Design Inspiration

As a novice designer, Courtney struggled with distinguishing between copying, stealing, and gaining inspiration from other designs. While copying entire projects would be considered plagiarism, taking small elements or general ideas can help enhance the user experience if it follows common conventions. Courtney discusses how copying standardized elements that users are already familiar with from other websites, like close buttons, makes for more intuitive designs. However, designers should still modify copied templates and build upon them creatively to represent their own skills and personality. Overall, imitating and remixing other designs can lead to innovative products, as long as the original creators are properly credited for their work.

Lisha provides 5 tips for boosting creativity from Austin Kleon's book "Steal Like an Artist." She recommends stealing inspirations from everywhere by researching widely and taking notes. Artists should also spend time experimenting freely and using constraints to find new ideas. Maintaining both digital and analog workstations can aid creativity as well. The tips suggest viewing the world as a place of inspiration rather than ownership to apply ideas in new ways.

Krisztina provides best practices for collecting design inspiration. She discusses sketching ideas in a dedicated sketchbook to capture important details. Tagging inspiration pieces in tools like Eagle allows for easy organization across multiple categories. Sources mentioned include Design Systems, case studies, competitors' work, and observing solutions in other industries. It's important to analyze designs using frameworks like Don Norman's 3 levels and also identify problematic solutions to avoid. Collecting inspiration is part of being a designer and should become a habit. The article lists many favorite resources for inspiration across dedicated websites, UI patterns, and following designers' work.