Introduction

2014 felt unproductive. It wasn’t really, not in any measurable way, but it felt like it because the volume of work I produced was lower than what I’m used to. I could give some excuses as to why, but regardless, I produced less work last year because I had very few side projects. One look at my Dribbble account says it all; five shots in all of 2014, with just three being truly unique, and only one of those was a personal project.

Despite this, I don’t feel as though the quality of my work has stagnated. Quite the contrary, over the past year I feel as though I’ve grown considerably, particularly when it comes to designing for Android. But most of that growth can be attributed to the work I’ve done at Shopify as part of the Android team, and that’s a problem. Not just because working on the same projects can potentially impact creativity and quality of work, but because it can contribute to burnout.

This year, I’m going to address this by posing a challenge to myself. Every week in 2015, I will be redesigning something and posting it here on Medium.

The Challenge

Every week, I will redesign the interface of an existing product, or design a new product for an existing brand. The original branding must stay more or less intact. The result of the exercise will be posted with a rationale to Medium on Sunday night at the latest.

Purpose

The point of this challenge is not to criticize existing designs or focus on aesthetic changes. After all, we can never know what internal factors went into the design decisions of any product. But the beauty of an unsolicited redesign is that internal constraints no longer apply; ideas that would have been impractical to implement for whatever reason are fair game.

By removing implementation constraints, and leveraging the aesthetic of an existing brand, unsolicited redesigns become more about flexing creative and problem-solving muscles. They allow you to think creatively about different types of problems in new ways, without focusing too much on the nitty gritty details. Writing a rationale about the decisions I make during the redesign process will also force me to write more often, something I keep meaning to do, and keep putting off. Lastly, as a general benefit, the routine of designing something new every week should improve my creative workflow and time-management.