Creativity is not like a faucet that can be turned on and off
Don’t you wish that you could someone turn on your creativity like a faucet? I do, but it sadly doesn’t work like that. Having a creative burnout is inevitable in a creative field. People who may not be in the field may assume that you are the go-to person for creative solutions, but what they don’t understand is that there’s more to a design than what the eye can see.
Sometimes creativity comes to us naturally, depending on the project. Some projects may be more challenging than others and may require more time to complete because of its intensity. As UX designers, we’re storytellers and we have to be able to convey a message to the users and keep them engaged in the experience. Therefore, we can’t just use a “template” as it creates a boring, generic experience. Instead, we have to dig even deeper and come up with our own designs and solutions. This is where it gets a little tricky — how do we come up with effective design solutions?
When starting a creative task, we have to go through a creative process. Going through the creative process allows us to clearly identify the problem and solution. In order to get the best results out of the creative process, we have to go through several steps.
1. Problem
We have to consider what the problem is and why you need to come up with a solution in the first place. Taking the time to understand what the problem is and identifying what you’re trying to improve will give you more insight on how you could possibly approach it. The more questions you ask, the better.
2. Research
Research, research, research. Gathering information on the problem in question and seeing how others have approached it could potentially give you inspiration for your solution. Research could include anything from doing competitor research, reading online articles, to doing visual research on sites like Behance or Dribble.
3. Plan
Plan out what approaches you’ll be taking to accomplish your final product. This is the hardest and trickiest step of all because this is where designers are most likely to run into a dead-end.
“Burnout doesn’t care about your level of experience.”
— via InVision
No matter how experienced you may think you are, having a creative’s block is a challenge that we all face as designers. So what should we do about it? Step away from the project and clear your mind. Whether that’s by going on a 15 minute walk, going out with a friend, browsing sites like Behance or Dribble, finding inspiration from Instagram or Pinterest, going on a run, or editing videos (the latter my personal favorite), do whatever it takes to help jump-start your creativity.
When working on any project, I find myself consciously stepping away from my work to give my mind space and it has helped me work more efficiently. Constantly working on a project can put a lot of stress on anyone, and even though you may be “too busy” to step away from your project due to deadlines, putting in break sessions can benefit you in the long run. Focusing all your attention on one project for a long period of time and overworking yourself could potentially lead you to a creative burnout that you won’t be able to overcome.
The point is to take a break in between projects. Diversify your projects so that you can get different parts of your creativity working. As mentioned before, I personally like editing videos when I feel overwhelmed by a project. I also like to change up the environments in which I find myself working in. Sometimes I find myself at the library, computer lab, my room, kitchen, or on a train working on various projects. If needed, it’s okay to even take a longer break by treating yourself to a trip; I did that just recently and I honestly couldn’t feel any better.
4. Aha-Moment
After refreshing your mind from all the clutter of pursuing a project, you’ll start to regain clarity on your ideas. At this point, the potential solution shines through — it’s that “aha moment” when you realize that you found the perfect solution.
5. Build
Now that you have a general outline, you can begin to build! Sometimes when you start building, your initial ideas begin to change but that’s okay. This is the most fun part of the process because you can then start to play around with other ideas as you start to become more creative within your workspace, whether that’s through the Creative Cloud or some other application.
6. Iterate
Even though the building part should probably be the easiest because you have the layout all laid out, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes when you’re introduced to a new tool, it’s hard to make your initial designs become a reality so you have to iterate (due to time constraints). The iteration process is honestly a never-ending task. Read more about it here.
Here’s my experience with the creative burnout:
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve experienced creative burnouts; there’s too many to count. One project in particular, that I will be sharing with you, challenged me in a number of ways.
First, I had to choose a topic of my choice that would carry over across three projects — kinetic typography, interactive infographic, and a user-interface design—that would be produced in Tumult Hype 3.6. Some ideas that came to my mind included: promoting a business, album release for a band, or something related to traveling. In the end, I picked a topic that I thought would give more content to work with. Kindness.
I was interested on doing something around the concept of kindness. Someone who I admire is Ellen Degeneres because she’s a great example of a genuine, kind, and loving person. At the end of every show, Ellen tells her audience to “Be kind to one another”; this is a philosophy of life that I would like to help spread through this semester-long project. The theme of my project may be a little vague to some people but essentially, I wanted it to be focused on the importance of being kind and how it could positively influence others.
Second, I wasn’t sure of how I was going to keep a consistent feel across all three projects. What colors, fonts, and content was I going to use to create a seamless user experience?
Third, what are the capabilities of Hype? With no prior knowledge of Hype, I didn’t know what effects were doable and what wasn’t. But as the semester progressed and I played around with the various tools offered in the pro version of Hype, I was able to add digital effects and interactive features to my projects to enhance the experience.
Running into concerns like these directly me towards the creative burnout but by handing it properly by running, looking at other people’s work, and taking the time to take breaks, I was able to envision a theme that I was able to follow through with for all three projects.
Discussed below are brief overviews of the three different projects that I created.
Kinetic Typography Animation
This part of the project challenged me to come up with a solution to expanding the reach of the text. Instead of creating a dull and static experience through text, I had to familiarize myself with the basic Hype principles and elements to integrate motion, colors, and images/icons. For this particular project, I took a snippet from a speech Ellen Degeneres gave at the People’s Choice Humanitarian Award Ceremony.
Storyboard Sketches
Content Development
Final Product
Interactive Infographic
The second part of this project helped me take information and present it in a way that was more engaging and helped users learn and interact with the data. Building off of my first project, I decided to create an interactive infographic on random facts on kindness. I divided up the sections into three parts — Kindness Increases, Did You Know, and Kindness Decreases.
Storyboard Sketches
As I started adding elements to Hype, I started to see an issue. No matter how hard I tried to make a layout with angled, rectangular backgrounds (like in my storyboard sketches), I couldn’t. Shown below is what I had envisioned during the ideation stage; this was created in Adobe Illustrator, not Hype.
Instead of spending even more time in Hype, trying to figure out how to make the layout that I had wanted, I decided to revise my storyboard.
Final Product
User Interface Prototype
Similar to the second project, this prototype involves a lot more user interaction. For this, I decided to create an interface for a kindness card tracking app that would have at least five different interactions. Essentially, each kindness card is first activated at a restaurant, cafe, or fast-food joint when someone purchases a suspended meal — a meal that is purchased in advance for a stranger in need. From there, the person who was generous enough to do that will activate their kindness card through the app and input their act of kindness in the description box. Wait, that’s not it though; there’s more. Once that card is activated, it’s up to that person to pass on the card to some kind stranger and they would have to repeat the same steps. By doing this, people will be able to track the journey of their kindness cards and read other people’s stories.
UI Visualization
This is still a work in progress. At the moment, I have five interactions within my mobile app. Within the next few weeks, I will have a working prototype.
Conclusion
Although I’m not completely done with this project yet, I have learned a lot about the importance of maintaining a cohesive experience across multiple projects. As designers, when we’re working on big projects, it can get very overwhelming at times. In order to avoid getting burned out too quickly, it’s important to take a little breather so that you don’t drive yourself insane. Having a creative burnout? Step away from the project for a bit, take a break, and do things that inspire you to think creatively.
Ellie Hoyt is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. This article relates to beating the creative burnout in the DGM 2280 Digital Effects course and is representative of the skills learned.
