3 drills to overcome designer’s block 🫠

Major breakthrough: Another week, another mind-blowing AI launch. OpenAI’s new Sora model can now turn a simple word prompt into a hyper realistic video of two dogs podcasting on a mountain—and if that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is. But what’s impressed me most about Sora? Its editing capabilities. Sora can edit a video with text instruction—and the results are wild.

—Tommy (@DesignerTom)

The Wireframe:

• How to break through designer’s block
• Inspiration, hold the copyright infringement
• Breaking down Arc Search’s design

How to Break Through Designer’s Block (and Hone Your Taste)

The most important resource in your designer toolkit? Your own design taste.

Let me explain: Great design requires great design judgment. That’s what sets you apart from your peers, creates value for your employer or clients, and gives you the confidence to execute…and nip designer’s block in the bud.

Today, I’m breaking down how to overcome designer’s block by sourcing inspiration and exercising your visual muscles with design drills.

How to Hone Your Taste

Step 1: Don’t wait for a creative block to seek inspiration. Why? “Instead of designing, you're aimlessly browsing the internet and getting distracted by social media,” Fons Mans, founder of the 10x Designers community, told me. And when you rush to find inspiration, “you're likely to settle for superficial ideas.”

A better strategy? Source inspiration constantly—and create a system that makes it easy to organize and categorize ideas as you come across them. For me, that’s a Notion swipe file.

How to create your own: Download the Notion web clipper browser extension ➡️ Build your Notion database ➡️ Add descriptive tags for future filtering.

Then? Start sourcing inspiration:

If Notion isn’t your thing (or if you’re an AI enthusiast), check out MyMind, an AI-powered tool that stores and automatically organizes any link or image.

The takeaway: Consistently seeking inspiration and ideas helps your brain spot patterns more easily. You fine-tune what you’re attracted to. And by curating your own inspiration pool, “you become your own influence,” said Fons. “Because of that, your work will start to stand out.”

3 Exercises to Overcome Designer’s Block

So you’ve nailed curation, but you still find yourself staring at a blank Figma file every now and then. Been there…here are 3 drills I use to work my way out of a creative block:

1. Parallel drills. Challenge yourself to take an interaction pattern from one company or industry and apply it to another. Some examples:

• Vertical scroll from ecommerce used to design a B2B SaaS product.
• A Netflix for Airbnb.
• A Spotify for Goodreads.

2. Remix drills. Take an existing design and make small tweaks.

• “Companies like Nike, Apple, and Snapchat all have well-established design languages which can be thought of as ‘kits’ to learn from,” Soren Iverson, designer at Cash App, told me.
• Reconstruct these apps in Figma and “remix” interaction patterns or visual design to fit a different mode.

3. Time boxing drills. Time boxing is one of my favorite ways to get out of a design rut. Here’s how it works:

• Set a timer for 60 minutes to complete a design task.
• Spend 10 minutes gathering inspiration.
• Spend 50 minutes getting something on the page. Completion > quality.
• Take a 15-minute break.
• Come back with fresh eyes. Realize what’s not working. Turn it into a tangible idea.
• Iterate.

Why time boxing works: Setting a time constraint forces you to act, and momentum drives momentum. But more importantly, a bad first attempt gives you something to work from—you’ll only find tangible solutions when presented with a problem.

Need more structure? Try out these 18 real-world UX exercises, ranging from designing a user flow to wireframing an onboarding plan. Be like Chaitanya Toraskar, who is working through every single challenge and sharing his results on LinkedIn. Love to see it—I’m certainly inspired.

Poll: Which activity would you like to learn most about?

News, Tools, and Resources: Honing Your Taste

• Pinterest nerd? Same. Check out these killer Pinterest boards for design inspiration.
• There’s a lot we can learn from writers—like how to embrace the sh*tty first draft.
• Want to try out remixing, but scared of copyright infringement? Check out this video.
• I love this X thread on developing your design eye.
• I’m amped for Soren’s upcoming book, a collection of unhinged UI design ideas.
• It only takes eight minutes to get out of a creative rut with the Crazy 8’s method.
• Instead of web scraping, try out this AI-powered moodboard creator.
• How to find novelty at the intersection of contrasting aesthetics.

Got a great tool, podcast episode, idea, or something else? Comment below and tell me what’s up.

Case Study: Analyzing Arc Search’s Design with the MAYA Rule

The MAYA (most advanced yet acceptable) rule, coined by industrial designer Raymond Loewy, dictates that the ideal design sits directly in the middle of novelty and familiarity. Applying the MAYA rule to your design inspiration can help you level-up your own taste.

How to use the MAYA rule: If your product is inherently familiar, try something bolder. If your product is new and surprising, incorporate more common patterns. In other words, use design to balance the product.

How I think of it:

• With an innovative product, you’re taking the user from A to Z. The best way to get there?
• Take the user from A to Z to B—introduce innovation, but bring it back to a place they can understand.

Let’s explore an example. The Browser Company recently launched Arc Search, an AI-powered iOS mobile browser. Arc Search’s bespoke feature is “Browse for Me,” a function that uses AI to browse the web, then generates a singular web page with the synthesized results. It redefines web search. In MAYA terms: It’s a novel product.

But Arc Search successfully encourages user acceptance by balancing an innovative product with common design elements. To get from A to Z, Arc Search focuses on A, Z, and B:

• A = traditional web search, like Google
• Z = “Browse for Me”
• B = familiar elements, like a search bar, tabs, and basic features like search on a page, sharing options, and reader mode.

It’s a winner on the MAYA front—and a great source of design inspiration.

Thanks for reading! Where do you find your design inspiration? Comment below and let me know.

See you next week!

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