All you should know about side projects
I can’t even imagine several years ago how the side project would turn out for me. But as it clear today this approach acted positively on my professional growth. I continue to follow it and now want to share this approach with you.
The designers growth happens by several ways. The experience we achieving while accomplishing work tasks. An education, courses and other special places to learn some tasks and knowledge. And the experience of colleagues formalized in form of books, articles, and speeches. But there is one more way besides main ones. Side projects.
Side projects? WTF?
Dope for brain
The main thing side projects can do for you is to force your brain to work on the new level. Right side project will force you to do new stuff and gain new experience.
As I wrote, one of designers growth ways is the experience of colleagues formalized in form of books, articles, and speeches. There is so much information around and one big problem. Not all of it worth your attention. It’s hard to define what’s useful and what’s not. Author’s personality and a short description can tell a lot. That’s what I started to add into my digest of useful links about product design called ARRW Project. Step by step from simple Facebook posts it evaluated to 27 issues and about 500 mail list subscribers. But more important is what it gave to me. Responsibility in front of subscribers led me to read myself into articles, understand the true meaning of them, dig deeper and separate what’s important. It strongly changed me as a designer and my understanding of the product design in general and in pieces.
Skills upgrade
Projects pass by but the experience stays. New edges of your skills, new knowledge, and new skills stay with you after proper side project.
The desire to create the real world stuff appears when you spend much time in front of the screen. For example, you can take a brush and paint the deck from your old skateboard. And I did the same. I called this mini side project Deck Project and turned it into the interactive web page. I had to refresh my JavaScript and CSS animation knowledge to make it.
Who needs side projects?
Companies and experts. And if it’s pretty clear with experts then it’s not so obvious when we talk about companies. Side projects are useful for creative people teams. But how?
Hypothesis check
It’s not safe to check brave hypothesis on your main product. You can outbrave bad consequences and unsuccessful integrations if you will use side projects for it. Hypothesis research can be substantiation for integrating it into the main product.
Fresh ideas
Ideas grow on each other as mushrooms. New and interesting ones will appear as a result of your side project. When you constantly involved in one product you need injections of fresh ideas from the “outside”.
Production waste usage
There are always will be production artifacts that not included in the main product. They are not getting worse from it. The side project build on top of them can work well.
The Unsplash project became real rescue for the Crew. Unsplash is a collection of great photos with a free license. It was created at a time when the company was just out of money. They put high hopes on a new website and were searching great photos to use on it. When Crew lost any hope to find a good one for free, they hired a photographer. Only one photo was needed so they decided to put the rest of the series online for free. This project became so popular overnight that the flow of clients from it let Crew stay alive and grow. Unsplash started the new wave of similar projects that so popular nowadays. (Source: Crew Blog)
Employers growth
You can go into employers growth using different ways. One of them is to develop the side project’s culture. By learning new skills and trying themselves in new roles employers will gain experience and raise the quality of expertise that will effect on the main product.
PR
Smoothly implemented side project will reach more people. You can use it as a way to find clients, interesting job or get useful сonnections.
Where to begin from?
Good side project needs a good idea. That’s why we should find out where good ideas come from. There is a common belief that creative people tend to generate good ideas one after another. And every other idea is better than the previous. This is wrong.
You have to deal with the brain to generate more good ideas. And I’ll tell you how. Do you remember a story about brains hemispheres? Right one works creatively and left one logically. Forget about it. Your brain works differently.
Story about two hemispheres. In 60-s scientists divided several patients brains hemispheres as last chance to cure epilepsy. By surprise, they unveiled that hemispheres started to act differently. The myth raised on this experiment. But several years ago scientists uncrowned it. They handled new experiment to detect any focus of each part. There was none. After all, we got only understanding that if someone will separate your hemispheres, one part will act creatively and other logically. (Source: The Guardian)
In fact, several centers in the different parts of the brain respond on ideation. The Executive Attention Network lets us concentrate on a specific task. The Imagination Network controls dynamic imagining of pictures. The Salience Network controls redistribution attention between this two networks. New and original ideas appear by concentrating on outlasted experience and earlier received knowledge, by imagining pictures and by constantly switching between this two states. (Source: Scientific American)
New ideas don’t come from nowhere. You need knowledge and experience inside your brain to invent something new. We get new ideas by forming connections between structured knowledge. That’s why it is so important for the designer to “collect” knowledge base and develop the skill of connecting it. You can enrich your brain with new and interesting connections by studying the world beyond your safety zone.
Now when we understood where ideas come from physically, let’s talk how we can help ourselves and our brain generate more good ideas.
Extreme mode
Everybody familiar with this one. It works well when you need to invent something immediately. But it has very unpleasant side effect. It’s cost-intensive and leads to the fast depletion. This mode works well at night before the deadline. But it’s inappropriate for the everyday usage.
More practice
Our body always tends to adapt to external circumstances. And the brain is not an exception. That’s why any of its ability can be trained. The more you practice in generating ideas, the easier will connections appear between knowledge, the more you will invent ideas. The practice works like a charm.
Let it settle down
You need to let your brain process new knowledge to generate connections. Your brain needs to do its job of cataloging the received information and laying it out after you’ve understood or figured out something new. That’s the only way your brain could find the information quickly inside itself. The unconscious rules this process. It’s going better when you sleep. (Source: Scientific American) So when you keep knowledge in a conscious area you don’t let the brain correctly structure it.
Take care of sport
You stimulate BDNF protein (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) production by regularly exercising your body. It boosts the development of neurons that leads to forming new connections inside your brain. The more BDNF in your body, the better your ability to learn. (Source: Newsweek)
Mistakes are your best friends
Stop being afraid of mistakes. Start taking them as a chance to learn something and use this experience for good. Your side project will be a good field for mistakes.
If you love the idea — let it go
Don’t hold your ideas inside. Our brain is capable of holding the limited amount of information in the working memory (Source: Livescience). Ideas that runs through your head interfere each other to get to the surface. Write down every idea that seems meaningful to you. I use a thick notebook that always nearby and Notion to store ideas online.
How not to screw up?
A good idea is only the beginning. It needs to be checked, expanded and not screwed up. You need a good approach to a side project.
Do it for yourself
In the beginning, you do any side project for yourself. It’s important to remember. In any time point, you can start to think about needs of users, coworkers or clients. You should not do this.
Trust yourself
Don’t torture yourself with reservations. Trust your intuition and feelings. Act as you think you should. Especially if someone thinks you are wrong. This is a side project, not the surgery on the open hurt. You don’t risk anything. Be proactive.
Do it simple
Don’t invent complicated space ships or conquest Mars. No, of course you can if you want to. Who can stop you from this? At least start with something simple. And then make it even simpler. You will never begin any side project if it will be too complicated. My ARRW side project started from the simple post on Facebook. You can always make it more complicated, but you can’t turn back time that you spent on polishing something useless.
Modify
Use your professional skills to modify the side project to the familiar shape. So as I turned my Deck Project from the painted skateboard to the interactive web page. Bring new skills into spaces that familiar to you.
Experiment
There is no better space to experiment then a side project. Do what you never took a chance to do. Do as you never would do. Dig where you don’t understand anything. But bring there your knowledge from other areas.
Grow culture
Nobody but you will explain your coworkers and the company about the positive influence of the side projects. Share what you working at, engage coworkers. Side project culture will bring a new wave of the evolution and turn your company into innovations.
Have fun
You don’t need a side project that you don’t have a fun time working on. Do only what brings you joy. Otherwise why the hell you need all of this?
