My thoughts about creativity have evolved a lot during the course of this year.  At first I just thought creative ideas would come to me out of thin air, and I soon realized that it just wasn’t going to happen like that for me.  Looking back on the work I did last semester, I am displeased with some of the aesthetics I used.  But at this point in time I can look back at what I did and change it to apply things that I have learned about both design and usability.

I did and interactive infographic last semester, it was kind of ugly and not at all usable to the average person.  So I left it alone for the rest of the semester and re-visited it again when I went to do my portfolio (talk about a creative break!).  The long break seemed much needed because I changed several aspects of the project and the new product is a huge improvement from what I had originally.

I think when at the beginning of last semester I was lacking the prolific part of the equation, only because I was not really sure of myself and I was stressed out.  The stress forced me to finish things that I was not totally happy with, but I just did not have the time to really evaluate what I was doing on this particular project (it was the first one) but once I was able to step back and gain more confidence it allowed my work to be more prolific.

Reading that equation made me reflect on the work I had done and it is easy to see which projects I did while I had all the elements and which ones were.  This is hlepful because it will allow me to avoid the pitfalls I ran into during the first semester with some of the creative projects I had done.