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10 ways to break through a design block
How to navigate the mental barriers that keep you from moving forward.
Design blocks are tough, and even after 15+ years of designing websites, they still happen to me all the time. I’ll be determined to move forward on a project, but find myself completely stuck — maybe I don’t know where to start, or there’s too much pressure to create something brilliant, or a vague “something” about the design just doesn’t feel right.
It can be debilitating; I can fear that this time the good idea will never come, or that I’ve lost my touch. A particularly bad design block can make me question my worth and ability as a designer.
Thankfully over time I’ve found a handful of tricks to get me moving forward again. By employing one, a few, or even all of these techniques, I can usually break down the mental block and get back to work. The next time you’re stuck, give one of these a go (and let me know if it helps)!
1. Make sure you understand the problem you are solving.
Good design is the natural outcome of effectively solving a problem. Whether the problem is “we need people to know about our business and become loyal customers,” or “we want users to be more engaged with our product,” as digital designers, our primary job is (usually) to solve business problems as effectively as possible. The more we know about the problem, the better we can solve for it.
As much as we may love to focus on the aesthetics (there’s nothing more satisfying than finding the perfect color palette or hottest new trendy font), we’ve got to make sure we understand the problem we’re solving as deeply as possible in order to create the best possible solution. So how do we understand the problem to be solved? Through up-front research.
(The discovery and research aspect of design is an entire discipline in its own right; if you suspect your skill set is lacking in this area, it’s worth investing your time in learning more. The book “Just Enough Research” by Erika Hall is a great place to start.)
