10 UXDERS, 10 QUESTIONS, 10 WEEKS

Week 4, Rituals for creativity: 10 UXDers, 10 questions, 10 weeks

Our experts share strategies for kickstarting creativity.

PatternFly Team

Published in

PatternFly

10 min readOct 27, 2021

The title card for this week’s question, “How do you kickstart your creative process?” featuring headshots of all 10 contributors.

Have you ever opened up a document fully intent to start a project and just… stared blankly for a while? Yeah, us too. This week, we’re talking about all things creativity: What it is, how it’s made, and how our experts find more of it when their inspiration runs dry.

How do you kickstart your creative process?

Wes: Research Operations Coordinator

So I don’t necessarily have a routine, but in general I try to work on my productivity and clear my mind to be a little more creative. I front load all of my chores and try to do them early. And this part actually excludes work. Today is a very good example: I’m finally getting back into my exercise routine. We get the baby up, he gets fed, we get him to daycare, we take the dogs out and feed them. Then I eat a little bit, I go for a run, come back, and get cleaned up. So I get all that stuff out of the way, at least in my mind. It’s like my morning routine — checking all those boxes clears my mind so that I can really block time out for creating as far as work goes. When I work, I like to somewhat isolate myself. I have a door in my home office I can close, and I put on headphones and music. None of this is super “creative,” but I think this routine puts me into a better headspace, so I’m focused and not worried about if I forgot something later.

Beau: Principal UX Designer

I am someone who needs to think. One thing you get in design sessions is people firing ideas and concepts, and I’m someone who needs to step away after. Just in general, recognizing how you ideate is important for anyone. I’m that cliche person who goes into shower or does my gardening and thinks about it. I really step away from the screen and think. I’m a thinker. The only thing when you step away is to have a pen and paper, so you can write things down, so you don’t forget them. For me, that’s part of the process.

I also am a strong believer in changing format when you’re typing: Say something out loud, get on the phone with a colleague. When you talk it through, your brain has to work slightly differently to speak about it. Same with sketching on paper. So I use the different tools available to me to help form ideas, including just taking notes during meetings. Half the time I don’t even reread them, but writing them down adds something for me.

Roxanne: Associate Manager, User Experience Design

I like to start with a blank canvas. I don’t like to work from an old document or one someone else created. I’d rather start my own, then pull in the elements that are required. The way I think is reflected in how I arrange documents, and working through someone else’s way is very jarring for me. I’m pretty adaptive and pretty flexible in terms of where I do that work (pen and paper or online), depending on the desired outcome and the artifacts I’m looking to create.

When I was younger, I used to be a huge procrastinator. I would wait until the final hour to get something done. I’ve definitely matured and I’m much more proactive about getting work done. I actually find deadlines inspiring. They help me regulate my time, and I just move through naturally. I get in a flow of multitasking. It just feels right.

Alan: Senior Director, User Experience Design

I don’t do any interaction design these days; it’s been a long time. So when I’m talking about creativity, I’m talking about things like: How best will the UXD group scale? What do we need to do to be successful as a big group? How do we, for instance, eliminate whatever silos there are between our own subgroups within UX? How do we work well with other teams? How do we make sure that other groups and leaders in the organization know about the work we do?

It’s been a long path to be able to do vision work, where people are working with us and looking to us for leadership and the next generation of Red Hat products. All of those things require a level of creativity. When I came to Red Hat, there were no other managers and UXD was just a handful of people. I look at my creativity as being related to how we can foster a great group. How do we end up with great managers in the group; how do we end up with individual contributor tracks that make sense and are tangible?

When I create, I go back to pen and paper. I’ll use things like fountain pens because I like the way they write. I’ll scribble and try not to just write things. Non-verbal mixing with verbal is a very important part for me. I might draw a bunch of squares first, fill them in, then connect them with arrows. I also try to give myself enough space to think, too. We’re all working in a world where we can fill our days with meetings. That’s not great for the creative process! Having time and feeling unencumbered by, “Oh, I have to have this solved in the next 30 minutes,” is huge.

The creativity that I do now is so different from what someone might do for designing screens. But certainly some of the underlying principles of interaction design apply.

Matt: Principal Interaction Designer

I am fairly introverted, you know, so I’m probably the type of person that needs to spend some time in my own space. I need to work some things out on my own before getting feedback. And I think that’s different for different people. Some people thrive more in group creative activities like brainstorming, collaborative design exercises, or workshops. I personally find those harder sometimes, because getting a cross-pollination of ideas is good to start, but then I need to take them in and reflect by myself.

If I’m really stuck on something creatively, I look at how other people solved that problem or another problem similar to it. From that research, I’ll find some ideas or inspiration that I can move forward with.

That’s the biggest thing I told my students for the better part of 10 years, when I taught usability and interaction design at Northeastern University as an adjunct professor. There’s nothing wrong with looking at what other people have done to solve similar problems. You shouldn’t directly copy it. But it’s important to see what’s out there, look at other designs, and learn from them. So why not look at things and ask yourself, “What do I like? What works, what doesn’t, and why?”

Unlike in just pure art, uniqueness in UX design isn’t necessarily a good thing. Users come with expectations for how they think a product should work, and the more that product fits those expectations, the easier it will be to use. Things are generally usable when they’re familiar and built from familiar mental models. In most cases, it’s a good thing if your design is similar to existing ones.

Joe: UX Developer

This isn’t necessarily a developer question, but oftentimes developers do need to get creative with their solutions. There are solutions that are less obvious that may be the best one for the job at hand. There are also times when components are available that designers possibly didn’t have knowledge of. So creativity comes into play by not just performing a task as written on a jira card, but rather being able to discern if there are alternate better ways to complete the bug or the user story.

If it’s a feature that I have to sink my teeth into, I like doing a little background research to see what others have done in the same area to help get the creative juices flowing. That’s helpful not only for me, but for the user because it allows them to find similar strategies for their workflows. When you are able to research, you hit the ground running and can start coding with some fundamentals, and you have a direction — and endpoint. You know what steps you’ll take along the way. So that’s my developing routine. Doing the background, and mapping out a plan. Also, coffee helps to get the creative juices flowing :)

Shiri: Senior User Experience Designer

I have what I call a “crazy mode” system. On a Google slide or even in Sketch, I take a bunch of screenshots and put them all in one place. I’ll do it every time I start a new big project. I throw everything I can on one page, everything that will inspire me or give me ideas. Once I feel like I have enough, I turn that page into a vision board.

I do this a lot, but I never save it. The first design I try that makes sense, I just close and delete that board. It’s not something that I save for the future, because I’m just brainstorming with myself.

Sometimes I bump into something that interests me, and I just go with the flow and try to see if it’s going to become an “Aha!” moment. Even if there aren’t any specific requirements for improving the feature, proposing something new is always nice. This kind of brainstorming structure works for me.

Other ways I get creative are less related to the actual design. I like to look for new photographers for inspiration. I enjoy all the National Geographic photographers — that was my dream job when I was very young. So looking at those pictures can sometimes inspire me.

Marie: Interaction Designer

Everything depends on my mood when I wake up. I usually need a good coffee. I love a latte or a cappuccino; those are my favorite types of coffee. My desk needs to be a mess, a good mess. I don’t usually have a clean desk at all. It’s my guilty pleasure, but sometimes I listen to ASMR to focus more on my design.

When I really need to focus, I need to use my headphones. But when I’m working more freely, I’ll play loud music and sing along with the songs.

Allie: Senior Interaction Designer

Creative, to me, is visual. I don’t think I’m creative, but I think I’m a problem solver. If you tell me to open Sketch and design the thing, I can’t do that. I like to start with a document of the problem and the goal. Then I’ll break it down, maybe make some bullet points underneath listing some possible solutions, and brainstorm that way. Often, I’ll move on to flowcharts or very simple sketches. That way, I have some kind of starting point, and I can jump into the actual designing part with that foundation. The whole process is design, but I have to do the idea part on paper, then think about it.

Building ideas and brainstorming is a type of creativity. But in my mind, when I think of someone creative, I think of Michael Celedonia (Designer on UXD), who can draw anything, or make a Harry Potter movie for some silly assignment. That’s what I aspire toward.

Margot: Interaction Designer

The first thing I do is look for inspiration. What are other people doing? For example, when I do PatternFly design issues like the dual list selector, the first thing I do is research other design systems to see how they’re tackling the same problem. What do I like from their side? What don’t I like, and why? A quick Google search can do a lot, because most things have been done before. I’m a strong believer that you should keep certain design patterns similar to existing routines so that you don’t confuse users even more. You want to keep the simple things pretty routine, and not throw users off by doing something really weird with it that they haven’t seen before.