Life moves fast and so do projects we work on everyday.
We’re experts in what we do and we have done it so many times, we don’t think about it anymore but does your workflow really flow? Knowing how to navigate different software and where to easily find things becomes second nature, so we don’t notice how easy it is for us to start working on autopilot.
However, it isn’t until we’re forced to slow down, that we see exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
Last week we had the pleasure of having a very talented young intern, Emma, shadow us for a few hours a day. She sat down next to me and curiosly asked what I was working on. As I started explaining what I was doing, how I was doing it and why I was doing it, I realized that there were so many more things to my workflow than I ever considered. It made me think about all of the design decsions that have to be made, all the little bits and pieces that need to be created, all the options that we need to see and reject before we arrive at a solution we approve of – it’s truly a diffcult and time-consuming process.
It made me think about how intense troubleshooting design really is and how workflows can be improved. Maybe certain things can take 20 min, instead of an hour. Maybe there’s a way to import assets that are ready to go from one doc to another faster. Maybe it’s a good idea to create an easily accessible library of assets you reuse over and over again, instead of looking for them in different folders every time you need an icon or two. Whatever it may be, having a check-in with yourself on how you could clean up and simplify your workflow every now and then, will become my new habit.
