Balancing Creativity and Productivity: Scheduling, Focus, and Resource Allocation for Web Designers

When you are a web designer, you are often on a straight line. On the one hand, there is the muse, new ideas, brainstorming, and anything that comes to mind. How do you keep it fresh and stay within the deadline without losing your temper or getting obsessive about it?

Let’s explore in detail.

Remote Distant Reality of Web Design Teams.

These days, with web design, teams are no longer placed side by side at desks. You could be working with a UX designer in the next city, a developer halfway around the globe, and a client who requires updates when you are not in your normal working hours. 

Such a shift implies you should have the appropriate infrastructure not only to develop but also to organize the robust assistance that can be provided by a properly deployed remote workforce solution. In a dispersed team, you need to have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, when, and how they can remain creatively engaged.

Hence, you should have conscious structures that enable your staff to give their best in designing jobs, regardless of their roles or positions.

Creative Flow and Predictable Delivery Scheduling.

Your time is not just a list of appointments; it’s a structure that allows you to do creative work and incorporate some randomness. To designers, allowing the day to be occupied by administrative tasks, receiving feedback, or even interacting with a client, is one of the most significant mistakes.

Protecting: Reducing Distractions and Maximizing Deep Work.

Design work thrives in flow. Being distracted by chat pings, halfway completing a sketch, clicking back and forth between UI layout and client email, etc., you lose that flow, and that is damaging not only your creative fuel but also productivity.

Think of establishing rules of focus for either yourself or the team:

• During a creative block, turn notifications off.
• Define a specific hour at which calls or feedback will be accepted, or the engine is running.
• A special task tracker or calendar with your creative sprint blocks represented.

Resource Allocation: Individuals, Resources, Time, and Skills

And now we can discuss the resources not only in terms of time, but also people, tools, and skill sets. In web design teams, you could have a UX designer, a visual designer, a programmer, and a copywriter. Each of these is a resource. Allocating resources effectively implies assigning the right person to the right task at the right time, avoiding overload, and utilizing the proper tools.

Combining Scheduling, Focus, and Allocation into a Unified Workflow.

When you consider scheduling, focus, and resource allocation in isolation, you will obtain expected results. However, when they are combined, you will be in stride.

Consider a sample workflow:

• Discovery & brief: spend time with your UX designer and the client.
• Design sprint: block off an hour for visual design in the morning, with no meetings; assign your visual designer and access the asset library.
• Review/feedback: set a meeting date; assign tester, developer to the next stage.

Conclusion

Keep it small: this week, set aside two hours a day to continuous design. No calls, no email, only creation. In the meantime, prepare your resource map of a future project: by whom, when, and what needs to be done?