Every designer has the situation of lacking creative inspiration and blank brain from time to time. Staring at a blank screen, worrying about "OK, what should I do now? How should I do it?" Some people like to wait, but this is not the only way. Anxious customers or your own impatience will give you a headache, so we share seven positive and effective ways to solve the inspiration exhaustion when you design. These are all summarized in our actual work, and we thought they would also help your design work.
1. Don't stagnate the design, even if it is imperfect
The biggest difference is that there are no good ideas and no ideas. Interestingly, if you have more bad ideas, more pressure will force you to come up with good plans. In the absence of ideas, the best solution is to think more inappropriate ideas, so as to extract good plans from these ideas.
Try to make a bad design, you may find that action is better than empty talk.
First of all, let's start. Many designers just stare at a blank screen, but doing a bad design is better than not doing it. At a deeper level, making an imperfect design can make you think about some problems related to the project; On the other hand, if you can find out the shortcomings and defects in the design, give them a note and a label, and find out the good places and good solutions, this fruitful method will make you think about how to solve them and refine them.
For some people seeking details, deliberately completing a poor design will make them feel uncomfortable, so here is another similar method. You can try to create a stream of consciousness without any constraints on your thoughts, which can also lead to the consequences of intentional mistakes. But don't forget that your works should be understandable.
The design process is based on as few ideas as possible. Based on your intuition and thinking speed, follow the above method, and don't worry about bad design. Set a time limit (such as 15 minutes), first design the ideas that appear in your mind, then immediately make the next one, etc., and make as few judgments as possible. The only bad thing to do is to hesitate. Theoretically, it can let you get in touch with your subconscious mind - to bypass the pressure and terror, so that you can find out what your original purpose is.
2. Reconstruct the existing website
The logic of this approach is meaningful. First, temper your design thinking. This is a better learning method than staring at the screen.
When you rebuild an existing website, deconstruct what is worth learning about the website, analyze the reasons why it is worth learning, and question why designers do this, it will often reflect some details that are often overlooked by you.
In addition, the more websites are rebuilt, the more web design patterns you will notice. Stripping the decorative materials of the website to expose its structure, you will begin to notice that designers tend to do similar design methods, and you will soon find out why.
This method is an experience that we all deeply understand. Marcin Treder, CEO, conducted a user test, and discussed how to improve the workspace and rebuild Yelp from scratch with UXPin. Under the conditions of project permission, or we have to review the pre-existing elements and why they do so. This perfect test tested our design theory and made us more confident.
Rebuilding the existing website can not only broaden your design thinking but also make you happy. Go and prove your idea with practice. This is a useful method. When you have no idea, it may give you a ray of vitality.
3. Take a step back
This advice can be used in two places: when you are in the process of creating or when you are about to complete the project goal. But if you use it at the same time, it will bog you down, because that is like abandoning the whole forest for one tree.
First of all, you can stop and focus on the details of the design and re-examine the overall situation. If you are obsessed with a detail, perhaps after reviewing your overall plan, you will see that this matter is ultimately unnecessary for the work.
Sometimes we are blocked by obvious details because they don't have to be in the first place.
Second, you can narrow down the actual angle to see the layout style. This will help you judge whether the page layout is reasonable or not. Zoom in and out to see how all the elements work together, giving you an opportunity to treat things in a new way.
4. Start with easy places
We usually work from the top, but the design is often to break the habit. The top of the screen is usually the hardest part because it is the first impression to the user. The home screen is very important. The home screen is very important. The home screen is very important. It is usually the information architecture and navigation of all websites.
When it comes to hard things, people may be intimidated. So it is a warm-up to do the simplest part first. Although you still have to deal with these difficult things in the end, you will feel less pressure if you cross some items off your to-do list first.
In addition, as we have always mentioned, any work is better than nothing. A single spark can start a prairie fire. Sometimes just worrying is enough to exhaust your enthusiasm for starting a new project.
5. Application implicit test
Lee Munroe wrote on his blog that I hope we can adopt implicit testing. If you keep a web page halfway and don't know what to do, implicit testing is a good method.
Check your web model and re-examine your layout to find unreasonable places.
The indistinct consequences can be achieved by using Photoshop to make a 5 – 10 pixel Gaussian indistinct filter. At this time, you may find that you spent too much time to piece together these elements, so you will find that this is very different from your previous idea after re examining it.
The subtle version will reveal the true side of your visual hierarchy. No matter where your viewing corner is in this faint test, it may be the most prominent position the user sees at the first time.
6. Try new tools
Try new software or upgrade your software. A happy upgrade process and concentrated learning of a new system may inspire inspiration on how to solve your problems.
These two problems will accompany each time you apply new software.
First of all, you must relearn how to use your old skills to apply the new system. Then reassess these skills, or diverge from them; Secondly, you will recognize some new features of new software. New tools and new functions, perhaps trying new toolkits can solve your problems.
For example, Sketch is a software that is designed for web pages rather than general Photoshop image editing. Some designers have found that the efficacy of adjusting complex shapes and real-time multi screen views can enhance design based thinking.
Even if the new software is useless, you may still get a new feeling that you still like the old software. Finding what you have lost may be the crux that is most likely to break the closure.
7. Find inspiration from the outside
Inspiration will be fleeting but not concealed. If you don't know where to look, we will list some websites aimed at sponsoring designers to solve their problems at the end, including the problems encountered by designers, look at the different ideas and comments of other designers, as well as some excellent works issued by them, and see if you can get any good inspiration from them. It is an online service for creators, artists, designers and other creative work groups to provide online works for netizens to view the completed works or the works being created online. It is important for designers to watch and comment.
Summary
Remember, if you come up with a situation of lack of creative inspiration and a blank brain, you are not alone. In fact, I want to say that you are not alone, not alone, not alone. It is like a disease Website Design The state that teachers will encounter. In addition to the above methods, you can also try the traditional methods to remedy it: activities, sufficient sleep, healthy diet, and some nifty entertainment. If you feel anxious, take a deep breath. Haste makes no progress, the more urgent the problem is, the less it can be solved.
