Designing Mindfully
Three ways that meditation has helped me as a designer

I started meditating because I was having trouble sleeping. Sometimes it felt like no matter what I did I couldn’t calm my mind down, so I decided to give meditation an earnest try. I’ve meditated every day for three months and not only have I had positive effects with my sleep, but I’ve noticed that mindfulness lends itself nicely to designing.
First, what is meditation? Well, more accurately, what do I do for meditation? The type of meditation I practice is centered around focusing on the breath, in particular I focus on the rising and falling of my chest as I breath. Inevitably, at some point, my mind will wander off:
“I think I’ll start re-working my portfolio for the 1000th time.” “Will the Pacers ever be good again?” “I really need to get better at sketching.”
The trick is to notice when you’ve gotten distracted and re-focus on the breath, learning to be present using breathing.
With that out of the way, how has meditation helped with my design practice?
Disclaimer: These are just some of the ways I’ve noticed meditation helping me while designing. This is not to say that I am able to do all of these things all of the time, instead meditation has helped me perform better more consistently.
Relationship Building
Building relationships with developers, product managers, and other stakeholders as a designer can be the difference between getting designs adopted or not. This summer I’ve been working as a product owner and user experience design intern at Availity. One of the most challenging aspects of the internship has been going out and conducting research, spending time understanding a work flow and problem, designing for it, and then translating this into work that has to be done as a product owner as we move toward an MVP. Basically, I haven’t been designing in a vacuum. I sit in the same room as the developers and when I bring up a design idea we have to not only work through it from a user perspective but also technically.
I struggled a lot at first with managing the relationship between me as the designer and the devs on the team. It was pretty much dictatorial, “Listen I’m in school for this, I’m a UX designer, you just don’t know people, I know what’s best.” It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I didn’t quite get how to explain designing yet and the challenges facing the developers.
When I started meditating I noticed that when these conversations would pop up I could create a little more space between what someone was saying and my initial reaction. It felt like I was responding instead of reacting, taking in what the other person was saying, considering their position, and responding in a better way than before.
Additionally, meditation has been shown to increase a persons ability to feel compassion and kindness towards other people¹. Empathy is talked about often as being important in human-centered design, yet, at least for me, no one ever really discusses how to build this or what it is. Meditation can help you build compassion and kindness which can help with being more willing to understand people better.
Listening
I think listening and building relationships share a lot of the same reasons for why meditation can boost them so I’ll keep it brief.
Good designers are good listeners. They start by understanding, not solving. — Adrian Zumbrunnen
Adrian Zumbrunnen was right when he wrote that. I think that article pretty clearly articulates why listening is such an important skill for designers so I’ll skip that.
I think listening comes down to being able to be present in a conversation, this is especially true when your listening for what’s not being said just as much as what is being said in user research. I’ve noticed that since I’ve started meditating I can tell more easily when I’m getting distracted during a conversation and can better re-focus on the person I’m talking to. This allows me to be more present in a conversation which I’ve found not only helps with remembering conversations I have, but also I feel I’m able to better respond and ask questions in conversations where I’m able to stay present and aware.
Productivity
Are you reading this post while listening to a podcast while reading emails while creating a wire-frame? There are so many ways to entertain, and distract, ourselves in today’s work environment. I find myself doing this all the time, working on a project and in the first instant of boredom going to YouTube and watching climbing videos. The problem with this is that, despite what some people may tell you, our brains are really poorly suited for multi tasking².
So if multitasking and getting distracted makes completing tasks take longer what can we do? This is another place where meditation can step in. Meditation has been shown to increase a person’s attentional functions and cognitive flexibility — the ability to handle new or unexpected things as they come up³. Basically, as you learn to meditate your mind is better equipped to stay on one task and not get distracted as often, allowing you to get through work faster. Additionally, meditators are better able to handle noisy or hectic environments while working⁴.
I’ve found that whether it is sketching, interviewing, writing Jira stories, or creating wireframes the longer that I’ve been meditating for the longer I’m able to go while working before I get distracted — which still happens a lot by the way.
Learning How to Meditate
Maybe you want to try meditating for the first time, great news there’s a ton of resources to get started! There are all kinds of apps that you can use to get started and I’ve tried quite a few of them. I’ve personally found Headspace to work best for me, but a quick search on Google Play or the Apple Store will show plenty of results.
Also, check this article out:
https://headspace.design/a-mindful-design-process-f4a4641ee88f
References
- Lim, D., Condon, P., & DeSteno, D. (2015). Mindfulness and compassion: an examination of mechanism and scalability. This study showed that people who received meditation training versus those who did not were more willing to give up their seats to someone who needed it.
- Wood, E., Zivcakova, L., Gentile, P., Archer, K., De Pasquale, D., & Nosko, A. (2012). Examining the impact of off-task multi-tasking with technology on real-time classroom learning. Computers & Education, 58365–374. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.029. This study shows the link between using technology during a lecture and negative affects on performance.
- Moore, A., & Malinowski, P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness And Cognition, 18176–186. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.12.008. A study examining how meditation improves attention.
- Levy, D. )., Ostergren, M. )., Wobbrock, J. )., & Kaszniak, A. ). (2012). The effects of mindfulness meditation training on multitasking in a high-stress information environment. Proceedings — Graphics Interface, (Proceedings — Graphics Interface 2012), 45–52.
