I try to talk to people in the design industry, especially with someone who's struggling with something or is trying to get their foot inside the design industry or has just started learning and practicing design. And questions I often get asked are, "How do I get good in design?" Especially UI Design. And "How do I become creative?", "How do I get good ideas?", "How do I develop taste?"
And most of the time I pause and think for a while.
These are pretty good question to ask.

How do people get good at design or anything for that matter? Is the process the same?

I will try to put my thoughts on what I feel is the answer to these questions. I'm just sharing my viewpoint on what I think about these topics and getting good at anything in general. Please take whatever makes sense to you and do.

Creativity:
Creativity is one of the most highly debatable ideologies in the design and creative industry. The biggest question people, especially beginner designers or aspiring creatives, have is:
"Am I creative?"
or a question like
"Are people born with creativity?"

I don't believe in the ideology that there are creative people and there are some who aren't creative or worse, can't be creative.

Whatever I've realised about creativity is that it's an ideology. An ideology to question things.
Why is something the way it is? Does it have some problems? Can it be made better?

Creativity can be as small as finding a shortcut to do something in your workplace to complete the task faster and become a tad bit more efficient than what you were yesterday, and as big as imagining that personal computers are gonna be a thing and the internet should exist followed by: "Let’s design a way to navigate the internet." and asking the question: "Why should a design tool be heavy and so inefficient to manage, design, and collaborate? Can a better way exist to design things?" ultimately leading to a question like: "What might happen if we feed all the information in this world to a machine that also learns on its own?"

I don't think creativity is just about the creative side such as design, art, music, etc.
Creativity is an ideology to see and experience this world. I do believe that everyone is creative in their own ways. It's just that we have linked creativity to professions such as design, art, music, dance etc., and have formed some biases around it.

An F1 racer, an astrophysicist, a scientist, a farmer, a teacher, anyone for that matter, is and can be creative. Just spend enough time learning and doing the job to a point where you know in and out about the job, and then your brain will automatically start seeing patterns, start questioning things, start finding ways to make the job much more efficient and fulfilling for you and for others. It's about putting in the effort.

Ideas:
"How does one get a great idea?" Good question again.

I don't know, honestly speaking. As of now, I don't know how we get ideas.
I would be lost in thought and suddenly an idea would come. Or sometimes thinking very critically about something where I'm sitting with my notebook and my pen, brainstorming, and ideas will come.
I think it's a very natural phenomenon of the brain to think and get ideas.

But I do know what makes an idea, "great". It's execution.

Anybody can get an idea but very few act on it and execute it.
Execution is what matters and what changes the game to take the risk to try something different, to go against the system, to question the status quo. Anyone can think about doing it, but very few would actually act on it.

Zuck wasn't the first person to get the idea of building a community, a social media where people can stay connected together. It was about the execution.

There isn't much that we can do about how we get ideas apart from being open to experiencing life at its fullest.
But there are things that can be done to make an idea great. Control the controllables, as they say.

Taste:
"How do I develop taste?" Again, a very good question. I do know how, actually. Let's understand this one by understanding how we develop taste for food.

How do we know when a food hits the spot it was supposed to hit?
How do we know the food won't taste good if we put a bit more or less salt?

The answer is: by cooking a lot of food, good or bad, and trying out everything, we will have enough data to conclude what tastes good and what doesn't. And the key here is to "cook" lots and lots of food before one starts questioning - Why am I not developing taste for it?

Let’s make it more simple.

Designing, good or bad, doesn’t matter, designing will develop taste.
Designing, sharing, asking for feedback from the ones who you think have better visual taste than you, all these things will help you sort of understand what should be considered tasty and what needs a bit more salt or sugar.

Also, seeing others cook and trying out their cooked food will also help you understand what is considered great cooking. Follow good designers and creatives who you think have great taste for design and learn from them, directly or indirectly.

To get good at something, you have to suck at it first. That’s the price one must pay to become good at something. That's how learning works.

These were just a few reflections I had on creativity, ideas, and taste. If any part of this resonated with you or if you see things differently, I’d genuinely love to hear your perspective. I really appreciate it when someone takes the time to read my thoughts and reaches out, whether it's just to say they read it or to share a different point of view. So if you’d like to make me smile or share your own pool of thought, don’t hesitate to reach out on any platform you prefer :)