Mindfulness, applied to UX designers
Are you thinking, how this mindfulness is actually related to UX Design skills? Well, I’ll be honest: it’s not directly related to each other. So, why this article?
It’s not a skill that only UX Designer should use but it has a meaning for anyone who is trying to upgrade their skills professionally to add value and solve problems.
I am sticking only to UX Designer, as I personally felt it has a lot of advantages over the things on how we work. So, read along to explore more.
What is Mindfulness?
So, before me jumping right into how UX Designer can use mindfulness to improve their productivity, let’s first dive into understanding what is this actually.
Mindfulness can be defined as a sense where we are aware of the present moment and have complete control on your thoughts.
If you read this definition twice, you will observe that two things are said here — Sense of awareness and Having control of thoughts. Now, believe me, these are inter-connected.
You can only achieve a sense of awareness and truly concentrate when you can control your thoughts.
Take the scenario of you using social media apps. When you are scrolling down your Instagram feed, you are really not able to control your thoughts and you feel sad, happy, or angry depending on the type of post you see. You are not controlling your emotions but your emotions are controlled by the app that you are using.
During this moment, you would not be able to stay aware of what is happening in your surroundings. So, the loss of control of your thoughts makes you distracted and you lose the sense of awareness.
That’s great, but what can I do about it?
Mindfulness has a clear link with Concentration. How you concentrate on a thought or on a material in your surroundings, defines your mindfulness skills. This skill can help you concentrate for a longer period of time as you choose not to get distracted.
Too much theory, right? Let me give you an example.
Imagine a Movie Theatre
Suppose, your friend asked you to come along with to watch Avengers Endgame. You were excited and went along with your friend, sat in the theatre and waited for the movie to start. While watching the movie, you felt sad in an emotional scene, you got excited in an action scene. When the movie ended, you were thrilled and said your friend,
“This movie was damn, amazing”.
Now, what just happened?
Speaking in terms of mindfulness, you actually let the director of the movie control your thoughts and emotions during the course of you watching the film. He wanted to make you sad in an emotional scene, that’s why he played sad background music to make you feel that.
So, it can be concluded that the feelings and thoughts that you had while watching the movie were not controlled by you but were actually affected by External Stimuli.
Mindfulness is a state where you are aware of and have control over the thoughts.
How Mindfulness is Useful for UX Designers?
Okay, now this question needs to be addressed?
Well, as we talked about controlling our thoughts which will help us to stay aware of the moment. But how can this help us as a UX Designer?
Let’s find out
First, let’s understand what Design is in general. You can define design as
- A way to solve a problem, and
- A medium to communicate.
Let’s talk about Communication first. Designing is basically a way to communicate your ideas with the people you are working with. To make our work faster, we use all of those jargons of UX design like User Journey maps, user personas, wireframes, high fidelity design, etc.
Well said, but what about solving a problem?
Problem Solving
You can define it as coming up with solutions that could solve a problem. A solution is a revised version of plenty of ideas. Different ideas from designers, product managers and other stakeholders merged together during brainstorming sessions makes that one million dollar idea that could change the world !!
People say, to come up with innovative ideas, you need to be creative.
Yeah, I agree.
But, what is actually meant by creativity?
Creativity is coming up with unique ideas. Your idea should not be used before and should be different from what already exists.
But, is it really what Creativity is?
Well, not really.
Creativity is coming up with ideas that are a result of your life experiences. You had so many experiences that you had felt and even talked about it with your loved ones. You have read books, consumed youtube videos, and online content of people discussing their ideas.
You connect all of them and then that results in your own unique idea. Your idea is an improved version of existing ideas.
Steve Jobs said,” Creativity is simply just connecting dots.”
What are the dots?
These are your life experiences and the things you already know.
But, I still didn’t get how mindfulness is useful for a UX Designer?
Well, being aware in the moment and concentrating on everything can help you to have experience and collect ideas. Your brains can act as a database of these and you can use them to connect dots and come up with life-changing ideas.
So, the secret mantra is:
Mindfulness -> Control Thoughts -> Staying aware -> Collecting Ideas
How can you practice Mindfulness?
The go-to skill for Mindfulness is Active Thinking.
Let’s pause here for a moment and try to come up with an answer to this question:
“Do you know how to think?” Give me a method on how to think.
I personally feel thinking is all about asking the Right Questions to yourself and answering them by using your own intelligence.
Now, connecting this with mindfulness, asking the right questions to yourself during active observation is what you have to do.
Can you give me an example?
Sure, while watching a movie, you can stay alert and think about the scenes of the movies.
- Why does this shot feel sad, maybe because of the background sound?
- How can a camera move while shooting double role actors?
Now, I know it’s impossible for us as human beings to control our thoughts all the time and observe everything we do. We live in a world where we interact with so many elements and these will surely affect our thoughts.
So, I can’t tell you to do it all the time.
You can consider this Mindfulness activity as any kind of physical activity or even work-related activity. You put all your energy on it, do it for some time, and then take a break. For example, going to a gym, completing college assignments, etc.
As these activities need effort, the same goes for thinking. It requires a lot of mental energy to do. That’s why we get tired after a meeting even though we were just sitting on a chair in an AC room.
Set a time in a day and then observe whatever you are doing. Maybe, you can concentrate on the taste of each food bite you take while eating your meal or just listen actively to someone you are having a conversation with and question why he is saying this.
Now the secret mantra goes like this:
Mindfulness -> Control Thoughts -> Staying aware -> Active Thinking -> Asking Right Questions -> Collecting Ideas
