Insights / In-house

Challenges that are unique to the creative space

In my experience, I've seen more internal reflection of negative perceptions than other disciplines. I think that, if we do work, and then maybe the work stops, for whatever reason, there's a different type of investment that someone on the design team has had. It could be more personal, it could be more emotional, which we try to separate and compartmentalise, but that's not always possible, because as a designer, you're working with a part of your brain that's artful. Not to say that engineering and development aren't artful in a very different way, creating beautiful code is a thing, and I think we need to have an appreciation for that. Designers, no matter what their discipline, are creating, and in the process of creating, it's very draining. Make sure that, as your team drains their creative juices, you create that space for them to get it back.

I think in certain areas, in certain businesses, certain worlds, you're just constantly outputting, and what happens is, if they're not finding the time to replenish and refresh in their free time, they're not going to have it at work. I think as design leaders, even if we're on crazy timelines, we know we're working nights and weekends for a few months, remember that, note it, carve out time for after that thing is launched, to let the team refresh a little bit, you're going to get a lot less burn out.

That's probably the core difference I've seen between working with designers versus folks in other disciplines, and I think you're not doing the whole role if you're not considering that.

Challenges that are unique to the creative space