What are the similarities between design and writing
My reflection on the process of design and writing and takeaways to understand how knowledge from design can help in writing
When I talk to designer friends, often I suggest them to write articles online. Mostly I hear excuses like they are not good at writing, or they don’t find the time, but that’s wrong. Friends, you can write well and it won’t take much time. With this article, I want to show you how you can use your design skills in writing.
When a client wants us to solve a design problem, we easily apply design process and derive solutions that satisfy the needs of our users. The ultimate solution also makes our users happy and clients too. We use design sprint and solve complex problems in a short period of time. With this article, I want to show you, you can use the learnings from design in writing. You can use learning from design, and apply them in writing as there are many similarities in both.
Users take the centre stage
“The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.” ~ Lewis Howes
In design, users take the centre stage in the whole design process. We perform contextual research to know our users, demographics, context, their pain points, needs, and motivations, etc. This ensures the end product is grounded in needs and it solves the problem.
In writing, we need to define our target audience. We need to decide the intention in terms of audience needs, pain points, and motivation so they will take interest in the article. What problems are we trying to solve here? Either we are inspiring our readers, entertaining them, or guiding them.
Ultimately, we are influencing our users/readers by our design/writing work.
Research
“He who does not research has nothing to teach.” ~ Proverb
In both design and writing, we need research. Research gives us a wealth of data to design products or to write a series of articles.
In design, the challenge becomes knowing the methodologies to follow and the methods to use. We perform user studies, analyse data, and gain insights from the data. We also perform secondary research, competitor analyse, and so on. Both give us a strong base to design the product or service.
In writing, a simple Google search will give you answers to your questions. If you are writing a scholarly article, then you can search in Google Scholar or digital libraries, for instance, ACM, IEEE, and Springer. But, you will definitely use keywords or perform a question-based search. Most of the time, you will feel “But, this might be written already.” The answer is Yes. Everything is written before, but creativity is knowing something exists and writing your take on it. You have not written that before.
Inspirations
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ~ Stephen King
As designers, we know our sources very well, either dribbble.com, behance.net, Pinterest, and so on. We perform keywords based search. There are online applications that provide colour based search as well. I like Pinterest. It gives you similar results. You already feel inspired when you open the site.
For writing, you should be reading a lot — books, blogs, magazines, etc. You may follow people on Twitter or talk to people who are interested in your work. When I watch YouTube videos by inspiring designers, I feel inspired. Similarly, the writers I follow on Twitter give me the inspiration to write.
Articulation
“The thought process can never be complete without articulation.” ~ Stephen King
I find a lot of similarities when it comes to articulation in design and writing. By now, we all have visualised the solution, but we spend a lot of time in procrastination. We need a nudge to get started. Once we start, we know we won’t take much time, but we don’t get inspiration without deadlines😂. Here, inspiring peers come for our rescue.
In design, we create information architecture, structure for the website or mobile application. We have learnt “Fail fast, fail often”. Paper prototypes and wireframes can be created very quickly, and then we keep enriching the wireframes. Once we are confident, then we move to visual design that enriches the solution.
In writing, we draft as quickly as possible, an article could be written in a sitting. Here, we compose the narrative. We have a structure and an outline for the article. Unless there is a logical sequence in place, we don’t know if we are going in the right direction. Readers get confused without any coherence too. And we don’t want that.
Both design and writing give you clarity of thought. You will find articles on writing where the writer demonstrates writings helps designers in their thought process. It does.
Review and refinement
“Half my life is an act of revision.” ~ John Irving
No work is finished until it is reviewed and revised. When I started the design, I was always afraid of sharing my work for review. Over a period, I got used to it and I realised it helped me. Now I share my articles with my friends who are good at writing. Reviews have removed ambiguity, improved flow and it has brought cohesiveness in my writing.
There are two threats I find in peer review — honest feedback and theft of work — you need to be aware of that. Many people will give you superficial feedback. If they repeated give good feedback without any comments, then you better find a new friend as you want to improve, and not be at the same state. But, sometimes your article might really be well written. You will not always get bad feedback. 😅 Talking about theft, there are people reviewing work online, but I don’t trust unknown online reviewers. I have seen people copy-paste work. Be aware of that.
Finally, once you are happy, they are happy with the work, then go ahead publish it.
But how to get new ideas?
“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” ~ Linus Pauling
Both fields are creative in nature. We need to be creative in our thinking as well. Practising writing regularly, you will get used to writing well. There are many lectures on YouTube, courses on Udemy that you may watch to learn the creative writing skill. I am taking a few courses too.
Sometimes we need to look at the problems from multiple points of views. I find activities such as talking to people, observing them, reading, and watching movies give me ideas. When you get an idea, just write down in a notebook. Come back to it when you want to write. In fact, when I recently started writing on Medium, I observed similarities in my design work and writing. I wrote this idea in my diary as my next blog idea. And here is the article about it.
I found Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques book has many creative techniques that you can implement. It will not only help you in writing, but it will help you be creative in your work.
Ultimately it is a loop of writing, sharing, and feedback. More you write and share, more you receive appreciations. You will feel inspired when people appreciate or at least read. This is a good enough motivation to write.
Thanks for reading the article! I hope you found it useful and motivational to write on a topic that you have been thinking for a long time. Do let me know your views about this article in the comments below.
Disclaimer: The thoughts, opinions, criticism, and viewpoints expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.
