One way to exercise your creativity is to spend time sketching your ideas. I know many recoil at the thought of drawing, but I assure you it has many benefits.

First of all, when we sketch, we’re using the right side of our brains, the part responsible for abstract thinking and intuition. Programming, on the other hand, is very much a left-brained activity. And while the left side of our brain is great for analytical and logical reasoning (e.g., writing code), it’s got a poor track record for discovering abstract patterns and new insights. Concepts that are difficult to express in code or logical reasoning might simply appear when you try to draw them. Yet so many developers avoid expressing their ideas this way, believing they must be artistic in order to use the tools of an artist. However, just because you can’t draw the Mona Lisa, it doesn’t mean that drawing can’t help you.

At the Agile UX New York City 2012 conference, Jeff Gothelf presented “Demystifying Design: Fewer secrets, bigger impacts.” In his presentation, he explained that if you could draw a triangle, square, or circle, you could draw just about any user interface. I agree. Unlike code, drawing requires a smaller investment of time and offers the agility to quickly communicate ideas. There’s virtually no commitment. If an idea isn’t working, you can throw it out and start drawing something else. You tell me what’s easier to throw away: a five-minute sketch of some basic shapes or a five-hour coding example? I rest my case.

One of the most valuable tools I have in my office is my dry-erase board. During meetings, it’s not uncommon for me to use the board to visually communicate all sorts of ideas. Sometimes, I’ll use it to simply write down words I hear when a user is talking. Not only does this reinforce to them that I’m actively listening, but they’re also able to see what I’m parsing out as a result of our discussion. The application begins to take shape just by isolating words alone.

I can also use the dry-erase board to draw an early layout of the interface. I do this, as you can see in Figure 6-1, by drawing squares, lines and other basic shapes, so the user can see how I’m interpreting what they’re telling me. Many times, by drawing early sketches, I can discover areas where I’ve completely misunderstood what the user was describing; this has saved me countless hours of programming things the user didn’t want.

Once, I had a user so exasperated by my inability understand that she took the pen from me and started drawing. It took only minutes before I finally understood what she was trying to say. At the very least, you should consider having tools like pens, paper, or dry-erase boards available. Again, people have many different ways of analyzing and describing a problem. You may not prefer to draw, but it might be the perfect tool for one of your users to communicate. Explore those possibilities with your users and you might save yourself time and frustration.

A core component of the user-centered design process is exploring effective ways to communicate with users. Be willing to try new things if your meetings are falling flat and you’re leaving confused. If your users aren’t giving you what you need, try other methods. Drawing can be fun and it might spark less-enthused users into participating.

Figure 6-1. One of the many drawings from my dry-erase board

Let’s face it: sometimes working on the same project day in and day out can be a drain. Sitting at your desk, confronted with the same problems you had yesterday and the day before can obliterate your motivation. Make sure you’re spending time outside your current projects to exercise your creative muscles and continue growing new ideas.

Consider this: perhaps you can work on a project that has nothing to do with what you’re currently working on. It might not even be a software program. Maybe it’s woodworking, painting, or making music. If that’s too creative, try exploring new technologies or coding frameworks. Perhaps you could build an application with a web service you’ve never used before like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Yahoo! Weather, etc.

Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books), shares the story of how one company dedicates an entire day each quarter to creative freedom. The company is called Atlassian and its cofounder Mike Cannon-Brookes has come up with what he calls “ShipIt Days” (they used to be referred to as “FedEx Days” but have since been renamed due to copyright infringement). Atlassian’s ShipIt Days allow software engineers a free day to work on whatever they want with whomever they want. The only requirement is that engineers must ship their work to their colleagues the next day, hence the name.

Pink explains how ShipIt Days work:

Imagine if you and your team could take a day out each quarter—or month—and focus on whatever you wanted. Atlassian realizes the value in this creative freedom and is willing to put its money where its mouth is. I’m sure many engineers come back the next day with ideas or demonstrations that have very little immediate value. But that’s not the point. Atlassian wants to encourage a company culture that embraces freedom to explore new ideas and celebrates out-of-the-box thinking.

If you’re working in an enterprise environment or software development shop, consider showing your boss supportive articles about the power of creative freedom. Suggest that your company should implement ShipIt Days. Be willing to organize it and educate others about how it will work. It could be the very thing your company needs to spark innovation and re-engage its employees.

If you’re on your own, make sure you’re setting aside time to explore creative outlets. Go to the park and take your camera. Produce a movie with your kids and show it to the family with a big premiere. Create an Instagram account and take pictures of interesting things you encounter.

It really doesn’t matter how you choose to express yourself creatively, as long as you’re being purposeful and making time to do it.

As I stated in the previous chapter, a clear vision and goal for your project is paramount to its success. Understanding your goal has implications for creative exploration as well. You see, when you truly understand what you’re setting out to achieve, it can be easier to push aside naysayers. That can be important when you’re in the vulnerable stages of early creativity.

Jeff Weir is a UX designer for Microsoft, and his project Viscosity is a great example of understanding your goal.

Viscosity is an award-winning, web-based application that allows users to spread multi-colored paint into masterpieces. Ultimately, it’s a digital representation of the viscous nature of paint, as shown in Figure 6-2. Users have created and shared thousands of art projects using Viscosity. They’re also able to see an ever-expanding slideshow of one another’s creative works.

When evaluating Weir’s work on Viscosity, one might deem it to be superfluous. A web application that allows users to spread paint around—what’s the point?

Figure 6-2. Viscosity interface

Weir doesn’t really see a need for a point:

This isn’t to suggest that one must be altruistic in his software development endeavors. After all, we can only eat ramen and live with our parents for so long!

However, for this project Weir’s goal wasn’t to make something that would be profitable. If that was his goal, he says, he would’ve approached it differently. The goal was to explore how to replicate the natural properties of paint using a web browser and, as he says, “make something awesome.”

When detractors said that there was no sense in spending time on Viscosity because it wouldn’t make him any money, it had no effect. Weir knew that wasn’t the goal of the project in the first place. He understood the purpose of Viscosity and set out with a clear understanding of what he wanted to achieve. This allowed him to ignore negative comments and see his idea come to fruition. That’s the power of vision!

Seeing Viscosity come to life was Weir’s goal. He says that creation can be as important as the end product. He built Viscosity because the idea interested him and he enjoyed the challenge. In this case, he didn’t need a business plan or elaborate strategy. To Weir, Viscosity was a creative exercise:

So consider spending some free time fleshing out various ideas. Take a break from your ongoing projects and allow yourself to be creative with as few constraints as possible.

But what if you’re tired and out of ideas? The blank canvas can be a scary proposition. If you’re under the gun or feeling uninspired, then let’s not reinvent the wheel. We should make it a practice to look at others’ work for new ideas.

In Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Workman), author Austin Kleon suggests we have to free ourselves from the pressures of being original:

So often we needlessly pressure ourselves to be original or innovative and we actually hamper our creativity. Today we have access to millions of websites, mobile applications, gaming systems, television menus, ebook readers, shopping kiosks, and many other user experiences. We should be relentlessly studying these interfaces and searching for new possibilities within our own applications. However, I see many developers throw out their early ideas with a quick dismal of, “that’s already been done.” They toil and wander the barren landscape of their ideas looking for the oasis of an original idea. Many times they never find one, and because of this, they never reach an innovative breakthrough.

In the literary world, great writers know that if you want to write well, you need to write. Write constantly, and when you’re not writing, read. You should read works from the masters and examine how they weave together their stories. Learn from their style and prose and continually examine your own. Great writers aren’t concerned about others’ influence on their work; they remain confident that their own creativity will shine through.

In the book The Writer’s Idea Workshop (Writers Digest Books), Jack Heffron discusses how new writers struggle with the anxiety of influence:

There are many parallels between writing a book and writing an application. Both processes require a great deal of personal creativity and resolve. They both involve receiving criticism and learning how to take feedback constructively and make the work better. Many developers, just like writers, fear there are no more original ideas and begin to block themselves from creative thinking.

This is what I say to developers when I see them thinking this way: “There may be plenty of Twitter apps, but there are none of your Twitter apps.” Each of us has the ability to bring our personal experience, programming knowledge, preferences, and user base to a particular application. The very nature that you are working on it makes it different.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t challenge yourself to innovate and improve applications that are already available; I’m saying that because something already exists, it shouldn’t prevent you from exploring your idea.

If Michael Crichton had decided there were too many books about dinosaurs, he may never have written Jurassic Park. If Anne Rice had believed that vampires had become too passé, she may not have written Interview with the Vampire.

Not too long ago I was working with a colleague as we went through some new design concepts for our company portal. We were discussing several ideas about how search results could include employees’ contact information. We were finding it difficult to imagine ways we could display search results that promoted this type of information. Then, my colleague suggested that we look at how Facebook handles its search results. We also looked at Google+ and Twitter (Figure 6-1 is a result of that discussion).

Looking at how these companies handled social search and relevancy spurred new ideas for our project. We weren’t directly stealing what these companies had done. Instead we were learning from what they had already implemented. We took the ideas that made sense for our project and discarded the ones that didn’t. After all, our project was dealing with employees’ professional contacts. However, we were able to observe parallels with how Facebook, for instance, dealt with personal contacts in search results.

We should also be cataloging the things we find interesting. If you’re using an application that has a unique way of logging in, take a screenshot and file it away for future use. You might not be working on a login screen right now, but maybe you will be in a few months.

In time, you should have a physical or virtual drawer that you can return to when creativity is low. Surround yourself with creative people and observe what they’re doing. You might not have Vincent van Gogh living next door to you, but there are plenty of Twitter accounts, blogs, books, and videos on the Internet. Find where those sites are, bookmark them, and return to them periodically: see Chapter 11 for a good list to help you get started.

Keep your collection organized and thoughtful. Don’t just throw together a bunch of haphazard screenshots, clippings, and articles. Kleon suggests that your creativity will only be as good as what you surround yourself with:

One tool that helps me collect great designs is the website Dribbble. Essentially Dribbble is show-and-tell for designers. Artists and illustrators post whatever they’re working on and users can comment, like, and follow them.

I created an account, and every so often, I’ll peruse the site looking for things that I enjoy or find interesting. All I have to do is like something, and it gets moved to a list where I can recall it later. It’s the perfect drawer for ideas. Additionally, Dribbble gives me the ability to search for whatever I might be interested in. Just the other day, a friend and I were searching Dribbble for ideas about how an audio player should look in his application.

Another site, Pinterest, has similar functionality, but it features a more broad collection of art. With Pinterest you and your friends can “pin” anything on the Web that strikes your fancy. Perhaps it’s a funny t-shirt or an interesting use of typeface. Maybe it’s an inspiring quote or unique piece of furniture. Pinterest is a great way to collect ideas, and because it’s broader in scope than Dribbble, it exposes you to other influences. Believe it or not, I’ve actually used the style of a chair as inspiration for a website I was working on.

Creating delightful user experiences will require this kind of dedication, but it doesn’t have to be a lonesome quest. By asking questions of your users, you can bring them along for the journey as well.