Productivity tools shape our thinking in ways that favor standardization, efficiency, and predictability. They demand structure before inspiration has a chance to strike. They ask for timelines when the problem itself is still hazy. But creativity is not linear. Often, it involves struggling down several blind alleys before finding the right path.

All of sudden, we weren’t just designing something visual, but we needed to understand human behaviour, to see ourselves in other people’s contexts ( don’t get me started on our empathy phase!!! ), to learn how the decisions we made could affect a company’s bottom line, etc.

But along the way, we lost something. The actual work we were producing.... See more