Why a Creative Day is Awesome for your Team
At Yummygum, we’ve started this summer with a great new concept we call a Creative Day. Reading about these days-off, hackathons and do-what-you-like-days at other companies inspired us to do something similar. Kind of like a creative hackathon.
Note: we’ve written an updated blog post on this topic in 2022. Read the new version.
What is a Creative Day?
Our Creative Day is one day in the month where no-one is required to work on client or in-house projects, they’re free to do what they want. This allows for everybody in the team to replenish their creative mind and perhaps learn something new. A few examples of things we do during the Creative Day are:
- Redesign a website or app
- Learn how to create complex prototypes
- Write an inspiring blog post
- Create for the design community (like an icon set)
Keep your task and goal small
The goal is to deliver something useful at the end of the Creative Day, so it’s important to keep the scope of your task for the day small. Your deliverables should give insight in what is required in the future to finish the full product.
Breaking your full team up into smaller teams is definitely motivated and can help to take on a slightly larger project for the day. For example, one designer focuses on UX and the other on UI.
Update the team during lunch
When lunch time arrives we discuss the progress of each task and see where everybody’s at. If people have questions for the full team, this is the perfect time to ask them. Try to give constructive feedback that helps people continue their tasks and bring them closer to the goal.
Show Off Your Work
Around 4 o’clock it’s time to wrap up, grab a beer and discuss the results. Each member of the team gets the opportunity to present their work on the big TV screen we have in our meeting room. The goal is to show off your work, but also to share any new insights or skills you’ve obtained. For example, one of us did research in Apple Watch App Design and taught us some of the strict rules Apple applies to WatchOS.
Results of our first Creative Day
Let’s not dwell on details or any back story, that’s not the focus of a Creative Day any way. Sit back, relax and enjoy a few photos from our Creative Day.
We loved the Creative Day
We really liked doing something completely different. Like gathering feedback from others at the office on ideas we’ve had, but never could get around to. Or designing a screen that was floating in our mind for weeks. We can definitely recommend organizing a Creative Day every once in a while at your company.
