How to be inspired for creating
Working as a User Experience Designer for more than 5 years I often hear the question: how and where to find inspiration and ideas for designing a new project? Sometimes, reviewing works of other designers, the question arises, where to get interesting ideas, or how to find design decisions? In this article, I’d like to share some thoughts, how you can find inspiration to create a unique design project.
1. Immerse into atmosphere
First of all, try to dive fully into the project atmosphere. It helps you understand and feel, users’ expectations from your product. For example, whiskey brand Jack Daniels on their website created an opportunity to experience the atmosphere of American pubs, in the last century. Which means you aren’t just visiting the website, you’re traveling in time. And this is what your users very often expect of the product — emotions (and of course good usability. However, sometimes readers are being blocked from these expectations because of practical but deprived of emotions, designer’s decisions. So, to convey the atmosphere of the product in your design you should feel it yourself.
Here is what can help you with it:
- Visit places that showcase the character of your product. If it’s a website for coffee try to spend a few hours in a cozy cafe. If it’s a traveling or alpinism app– try to climb to the peak of the mountain. If it’s something for a space theme — fly into space or at least visit an observatory. Visiting places related to your product will generate amazing and unique ideas in your mind about creating emotional design. Also, you will be inspired by switching locations to start thinking about a new approach.
- Another way is trying to move virtually through time and space. Themed movies, music, or video games may be useful in this case. Once, working on the online shop for ancient goods I totally changed my music playlist into folk music and devoted some time for watching a movie about ancient Ukrainian culture. The result was amazing! In a few hours, I created the main concept of the main page in a totally new style, which was delightfully accepted by the customer. A similar occasion was when I worked as a freelancer: I had to design a poster for the online game, so before starting design I played this game a few days to feel the emotions that gamers feel and understand their expectations.
Besides, you can easily solve problems that you face with the first method — go into space in a virtual way, watching an appropriate movie or playing a game.
2. Works of other Designers
Another good source of inspiration and ideas is reviewing the works of other designers. All of us likely thought about resources such as Dribble, Behance or Pinterest. And really I often start searching for ideas or create mood boards visiting these and similar resources. However, it can be a very interesting practice — reviewing works not relating to user interface design. For instance, the works of a famous artist can be a good inspiration. They can not only inspire you, but you can notice some regularities or ideas that you can use in your design. For example, an illustrator from Brasil, Leo Natsume creating his illustrations for HUAWEI, was inspired by pictures of an artist who used increased proportions of body parts.
Also, it concerns designs of things that inspire you with their shapes, colors or even strange looks. For example, Jonathan Ive for the basics of his design of a calculator for iPhone took the real calculator designed by BRAUN engineer Dieter Rams.
3. Communication
The other strong tool for inspiration can be communication with users or people with a similar background. We know that interviews with users are necessary for finding out the user’s goals and needs. But what, if we look at these interviews, not just as a method of taking information but as a tool to understand people’s feelings and moods as well. Many designers ignore them while concentrating their attention on problems and how to solve them. However, the moods and emotions can help us find needed solutions from the UX side, and in the visual part: choosing fonts, colors, etc. Also, these conversations can change your vision of the project in a new way and I suggest you embrace it. Many genius ideas appeared in friendly conversations.
4. Observing
One more method to find inspiration is observing. For example, a talented illustrator from Italy Marianna Tomaselli very often creates amazing illustrations by carefully observing different occasions, people and even her own experience.
Observing people, architectures, or nature can inspire you in a unique way. Experiencing nature can open beautiful color combinations that will be greatly perceived by others. Interaction of humans with objects can inspire ideas for animations that will be close to real physical processes — realistic shadows, or shapes of things. In this manner just observing people or things, you can get ideas for icons, interfaces or even new products.
5. Brainstorm
A great tool for ideas searching — is team brainstorm. Together you can find many ideas and some of them can be very non-standard but a good fit for your product. And remember things that are impossible today, can become possible tomorrow, so don’t bury ideas even when they seem crazy and unreal.
Finally, I wish to give some advice that helps me in my daily work:
- Take breaks.
Fresh air fills your brain with oxygen for work to be more effective. During recesses have some physical activity. It’ll rest your brain and better blood circulation in your body. Often after an in work pause, you see things from a new perspective and it helps to find new solutions and ideas. - Create sketches.
Try to visualize the same element in a few different ways. Often among the drafts, you will find the idea that can evolve into the real concept.
Look for inspiration and create beautiful things that will admire your users and bring in the real feelings. These users will be with you for a long time.
Feel free to share how you tackle the challenge of always staying productive and inspired day-to-day and still bring a unique touch to every product you are involved in as a designer.
