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DUp 175 👿 More Speaker Reveals, Guest Ed > Getting over Creative Fear + a sneak peek of a new book

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DesignUp Conf
August 05, 2024

☔ This a collection of goodness curated by guest editor and newly minted author Nishita!

Nishita Mohta has a selection of invaluable resources and tools for you to get over creative fear - and even a sneak peek of her new book! DesignUp attendees will remember Nishita’s talk from DesignUp 2022 about creative fear and the Inner Critic. Plus there’s -

Speaker reveal + Our Director Shiva at UX Lighthouse in landlocked Pune, and AltC with JD now sharing clues to “Guess-the-next-Guest”! Action-packed, like a Bollywood blockbuster…

🌏️ Around the Web with Guest Editor Nishita Mohta

❝

So many of us constantly ask ourselves, “What next?”, 
“How do I grow from here onwards?” 
And passion projects are such a powerful way to answer 
those questions, discover our strengths and gain the 
confidence to share them with the world.  

Nishita Mohta

Nishita Mohta, DesignOps consultant, educator & author of the book ‘Inspired: The A-Z of Creative Unblocking’, shares how to get past the typical hurdles we as creative practitioners face when starting projects of our own. Without clients! Without constraints! Who knew it could be so hard! Over to Nishita:

“When we’re creating passion projects, inspiration and action need to go hand-in-hand. The internet is full of ‘words of motivation’, but they mean nothing if they cannot inspire us to take the first step (or the tenth, depending on where we are in our creative process). It’s not about consuming beautifully written thoughts for the sake of consumption. It’s about curating the right inspiration which will fuel action and help us create new futures for ourselves.” 

The 6 Types of Personal Projects and How to Know Which Kind to Do NOW

In this podcast episode, Andy talks about the 6 types of personal projects that we might create at different points in our creative careers. These are: the Exploratory Project, Writing On Stage, the Brand Awareness Project, the Strategic Project, the Seasonal Project, and the (occasional) Pitch.

Chances are: this video has already been part of your learning curve! If so, this is your reminder to not forget about the principles of divergent & convergent thinking when it comes to picking your passion project idea. But if you’ve not seen this so far - you’re in for a treat. I recommend this video because of how the IDEO design team gets playful when thinking about all the what-ifs, and then puts on their structured-thinking hats to process has been a source of inspiration for many, and you might find it interesting for your very own, unique reasons. 

📕 Inspired Sneak Peek: Is it Criticism, Critique, or the Inner Critic?

The Inner Critic is a sneaky character who likes to masquerade as critique or critical thinking - elements that are indeed important for the creative process. But the truth is: it's neither. Imagine a professor in a critique session trashing your work and your self-worth. Yikes! That's the Inner Critic's specialty – vicious personal attacks. This chapter from the book ‘Inspired’ is a special sneak peek for the DesignUp community, and it focuses on distinguishing between Criticism, Critique and the Inner Critic.

People’s words and actions can actually shape your brain — a neuroscientist explains how 

Have you ever felt the effect of a friend, colleague, or family member’s comments on your own creative progress? It’s the fundamental dilemma of the human condition: The best thing for your nervous system is another human and the worst thing for your nervous system is another human. 

THE GAP by Ira Glass

With so much great work around us, we develop good taste faster than we develop our own skills. That gap can become really demotivating sometimes, because it can make our own work feel a little disappointing sometimes. Ira Glass’s words, visualised by Daniel Sax in this video, are a liferaft for the moments when we start drowning in that very disappointment. 

Before I go, one final reminder: 

❝

When the Inner Critic makes you think, “This might fail, and I’ll look like a fool,” please remember: “Give yourself permission to experiment.”

Nishita Mohta

🚀 DUp24 Speaker Reveals

We're pleased to announce Vidisha Hegde as one of our fantastic speakers at DesignUp24! With over 15 years of consumer tech experience, she's bringing her unique insights and in-depth customer understanding to DesignUp Conference. After working with organisations such as KPMG, Quicksand Design and Swiggy, she currently leads insights across Data Science and User Research for Spotify across India, Middle East and Africa.

DesignUp Conference attendees are no stranger to designer, illustrator, musician, comics writer, and co-founder of Carbon Health, Pablo Stanley. We’re thrilled to announce that Pablo is returning to DesignUp Conference in 2024!

Here Pablo talks about the importance of aesthetics in design, and how his comics work inspire him. (Here’s one of Soo’s fav from Pablo’s comics)

🚀 DUp24 at UX Lighthouse

This year at UX Lighthouse Shiva Viswanathan presented Eight Truth Bombs: Hypotheses on the Future of Designers in Tech - A 25-minute wake-up call of a talk that demands attitudinal change in how we designers work. It questions our inabilities - to collaborate with business and tech, bridge concepts to tactics, know the larger business context, originate rather than adapt, teach rather than preach, keep design inclusive, and embrace the future.

🎙️ AltCwithJD: A Podcast on a Mission

Can you guess Jay’s next guest? Watch for a surprise giveaway!

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📨 Came across a cool link? Share your recommendations with @soosixty or @jdallcaps - we love to hear from you!

A ‘Reminder to Self’ from the series Vaccines For Fear by Nishita Mohta

🍀 See you in a couple of months!