The Seduction of Tools
TL;DR - As design tools improve we use them more and earlier in the process. This influences us and limits creativity. To tackle this, try sketching.
Design Tools are Awesome
Design tools (Figma, Figjam, Miro etc) have become incredibly powerful over the last few years. I've found these tools have really overtaken many of the tasks I would usually do with pen and paper. Drawing boxes and arrows, rough UI sketches etc.
There are many reasons why these tasks are better performed in those tools. Better collaboration, faster iteration (hello CMD+D🫶), access to images and other design artifacts.
The tools are amazing, and thats the problem.
Tools influence Craft
Grain - digital tools have a grain. They want to be used a certain way. This friction consciously or subconsciously affects the choices we make since we are all hard wired to take the path of least resistance.
Have you ever been discussing an interface and wanted to place a button in a certain place to illustrate an idea but then found yourself fighting with Auto Layout? Your mode just swapped from thinking about the problem to thinking about the tool.
Defaults - defaults are powerful. As designers we know this. They get you started quicker by making smart suggestions about what you want. They tacitly influence what elements resurface. Effects, colours, shapes, fonts, layouts, frames.
Of course the combination of these two things makes your work look pretty decent straight away. This can also be a problem for 2 reasons.
Things looking good too early is bad for idea generation - if your first idea looks good its tempting to stick with it, and that's a problem. Your first idea is never the best one. If it looks good then you will hang on to it. You might not push on to the next idea. Separate creating ideas from deciding which ideas are good.
Design Hegemony - If we're all using the same defaults, the same tools and the same workflows we're more likely to make the same things and come up with the same solutions.
So what do we do?
Sketching! Sketching on paper has been around for a fair old while. It's much worse than digital tools in many ways. In almost every way in fact.
But nothing is quicker, and more immediate than sketching. When you have an idea the quickest way to realise it is by sketching it. Every sketch looks equally bad (if you're like me), so the idea matters, not the fancy corner radius.
Next time your at the early stage of a design. Sketch 5 ideas, then sketch 5 more. Really force yourself to find those extra ideas. You might just find something new.
Stay sketching.
