design mindfulness

Using Mindfulness to effectively empathise with each project.

As a designer in a busy creative agency, I am routinely given large branding projects which cover multiple sectors. So what, you say, that’s what your paid for. Recently though, I’ve been using Mindfulness techniques to better understand each of the projects I’m tasked with, as a constant flow of research, design, test, improve and repeat can become exhaustive and you can become burnt out very quickly if you’re not careful.

This is where Mindfulness can play an important role in design, to become better aware of yourself and the task in hand, explore your world with greater curiosity in the everyday and unleash your creativity along the way.

But this has to be more than a fluffy principle, it has to real and needs to be practical to design. You need to embrace principles such as valuing human attention, recognising well-being, prioritising quality and discouraging addictive usage where there is a negative impact on the user.

This is an itch, scratch the surface if you like, of how Mindfulness can improve not only your design environment, but also the users experience in whatever medium you are specialised in.

From one creative to another it’s time to embrace the Mindfulness mindset.

Inspiration sources: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11281104-mindfulness, http://www.iamherenow.com/