I love product design. Working and creating products and seeing how users interact with them makes me so happy, that I would love to work in the field professionally. However, product design is becoming impacted by technology in negative ways. Technology and product design are deeply connected, so if technology struggles, product design will have the same issues. Loss of focus and distractions have become commonplace in technology, and now it’s affecting designer’s productivity. Reclaiming focus means implementing new techniques to product design that can fix the problem.

The Problem

The issue is that productivity requires deep understanding and focus. There are many problems with technology including social media that have impacted productivity by causing distractions and ruining attention spans. It is now common for people to look at their phone if they are bored, don’t want to work, or need a break. There is also the issue of overworking or working on multiple projects which leads to worse focus and the breaking of deep concentration. Product design requires deep concentration and focus to have good productivity. Without any techniques or solutions, the problem will get worse.

Solutions

After I was done understanding the problem, I began looking for solutions. I found the perfect solutions: techniques to help deep work, flow states, and focus. Two books helped me understand these 3 concepts: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Deep Work by Cal Newport. Stolen Focus talks about how to regain lost focus, and how to avoid distraction. Deep work discusses the importance of deep work and flow states, or the ability to stay focused for long periods without distractions. These abilities can help designers stay focused on their work without getting distracted. Some of the solutions the books listed were:

• Avoid phones or limit phone usage
• Do research and become aware of what gets you distracted 
• Build a routine to help think critically about your work, so you stay focused longer
• Focusing on one task at a time makes it easier to stay focused because it limits being overwhelmed and overworked

These techniques can be beneficial to designers anywhere. I have been using them daily to help improve my focus on my graphic design work. Other designers understand the importance of deep work and focus in their industries. There is a great article called Designers Share How They Get Focused. The article shows designers’ techniques for how they get focused on their work, and one of them talks about focus perfectly:

“For me, it’s about understanding that concentration and focus are resources you can improve. A concentration master might have 4 hours’ worth of focus in a day, while a novice might only have one hour. What helps me get in the zone is knowing that every time I’m going deep into a task or project, I’m training my concentration skills to be better in the long run.”

–Cassius Kiani, Partner at Mikleo

Research into White Paper 

After all my research, I began writing my work into a white paper. A white paper is an “informational document issued by any organization to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service that it offers or plans to offer”. Putting all the information together helps create an understanding of how to fix productivity in the product design field. I loved writing and analyzing all the previous information, it felt like I addressed the issue with multiple people and got people to start discussing the problem more and more. Below is the final research paper in PDF form. Thank you for reading!