5.2.3 - Workflow

Part 1: Reflect

What parts of your practice make you feel most engaged? 

I find my flow when starting to come up with design ideas and new tasks, especially in Photoshop and InDesign, as I have more experience with these tools, and I love using them when starting new projects. The momentum behind my work has always been starting projects I'm passionate about and experimenting with new techniques to enhance my process further. The excitement comes from working with new design elements and new tools, such as After Effects and more of the Adobe Cloud than I am accustomed to. I love starting new projects because, for me, they become more engaging. I also enjoy collaborating with others on ideas when working with software. 

When do you ‘actually’ feel like you’re designing?

When starting a project, beginning with tasks often works better than starting with planning straight away. Having a well-designed plan for approaching my projects works better than starting without one. I create a plan at the start of each project to stay on track. After plans were made, I began by opening various Adobe apps to start designing, so for me, the transition between planning and designing occurs quite early on. 

What pain points do you identify in your own workflow? 

For me, refining my designs and creating multiple design copies can sometimes be challenging. I struggle with processing briefs most of the time, and it takes me a while to understand what the brief is trying to convey. The briefs are very wordy in my terms; this means that the words overcomplicate the point it is intended to make. 

What tasks or steps do you find to be obstacles to designing? 

The thing that slows me down the most is reading the briefs and reflecting on projects. With my dyslexia, I find these tasks and getting to grips with how to approach them really challenging. I do, however, have ways to cope with finding these difficult, and that is to take it to my dyslexia tutor to ask for help understanding the points on the brief and to help with creating questions to answer for my reflections based on the projects. These two elements of the project really worry me, and I need a significant amount of reassurance to ensure they proceed smoothly. Most of the time, I have doubts, and if I worry too much about the tiny elements for each project, I know I will not want to start it, so I try not to let it bother me and make sure whenever starting a project, as soon as I have a brief, I book a meeting with my tutor. 

Part 2: Research Tools

What tools, techniques, or strategies did you find in your research?

For my work, I create numerous mind maps, and I have a web browser specifically designed for mind mapping, called Bubble. I either use this or pen and paper for the maps, which makes my design and word processing better, as it allows me to get everything down on a piece of paper. I love creating mind maps to write everything down and get my thought process and feelings about the project down at once. 

How could these be integrated into your practice?

Using Bubble helps me get everything down, but I prefer to use pen and paper to convey my thoughts and then upload them to specific websites. This helps me process everything for each project, and they are very useful. To just look back on and see where I was with different tasks. 

 Part 3: Question

How do emerging tools (including AI) challenge or change what it means to be a designer, and how might your workflow need to adapt? 

I believe that instead of using AI as a tool to do the work to use it alongside designing and creating projects. AI isn’t a way to create documents, but if you use the tools in the right way, you can use them to help create better outcomes and more advanced responses to help future careers and use AI to develop your learning ability instead of using it to write itself. Things that AI cannot do are your own skillset and what you have already learnt how to do. This could be using materials to create things, or how you work well with Adobe and other designing apps. Using AI to me means having very automated responses and more concise words, so I use it to help aid my work instead of writing it myself. I think embracing the change in our industry is very necessary, as it is an ongoing, constant development. However, using AI to help and using it to write things out is completely different for me.