8 Ways you can improve your creativity as a designer

How to become a creative designer. Lot of people really wonder about creativity. I want creativity. I needed to improve my creativity. Whether I'm creative or not, whether design is actually field of creativity and am I really fulfilling that. People have this confusion and they don't have a boundary and they don't know exactly the steps how to become that person randomly. I'll get a Gyan or I'll get a Buddha or I'll get some idea and then I'll become creative. I'll wait for that idea, I'll wait for that day. That is madness and you will never reach that point. Creativity is a learnable skill. It's not a magic. You can definitely learn it as simple as driving a cycle or a bike or a car. If you can do that, yes, you can learn creativity as well. It's not a bold topic or something like only few people are or only the so called gurus and all these things people have. I'm gonna be giving you eight steps and a surprise gift also at the end to make sure how you can start your creative journey. Even if you're a designer, even if you're a fresher, even if you're an experienced designer, no problem. This kind of a topic, if you openly receive, you will be able to take action for it. Okay, so with this clarity now let's start the eight different ways how you can become a creative designer. What's up? Yeah. Welcome guys. Welcome. Thank you for staying tuning in with me in Design for Change podcast. So there are different type of creativity process what design industries follow. Okay, there are some different techniques and methods which individuals follow. Let's not worry about it. This is coming from my nine years of experience. I had more than 62 projects did product design in development in engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, industrial design, ui, UX design experience design exhibition design, system design. I worked in multiple projects starting from traffic design to some of the different wide areas and one of the one of the product. What I did got national award for a medical ventilator. I was working with Phoenix medical system and also there are three projects which have really got appreciated in Germany and as well as in in it's actually in the central part of Germany where we designed and implemented a real time system design and also in India lot many projects. I worked with international clients, local clients, startup, MNC etc. Okay, so you can understand the kind of experience I have and I'll be telling you my way of taking how creative you can be. Okay, Again this is not the only way or one and only Eight steps. This is a start for you. You can explore your own method also in the future. Okay? So this is to give you a start. You need to remember that. That's why I'm putting you a caution also, because we cannot draw a boundary for this creativity, right? So listen to that mean listen the podcast. In that openness, you'll be able to even comprehend much better. And don't worry, I'll be giving you some resources and materials and also some action plans how you can take it forward from there. You're not just listening. You're going to take action to change your life. Okay, so the first thing before going into this creative step is you need to understand, you need to be clear on what you wanted to solve, right? You need to be clear on what you wanted to really ideate, what you wanted to really bring a lot of ideas in. Your objective should be very clear. If you don't know what's your objective, you need to go and talk to your managers, you need to go and talk to your seniors. You need to go and talk to your guide or your or your business partner or whoever you're really partnering with or working with. Because the act of getting more clarity in what you wanted to solve, like defining a goal properly, that itself will make you 100% a creative person. Many of you would be surprised. Hey Jagdish, I am expecting you to teach me some Gyan creative techniques. Of course it's coming. But the thing is you need to be first clear on what you're doing, right? If you're working on a vague kind of a problem, you won't reach anywhere and you will put a lot of energies and time and effort. Nothing will come out of the session. Okay? So clarity and objective with the goal is very important. And I told you how you can get that. The first step is having hundred percentage focus on your problem, what you're looking for. Okay? After you have the clarity in your project, in your problem, in the kind of output, what you wanted to solve, you're going to go 100 percentage focused on that. And then you're going to think, think, think. You can do it in one hour session, you can do it continuously for 30 minutes, you can take five minutes break, you can do 30 minutes. Do not switch on your phone, put it in airplane mode, lock yourself in room. Or maybe if you're working in a team, make sure everybody calendar is free and everybody is locked in their particular, what you call in that meeting so that the distractions are less. And when you're Able to do it 100% focused, you'll be more creative. And the exact opposite of this is having zero percentage focus. What is that? Zero percentage focus? Yes. If you're ideating for a long time about the same problem again and again over the time, you need to distract yourself and come back after some point of time. You should not think about the problem at all. You should not have the worry of oh, I did not solve the problem yet, I have to go and solve it. No. And the surprise thing is when you come back, you will get lot of ideas flowing in that see, our mind becomes very rigid when you do a lot of ideas creativity. And when you think about that problem again and again and again and again and again, many relationships breaks because of that. If they take a break, if they really distract and take a travel or maybe go out and come back, maybe their relationship will rejuvenate. I have seen a lot of people like that. Same applies for creativity here also. So you need to be 100 percentage focused also. You need to be 0 percentage focused also. And you need to know when to switch on this button and when to switch off. That's the step one. Okay. The second way you can be creative is look at the constraints as an opportunity. See guys, always people think about oh, I'm having a constraint. Like let's say your client will say you should not use lot many colors. You should only use white and black monochrome. People will cry like, hey, no, if I'm given a color, I'll do orange, I'll blue, I'll do blue. I'll explore all the pantone shades of 30,000 colors. No, you need to love to work with constraints with a limited resource and time and budget. I'll tell you why. When you think in a constraint, you will definitely become more creative. Because you are forcing your mind to think about only in this direction in this monochrome colors. What I can do? Your customer will say, you need to use only plastic material. You should not use steel. Steel is definitely hard. Plastic has a different property. So you need to think about that material as a constraint and how you can bring the best out of it. Surprise, surprise. You will have more creativity accomplished than that. Let me tell you one great thing, guys. See, even when sometimes customer did not give any constraints, if you're ideating in a process and you feel like stuck, you can use this technique. I'll tell you how. Imagine that you are forcing yourself to constrain this project. Tonight the customer is going to ask it. Tomorrow, customer is going to ask it or maybe the customer is saying you should only use these four colors. Constrain that as a own thought and order what you're setting for yourself and your team. And then do this ideation and what will happen is two things will happen. One is you would have broke out of your comfort zone. Okay, Maybe you would have got some ideas or not. That's not the point. The second thing is when you now think about normal problem, removing all the constraints, you will be 100% more creative. You will see your brain is working very differently compared to the earlier one because you used your constraints as a mental block to force to think in certain directions. So what will happen when you are released from a jail? You become. You feel so free, right? When you are entering in the world of freeness, you doesn't feel very happy. But imagine if you are in a jail for two years and then you are coming back after jail, what will happen? You feel wonderful, right? That's exactly what I've explained now. So this is using constraints as an opportunity and I'll suggest you some material. Guys, go and watch a video called Creativity in Constraint. There was a good TED talk which was given by one speaker. You can go and watch it. It will really blow your mind. The third important aspect, what you can improve as a creative designer is have cross functional teams collaboration and always get inspired from them. Let me tell you guys, when you talk to a lot of people like from testing, from engineering, from marketing, from sales, from other engineering design, part of the team, counterpart of the team and customer invoice, customer side and distributors, you know what? You will get more fresh perspectives coming back to your idea. When you come back to your drawing board, you will see yourself completely thinking differently. See, you should leave that ego. Hey, what else this person can do? I'm a designer, I've been, I've studied in big big colleges, I have did a lot of national projects. But what this common person can add a perspective to my project. Please remove that ego. If you're able to see what people are naturally thinking and what people are naturally telling, sometimes that will flip your entire project. And there are a lot of stories you might have heard. There is a sweeper who is working in a company who told about a soap manufacturing company how they have used emptied upper soap to check the defect quality and by blowing the air from the side, right? Lot of stories are there. How come that person is getting this idea? If you wanted to get the story here from me, you can write it in the episode podcast. I'll be Sending you a separate episode for that. Okay, do not worry about it. But yeah, people are creative. People have proven that working in any different part of design departments or other departments and also cross functional collaboration is very important. See, I'll tell you one more thing. If you are making a cross functional collaboration, you should use something called brainstorming and mindstorming. Brainstorming, which is very common. Okay. We need to sit with our team and ideate about what is the possibilities, how we can solve this problem and how we can think about different, different solutions. And that's the thing. Mindstorming is something very interesting. See guys, I've learned it from my mentor. He actually what you call made me to do this. When you force yourself like let's say 20 minutes, I need to find 20 different ideas to solve this problem. Let's say you have a problem of something like neck pain, your customer has neck pain, you are designing a product for him. Okay. Or maybe you're designing an app for him. What are the 20 ways I can solve this neck pain? If you write that as a goal in a paper, you need to do exactly what I'm saying. Then and only the mindstorming will become effective or else it will not have a value. You or your team, you can do it in team. Also write down the goal very clearly what you want to solve. You're going to find 20 different ways for solving next problem for your customer. You have 20 minutes time. Make sure you write 20 different ideas and set a rule saying anybody can come up with any idea. No idea is good, bad. Imagine you have all the resources in the world and all the technology in the world and all the brains in the world. How will you solve this problem? You need to set this context for you and your team. Then and only people will be able to think without any kind of a constraint. And the beauty of this exercise is, guys, you would have definitely got 20 plus ideas here. And after 10 or 15, it becomes very, very difficult for you to write. But when you force yourself, what will happen? You have seen the number 20, right? So your mind will force you to give 20 different ideas. Okay, let's say if you're not doing mindstorming, what will happen if you think for 20 minutes? Possibilities are you will get three or four ideas, that's it. But when you set a target and when you are tuned into that 20 minutes and the timer will be running and 20 ideas you need to formulate, your subconscious will go into a higher level of intelligence to find different, different, different, different answers. Guys, this is a magic topic. I mean, I'm not telling anything about magic in that sense. I'm telling it has worked for me. If you close your eyes and think about how you can solve whatever you've seen earlier, whatever you've seen, YouTube or whatever you've seen, images, whatever you talk to different people, whatever you read it in a book, random ideas will come and hit you. How you can solve that neck problem for your customer. You would not be even realizing it that you got this idea. Later when you look back, you'll come to know that is the power of using your superconscious mind. Actually mind storming. If you use like how I can solve how, how, how. When it comes to creativity, how is an important question. When it comes to design, I used to tell my students why is an important question. But when it comes to creativity session, how, when you ask how your mind will force yourself or mind will try to find a different, different pattern and you will definitely feel so happy. Guys, when it comes up with an idea, you need to be extremely happy. When you wanted to be a creative person, right. And you and your team, when you're having that rhythm set. Yes. You're going to get cross functional inspirations from your team, like anything. And there's a material also you can read a book called Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon. It's a great book. It's a very short book you can read. Okay, so the next important factor, the fourth important factor is mindfulness. See, you need to be present now. You need to be thinking clearly. You need to just close your eyes and if you feel like doing meditation, you can do it. There are good techniques in anapana meditation, vipassana meditation. There are some, what you call a lot of techniques of meditation nowadays. It's there like I used to do vipassana for 10 to 15 minutes a day, basic meditation. Okay. So that helps me at least focus for the next one or two hours very clearly. I've got magical ideas after sitting in 30 minutes of meditation session and going for a work. So it is actually a good technique, but you can use your own technique and a method for mindfulness. But the point is you need to be mindful and you need to be in now, not in the past or not in the future. Okay. And there is a book called Power of Now. You can read a book which was written by Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now. Okay, that's a beautiful book. And the fifth technique, what you can do is for improving your creativity is you need to collaborate ideas. See, when your team, you're doing a brainstorming, mindstorming like I told you, right? Cross functional teams, try to manage the ideas, what people are giving. Try to collaborate one or the other idea build on top of it. Please encourage the people who are working in it. See, when you do it with your team, your management, your own design team, the very good advantages you will see lot many ideas building on top of each other. And two, three ideas and two, three minds will come together. There'll be a third mind forming. And this is a beautiful thing. This is the beauty of sitting and brainstorming and mind storming with your team. You will see surprise. Magic ideas are coming in just short span of time. Guys, in two hours me and my team were able to generate hundred plus ideas. And even in the last 15 days we had two ideation session. In one session, in just 20 minutes, people have come up with 225 ideas as a whole. Like I think eight or nine people, me and my team. The point is, if you're able to sit for 20 minutes and do something like that, you will not be able to do it. You need to have the steps followed. Whatever I said, then magic will happen and the sixth step is experimented and iterated. See, this is very important. A lot of people miss this. See, if you wanted to be a creative person, you need to be first open to experiment lot many things that boldness needs to come from you. And then you should be able to iterate. Okay, some ideas is not good. Okay, let me think more. Okay, let me think more. Okay, let me, let me, let me that. Let me think more and nobody's going to judge me. Will move you further. You need to be experimental. See, initially you won't get clear ideas, but you will get some thought. You have to refine it later. You can do it later. But when an idea comes, you need to ideate a lot. Quantity is more important in ideas rather than quality quality, you can pick it up later. Also that is the very big advantage guys, in creativity field. If you wanted to really skip out of this particular problem, ideate more, come up with more solution. The beautiful thing is you will see one of the other ideas will be really beautiful for your problem, what you're trying to solve, right? And the best point is people who have one or two ideas, they'll be really scared because if that idea fails, they don't have anything. People who ideate in quantities of hundreds and two hundreds. This is not working. We'll do this. This is not working. We'll implement this. If time rate is not crucial for this idea, then we can do this. If budget is not crucial, then we do this. Yeah, that kind of a clarity will come for you. And the other, the seventh aspect of this thing is random keyword technique. See, you can use some keywords what was given by your client or your customer and your project teammates to start ideating from there. If you're completely blank, I'm saying you have to use it at the last, you should not do it initially. You should come up with, let's say if you're designing some kind of a pillow, okay. A mattress or a pillow. So come up with something like cushion. Come up with something like soft. Some come up with something like balloon. Come up with something like, what do you call te style. So these are some of the keywords associated to that pillow. Right. So think about each keyword and ideate from there, possibilities are you will come up with so many different ideas and this will really blow you. And like, let's say, let's take balloon. Okay, so how does a balloon look like? Maybe balloon is like airy. Can we have airy pillow? Yeah, we can do this. And it's a little soft. Okay. We can add some materials which is like air balloon. Yeah. Which can look like an air pillow. Yeah, that's also a concept. And what about the texture? So balloon doesn't have this kind of when it is poked, it breaks. Right. When it is tied with a knot, it stays. It packs the air. So can we design a pillow in that way? See guys, this is also a random kind of keyword which will give you more different ideas and possibilities. Right. This is a great technique which you can use. And the last technique is analogy mapping. See guys, this is slightly in connection with the random keyword. See, when you're able to take an analogy, you are going to fix on one particular character, one particular object, or maybe something like an analogy what you're taking. Okay. Like let's say if you're ideating problem for a pillow, okay. For sleeping. So your analogy might be something like you can take any random thing. Water bottle. Okay. Water bottle in front of me. So I was telling that. So water bottle and sleeping in mattress, pillow, how both are related, it sounds stupid, right? But let me tell you guys, analogy mapping is a beautiful technique. First of all, write your analogy. Like let's say water bottle is your analogy. What is the problem you want to solve? It's a pillow. It's a sleep problem. Right. For your customer, you want to solve this problem. So look closely at the characteristics of a water bottle and write it down. See, do not get confused. The previous technique is random ideation. Have a different different keywords and start ideating from there. But here we have only one word which is that analogy. And you have a picture of it. You can take any analogy guys randomly, cat, snake, table, chair, pen. I'll tell you why, because the more diverse you go, you'll be able to come up with greater idea. I'll tell you how it is. Okay, so let's say if you're writing water bottle on the top or left top of your paper and then you're thinking about the properties. Water bottle can hold water. Water bottle can stand itself. Water bottle has a cover. Water bottle is able to drink water on your regular basis, whatever quantity you want. Water bottle is something which is solid. Water bottle can be made in plastic. Water bottle is what you call it is. It is transparent. Water bottle is like. Like let's say we can carry it anywhere around, right? So you mapped around eight characteristics. So now think about out of these eight characters, what is the characters which I can map for my pillow? Okay, we are going to solve the problem of sleep for our customer. First, let's say water bottle has water. Can I make a water pillow? Yes. Superb idea. We can do it. Second, water bottle is carryable. Yeah, we can have a pillow which is foldable and carryable. We can do it. We can put it in our bag and people can use it in their travel. Like let's say in bus or trains. Right? Very comfortable. Lot of people get neck pain in travel. So you are going to solve through that problem. Third, water bottle has plastic material. Can we use plastic here? Yeah, we can use. But we'll think about something. Okay. This character doesn't match. See guys, all the characters will not be exactly mapped. You need to know what to eliminate, what to take it forward. Right? And yes. Next is water bottle is able to hold it in hand. Can you make the pillow easily hold it in your hand? Can you make it like a rollable pillow? Can you make it like a superb what you call something like a small cylindrical rollable pillow so that you can put it in your bag and carry it comfortably? Yes, we can do it. Water bottle is transparent. Water is transparent. Can we make a transparent pillow which is really beautiful? Yes. So see guys, there is no connection between water bottle and pillow. But now we got totally an innovative pillow, right? It will work. Guys, this is a great technique which people are scared to use. People are very afraid to use it because what other people will think, hey, this guy is doing some random shit here. How come pillow and water bottle is related? Lot of other people who don't know design will comment on them, right? So they're worried about this kind of a judgment. Even I got a lot of comment when I did this session. But the end of the day I came up with a beautiful idea that was actually selected for the final concept. So where will these people go? Who said comments here and there? People will come here and there. Guys. See guys, when you want to become a creative designer, you need to be a guy who is out of fear of judgment. I first told you, have a clarity in what you're doing. The second is please be out of all this judgment and fear of judgment. When you're able to do that, you will see yourself more creative and apply any of these techniques and continuously practice for next 21 days. Guys, take any three techniques out of this. Okay? I've told you about 100 percentage focus and 0 percentage focus. That's the first thing. Second, we discussed about thinking in constraints as an opportunities and designing it. Third is have cross functional teams inspiration and steal like an artist. And fourth is mindfulness, Being in now and thinking about the present moment. The sixth is collaboration. The fifth is collaboration ideation. You can build on top of others ideas and manage and you can use brainstorming and mindstorming techniques. The sixth is experiment and ideate. Experiment and iterate. So you can experiment. You can iterate more and more and more and more and more. And the seventh is random keyword mapping. And the last is analogy mapping. See guys, particularly the last point, analogy mapping you need to do with 3, 4, 5 or at least 10 metaphors or different analogies. Then only you will get a great idea and innovative. You should not just stop with only one water bottle and leave. Okay, so this is a thing which I forgot to tell you. So when you're able to apply these eight things continuously for next 21 days, maybe you take three things guys, out of this eight, whichever is comfortable for you and apply it with you and your team for next 21 days. You will become a pro in that. You will become a master in that. See guys, hearing to this podcast will not change you anything. Okay? You need to really apply that then and only you'll be able to get the results out of it. I already told you, creativity is a skill. It's like practice of driving. It's like practice swimming. Creativity can also be practiced and then you will see the difference. Guys, okay, so the final material for this particular podcast is you can read a book called Creative Confidence by Tom Kelly and David Kelly. And you can read a book called Creative Collaboration by David. Right. So you can use this materials and other materials also have suggested to learn and grow yourself as a creative designer. Okay. To close this podcast, let me tell you guys, we are solving a problem of a customer. Customer. Okay? We are not showing off our creativity skills or we are not just showing here and there off. Okay? That's not the point. End of the day, you have to use these techniques to solve some problem. Then your customer is going to love it. Okay? I hope you would have liked this podcast, guys. Thank you so much for staying tuning in with me. If you like this podcast, give a five star rating in Apple and Spotify. And if you feel like having a mentor in your career, please feel free to drop a message. I'll be happy to help you out in my mentorship program as well. Thank you so much, guys. Take care. All the best. Bye. Bye.