying to find an answer. You extract the important bits and structure your thoughts in a way that makes sense, in a way that you can communicate to others.

Thinking is different to inspiration because you’re not looking for one big “EUREKA” moment. You’re looking for a series of soft “aha’s” until you see the bigger picture.

There are many times when the best approach is to think. Sure you could be testing out loads of things in photoshop or sketching or making mindmaps or holding design meetings. There are times for that too. But never undervalue the power of simply mulling something over for a while.

I think it’s Mike Monteiro who said something to the effect that a designer goes through many stages of confidence (I can’t remember all of them but here are three):

1. The state of youthful hubris when you think you know everything and refuse to listen to anyone who doesn’t agree.
2. The state of extreme insecurity when you let your clients or peers push you around without questioning them.
3. The state when you are confident enough to accept what you know and what you don’t, and you focus on observing and learning

I’d say I’ve managed to get to stage three. In the first, I would be busy waiting for inspiration and in the second I would be too worried that I’d look unproductive. The third stage is a lot calmer, quieter, and I spend a lot more time thinking. Taking time out to think lets me complete projects quicker and with less mistakes. It’s an invaluable part of my process.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

So I’m waiting for thinking to make a comeback. Not as the bullshit “waiting for the right idea” or “just sitting around trying to look intelligent” kind of activity. But as something that’s just a part of the design process for any project. Maybe the thinkers need to rally to explain how their thinking time benefits the project. Maybe we need to come up with some clever way of making it look more productive.

Let’s think about it.