Infinideas
Background
Creative block is the inability to create work without lacking techniques or skills. With Infinideas, I looked into this common problem that happens to visual artists and designed a solution for them to overcome this miserable condition quicker.
My Role Product Designer
Setting Personal Project
Duration 8 Weeks
Research
With literature review about creativity and creative block, I constructed an interview protocol based on factors that impact creativity from the aspects of motivation, mood, environment and personality.
After interviewing 5 visual artists, including photographer, illustrator, painter, and graphic designer, I used laddering to analyze the interview findings because it can reflect similarities and patterns among the fragmented information and extract the key values of user level by level.
Here are 3 most essential approaches to keep creative and productive.
Being mindful and reflective
Stimulation from the unfamiliar
Communication with other artists
Fig. Laddering of interview findings
When a creative block happens, it becomes increasingly hard for artists to continue the first two essential approaches : 1) Be mindful and reflective 2) Get inspired from the unfamiliar.
One participant said, “ I’m often inspired by daily life. For example, I’ve created a series of paintings starting from questioning how soaps made bubbles. But one day I suddenly couldn’t find those interesting details anymore and I felt hopeless after the situation kept going on for weeks. I was disappointed and I kept denying myself to the point that I didn’t know what to think about to create new work”.
Challenge
Participants became increasingly unmotivated because ideas were not coming as usual. The sense of loss and failure increased the difficulty of keeping reflective and curious, thus locking them in creative blocks.
Research Conclusion
Provide an easy entry to build reflectiveness and mindfulness again and help artists develop ideas from thoughts became the direction of my design. I attempted to help artists reboot their creativities from two directions, digging inside and exploring outside.
Ideation
Process
Based on the research findings, I conducted the ideation session, as shown in the graph below. I tried a lateral thinking method to think outside the box, generating many ideas in a short time and then analyzing the ideas to develop a feasible and intuitive one.
Ideation Steps:
Brainstorming + Analysis:
Final Concept:
1. Self-reflection
I developed the final concept of a mobile app with prompted journals paired with a web app with digital mood board :
The mobility of phones has less constraints on when and where users can build their ideas.
Writing helps users uncover emotions and thoughts that are often forgotten or ignored in daily life.
The promoted themes and activities provide users an entrance to reflect themselves without struggling about where to start, which is a big problem for unmotivated and lost artists.
2.Exploration
Self-reflection is not enough; artists also need stimulation from unfamiliar work and new experiences to broaden their perspectives. I developed another idea of suggesting new experiences and recommending widely diverse work according to keywords from users’ writings. Since the recommendation is based on keywords, it won’t be limited by a specific genre. Thus, users can explore as much as possible.
3.Organization
Users can view their past journals and saved artwork on one screen in the web app so that users can brainstorm further here.
Encourage lateral thinking to stimulate ideas.
Users can still use the app to make mood boards for future projects, which makes the app sustainable after users overcome creative blocks.
Iteration
I hand-sketched the ideas and conducted interviews with 7 potential users to find out if there were any hidden needs that were needed to be addressed and problems in the user flow.
Here are my key findings:
After the interview, I refined the ideas.
Journal section: Addition to prompts about daily life, I added inspirational quotes from artists or art movements.
Explore section: Users can highlight any words or pictures on the artwork page and add notes.
Profile section: Organizing users’ journals with related artwork that they have saved and notes that they’ve commented on the artworks, and providing writing space for them to do further writing or brainstorming.
I then created prototypes to evaluate the user flow.
Here are some key insights:
It’s unclear that users can highlight and add note on the artwork page.
Some information, such as the completion date, about artworks on the exploration page is not necessary for users. It should show content that attracts users to click on.
Iterated Version
Style Guide
Using an off-white warm paper tone as background color conveys the feeling of calm and welcoming and reminds the familiar feeling of a sketchbook which artists often use.
Since the app displays a variety of artwork, the icon colors utilize a monochrome approach to make the interface clear and undistracted. The changing gradients on the journal page indicate a little unexpectedness and freshness.
The round edge and approachable warmth of the Lato font feel welcoming, and its high readability makes it suitable for the paragraph. The versatile, unique, and sophisticated look of Raleway matches the characteristics of a creative process.
Final Design
Stop struggling and activate your mind today
The prompted journal offers themes that are relatable to encourage users to observe and reflect more about life and art.
Freewriting uncover unconscious ideas and avoid procrastination or over-analyzing
Explore an unexpected yet relatable world of art
The exploration page shows diverse kinds of work, including artwork, books, poems, music, and movies, according to keywords from the user's journal. Unlike just browsing an inspiration websites cluelessly, users now can see relatable work and broaden perspectives by viewing different mediums and angles.
Users can also highlight content and add note to it.
Review past journals and inspirations anytime, anywhere
All past journals and saved work are stored in app.
Sync the inspiration boards from the mobile app for further brainstorming
Users can access past journals, notes and saved artwork on one screen. They can edit the boards and create new mood boards for future projects.
Reflection
In the beginning, I was very unsure about this project because I knew that creativity is quite a subjective thing, and artists are very diverse and think differently. But after I identified similar patterns within their creative practice and received positive feedback from evaluations, I gradually built my confidence. Having heard a lot of heart-breaking experiences of creative blocks' shocking impacts on artists mentally and financially, I was so moved when I figured out a possible way to help them.
Also, I learned a lot about UI design too. Even though this project wasn’t planned to be developed, but I searched about some aspects that designers need to pay attention to for a smoother development step. For example, I used a 8 grid system to design the interface because of its consistent scalability and fewer needs for developers to measure each time.