A junior designer’s takeaways from Adobe MAX 2020
I was able to attend the Adobe MAX 2020 Conference this past week and catch some amazing sessions, both live and on-demand, featuring some of my favorite creatives sharing their creative processes and journeys.
I learned a lot from the sessions I was able to catch and decided to compile some takeaways from the conference.
Habits for creativity
It is difficult to overcome a creative block when it happens, but we can build habits to help us stay creative and motivated to create.
We can build a routine to help us create consistently. Choose a time and place each week where you do something creative, and force yourself to create something. It doesn’t have to be a complete solution or story. It can be a brainstorming session where you take notes or talk with a friend and/or colleague to bounce ideas off of each other, a time where you sketch your surroundings or a time where you complete a design challenge. Return to the same place every week and repeat this process. This will train our mind and body to correlate this time and location as when and where we create and will help us stay consistent.
Diversity & inclusion
There is a lack of diversity in the creative field, especially in leadership roles. Diversity is needed to create more inclusive designs that can reach a greater population.
Although we can gain insight into each group’s experiences through extensive interviews and usability testing, it would be better to have them as members of the team helping design those experiences and telling those stories. They can help bridge gaps and build rapport more quickly with those communities because people tend to open up to those who they can relate to quickly. This could lead to teams uncovering new insights and iterating prototypes faster to create solutions that users will find valuable.
Put yourself out there and learn from your failures
As creatives, we spend a lot of time trying to perfect our practice and art, and we usually don’t share it with the world until we think that it’s perfect. Sometimes, we may just give up on that project because we believe there would be no interest in it. We hope that when we do share our work with others that they would love it immediately; not because we don’t believe that there are things that we can still tweak, but because we wanted to hear words of affirmations that we are designers.
The thing is, you will never know if your definition of perfect is the solution that your user needs until you share it with the world and receive feedback. You learn more from the criticism you receive for your design than you would from the praises; you discover areas that need improvement so that you can grow as a designer.
Although I feel like I knew about these things deep down, it’s nice to hear them from creatives that I admire; as I said, it’s nice to hear affirmations. I’m going to set up a routine to help me stay motivated and creative which will help me produce more work to share with the world because there are some stories, solutions, and designs that I can create.
