Member-only story
Designer’s Block: What to do When Ideas Just Won’t Come
Getting Unstuck and Overcoming the Blank Screen
Thump, whoosh, clunk. Thump, whoosh, clunk.
That’s the sound of the assembly line. Four hundred times each night I would hear the repetitive groans and hisses of the machines around me. Over and over again, I’d hear it. Thump, whoosh, clunk. It became white noise while I spaced out, listened to the radio and bolted heads to engines.
I was an assembly line worker for four years of my life. A card-carrying member of the UAW — Local 98. It was the same factory my old man worked in. The same factory that put food in my mouth and clothes on my back as a kid. And there I found myself as an adult, working to put food in my kid’s mouth and clothes on her back. Funny how things come around like that.
Sometimes I miss those days. Despite the wear and tear on my body, there was little wear on my mind (unless you count the mind-numbing boredom of performing the same task 400 times in an 8-hour shift). I didn’t have to think about much of anything. I didn’t have to think up anything. I was like a little monkey, pushing the buttons and pulling the levers with the reward of a paycheck on the other side.
All of that changed when I became a designer.
Today, I have to think. I rarely get to space out and just push those buttons or pull those levers. Today, I am solving problems, thinking through flows and mapping out solutions. It’s like doing math in my head for hours on end.
I routinely find myself in one of those positions where I am forced to come up with a solution to a complex problem in a very short period of time. Sometimes the solution is easy. But sometimes I’m racing against a deadline with no idea how I am going to make a feature work.
If you work on a UI of any sort, you probably know the drill. A product manager or team lead shows up at your desk with that soft expression they usually reserve for only those scenarios where they know they need to be gentle. It’s that expression someone gets before they are going to give you bad news. It’s the expression your significant other gives you before they tell you they think it would be a good idea if you both see other people.
