This week we had a guest lecture from Hal on the topic “Designing your narrative to unleash creative confidence for success” His presentation included a little bit of his backstory and a ****deep dive into the themes of the book "Creative Confidence" by David and Tom Kelley with the aim to unleash our ability as designers to generate and inspire creativity within others.

Hearing Hals journey as a designer resonated with me as I also came from a different background career after identifying the creative elements within my hobbies despite not feeling like an overall creative person as I am not good at art or drawing.

We had an open discussion on who we are as designers especially defining ourselves as the “creative” one based on our artistic abilities which is not what defines your creativity or what makes you a good or successful designer. He highlighted the point as well which design can become an illness, something which I do agree with as I can find it hard to turn off and create a definite line between work and everyday life unlike if I was to work in an industry such as an accountant which has less blurred lines between the two.

As designers we also need to work on aspects such as how empathetic we are to ourselves and others especially when it comes to having a growth mindset on our skills. This is something I struggle with a lot as I am not the most artistic so at times I can feel I am less of a designer or lack creativity compared to my classmates but instead of comparing myself to them, I should be comparing myself now to my prior self and how far my skills and myself as a person has grown. Creativity is not defined by how well we can draw a picture, it is defined by being innovative, embracing our failures, learning from them and letting them go as well as having the courage to try and learn new skills such as I could do tutorials on drawing to improve my art abilities.

Finally he spoke about how we can identify and enhance our mindsets moving forward such as such procrastinating and planning on what we could do and act on what I will do. We can do this by being open to learn new skills, expand existing skills and think outside the box such as using design questions using the phrase “how might we…….” as well as not fearing what may happen or will happen.

Fear is inevitable however we can channel our fear into courage by letting go of comparisons to others and banishing the myth of what creativity actually is. Once we get past this, through teams and building creative confidence groups we can embrace creative confidence in our work.

<aside> 💭 Overall, it has helped reiterate the point to me that creativity is a mindset or a muscle that we all have potential to be but we must train to become better and our creativity is also not defined by being a good artist. For me, my IXD journey so far has helped me to learn how to channel my creativity in helping identify small annoyances or problems and being able to spot and create design opportunities for my work.

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