How loss is experienced by designers and 10 tips to find yourself again
Despite being prolific, Vincent Van Gogh was at a loss towards the end of his life. His despair was noticeably evident through each paint stroke of his self-portrait. Yet he was motivated to paint over 35 self-portraits due to a few factors. One was due to his lack of money. Thus, he resorted to using himself as a model to improve his technique. The other was largely due to the hope that by painting himself, he would heal from his medical condition, which was likely to be bipolar disorder.
Due to his fragile mental state, Van Gogh died at the age of 37 on July 29, 1890. Regardless, Van Gogh’s self-portrait was like a visual diary of a creative genius at odds with himself for about 4 years.
Our protagonist, Van Gogh, was an extreme example of loss, but just like his canvas, our emotions and selves are byproducts of our work. We should be able to associate our losses much more closely with those of Van Gogh. Like mini portraits, our designs could bear a resemblance to our personal losses.
How often have you designed something that did not turn out to be part of the original design? While it is every designer’s dream to have a never-ending streak of creativity in a flow state, the harsh reality is that there will be times when things don’t work, failures occur, and we are stuck.
And the topic of loss is hard to write about simply because there are many other things that are associated with it. Here are a few other occasions when a designer feels at a loss:
- Work loss: losing a piece of valuable work due to an error or unforeseeable circumstances
- Cognitive or memory loss: inability to find and locate information or inspiration.
- Personal loss: a personal setback that tends to be outside of their work.
- Financial loss: either not getting the right income, or covering a significant cost
- Interpersonal loss: absence of a team member, especially when they bear similar traits or complementary skills
- Catastrophic loss: a setback that will be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. Van Gogh’s death would fall into this category.
Surely, there are other forms of loss, but one doesn’t have to look far to see further losses in 2023, from offices shutting down to people being laid off, to inflation kicking in. The effects of losses in a recessionary economy further bring about issues in mental health, as well as survival guilt at the workplace. Both metaphorically and literally, winter is coming, and it could be felt by the entire economy.
A pattern develops over time following a trigger or series of events, forming underlying structures and the hidden mental models of a designer. Sounds familiar? Perhaps it’s because the key words are from a well-known systems thinking method known as the Iceberg Model. You might have used it first for your work, but the same tool can also apply to designers.
You might still say, “Loss doesn’t affect me as a designer.” But by going through the iceberg model, there could be mental models that go beneath the tip of the iceberg:
Because of previous losses, we chose to avoid them.
Another familiar mental model comes to mind: loss aversion. In a nutshell, it is a cognitive bias characterized by a preference for avoiding the pain of loss over receiving gains.
Yet again, the designer could use loss aversion in their work. They may also be affected by it.
Consider a new design role with the chance to learn new skills. Perhaps you have been good at working with screens, and this is a chance to become a product or growth designer to merge your practice with business strategy. Loss aversion as the dominant mental model creates the tendency for the mind to lean more toward what you could lose—time, reputation, or even money. After all, wouldn’t it be better to keep performing well if you’re good at designing a typical interface?
Unfortunately, while staying put to deal with potential losses is the safer option, the potential benefits of taking on a new design role are not realized.
Loss could affect designers when we experienced it from others
Brene Brown distinguishes two types of empathy: cognitive and affective. The latter makes one more sensitive to others’ emotions, which can be challenging, especially for emotionally sensitive UX researchers or designers. It could be the reason why designers and creatives are one of the first groups of people to feel the negative effects of the environment or of people if there are no guardrails in place. When left out of check, it could also rock the individual designer’s well-being. They could ask themselves, “Why am I feeling at a loss when I actually have nothing to lose?”
In this case, because the underlying structure is emotional empathy, our beliefs could be affected if we do not have self-awareness.
Ultimately, when we go through loss, we may feel grief, hurt, regret, and shame. The consequences may be a further loss of quality in our work, social interactions, and personal well-being. And thus, a cyclical pattern between emotions and reactions emerges. No wonder so many designers suffer from progressive burnout or other forms of depression.
Turning it around
The dip has many names. Some called it the “Trough of Sorrows,” “Trough of Disillusionment,” “Tuckman Model,” “Happiness U-Curve,” or “Sophomore Slump,” but the common pattern here is the rebound from an initial drop. In other words, what goes down must eventually come back up. What was lost can now be found.
In fact, Barry Johnson, like other authors, employs both-and thinking to recognize the existence of two opposing entities. Short-term and long-term business goals and customer goals. Chaos and control. Gains and losses.
Ed Catmull, Pixar’s co-founder, calls this the “middle ground,” which oscillates between the two extremes, each drawing the benefits of the other without tipping too much over. Although difficult, the healthy tension is what brings out the best in all of us, especially designers.
Even Van Gogh benefited from a polarizing state by producing his finest masterpieces on the rebound, inspiring others around him to pick up the skills. Loss can be a teacher, and we can learn from the masters so that the right measures are in place.
And so here are ten steps we can take to recover from our losses:
1. Get professional help if dealing with loss is overbearing. Unlike Van Gogh’s days, there have been great medical advancements in understanding the human mind, with more to come. We as designers no longer need to feel isolated when dealing with loss, especially if it’s affecting us detrimentally. Seek counseling, visit a medical facility, or even get started through telemedicine channels such as Talkspace or BetterHelp.
2. Find your support network. One framework to keep in mind is Dunbar’s number, which suggests a ratio for maintaining stable social relationships. This becomes a helpful reference to identify who the top people are in your life that you can confide in during your darkest days. Tap into their strengths, and be there for them too, when it is their turn. A point to note: while a close designer friend is a gem, so too are those who aren’t designers. They may have similar struggles that they can relate to. Our protagonist painter also shares a similar point of view,
Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone — Vincent Van Gogh
3. Apply human-centered tools to ourselves as well as our clients and customers. Great designers know how to use great tools, but they can also apply these tools beyond their working lives. Just like Van Gogh, we could use ourselves as a model to improve our techniques. Try the iceberg model on yourself by asking the following questions:
a. Events: What is happening right now?
b. Patterns: What has been happening over time? What are the trends?
c. Structures: What’s influencing or connecting these patterns?
d. Mental models: What values, beliefs, or assumptions shape the system?
Use the method regularly to remind yourself of your thinking, personal biases, or immediate emotions.
4. Additionally, another method is the polarity map by Barry Johnson. Only by acknowledging the coexistence of gains and losses could we proceed to use this tool to balance the paradox. The Polarity Map captures the both/and thinking in an unsolvable problem. The best approach is to recognize the polarities, followed by working out the early warning systems and action steps. Just like every other great tool, once you have tried it on yourself, you can try it at work or with your team. (check out how design leader, Stephen Anderson, used the polarity map for himself )
5. What if we see our emotions as personas? One immediate reference is Pixar’s brilliance in visualizing five core emotions as animated characters: joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger in Riley’s mind. We too can apply this powerful technique by externalizing the emotion we are feeling. Using the same persona techniques, write the narrative and descriptors of our emotion’s persona. You may even sketch it out and give it a name, such as “Listless Liz” or “Grieving Greg”. If this still feels foreign, consider how the design process requires us to extract our ideas so that we can float them between the problem and solution spaces. We can do this with our losses.
6. After personifying your emotions, take the next step to reframe your thinking based on the situation. The term "cognitive reappraisal" was coined by Jame Gross to describe the process of changing the meaning of emotional events without removing objectivity in order to alter emotional experience. In the case of loss, we can apply cognitive reappraisal by quieting our negative emotions and/or calling out more positive lessons and outcomes. There is an element of creativity to this: You’re breaking away from your existing perspectives and assumptions and coming up with a new way of thinking. You may start to recognise the inner persona in each of us. Referring to the polarity map helps in practicing cognitive reappraisal and reframing exercises.
7. Amor Fati, "love of fate." Originating from Stoicism, the idea is to accept the loss by simply facing the obstacle and seeing it for what it is: fate. What is different from the previous tip is to embrace the situation. It is to live with the loss as if it had a purpose. Lost design files? Be glad that you can recreate them again. Lost your job? Ok, that was meant to be. Pay cut? At least you are still bringing in money. This intentional thinking treats losses like "fuel" for a burning fire—a fire that symbolizes a power or energy felt by a person. What if that fire was your love for design? So if the love is genuine, it will confirm Friedrich Nietzsche’s maxim for greatness:: “Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, but love it.”
8. Switch off the signals that are attributed to loss and other similar distractions. Counterintuitively, this feels like being oblivious to current affairs. However, tying back to affective empathy, I would argue more in favor of being intentional by curating inputs that are beneficial to your mind and soul. Attention, just like money, is a scarce resource that should be protected in order to build personal traction. Unfortunately, we are increasingly prone to having our attention bombarded by targeted social media or by undermining articles that use fear to capitalize on views and clicks. Behavior designer Nir Eyal offers a suggestion: hack back your external triggers, and that could mean limiting or uninstalling distractions altogether. Minimize the infiltration of loss terrorists in our lives with curated triggers.
9. Allow your mind to go on a new trip of renewal. More often than not, the environment or an associated object plays a crucial role in taking your mind off of loss. In one particular instance, tidying consultant Marie Kondo helped a grieving widow deal with the loss of her husband by thanking the items and letting them go. Only by letting go of the past will something new be able to enter. As designers, we too can let go of our past accolades and works by “tidying up" our design assets. It may sound strange to show gratitude to our past works, but it is important to recognize their former utility and then to release them. Changing the scene doesn’t need to be radical, but it is a process in itself that requires time and conscious effort.
10. Shifting your empathetic response. As Brene Brown shares about two types of empathy, so too can we toggle between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. What we can learn from cognitive empathy lies in our ability to understand the person’s perspective intellectually by connecting from head-to-heart rather than heart-to-heart. By doing this, UX researchers can protect themselves from being affected by any negative emotions, remain composed, and aid the user better. That doesn’t mean we should keep people at arm’s length and not be close to them. It does allow us flexibility in knowing when to use the right empathy under each circumstance.
Clinical psychologist and writer Nick Wignall claims that there isn’t a lever or dial that offers immediate affordance to our emotions. However, by acknowledging that a dial does exist, we can remove the spell of loss and be in control of our emotions through progressive steps.
It will be fitting to end this article with a final phrase by Vincent Van Gogh,
The heart of man is very much the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.
May we keep searching for our pearls.
Further Reading:
Anderson, S. (2018). The Joys of Polarity Mapping. [online] UX Mastery.
Cognitive Reappraisal. [online]. Science Direct.
5 things you need to know about Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits. [online] Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam.
Gearon, M. Cognitive biases: loss aversion. [online]. UX Collective.
Holiday, R. The Unfathomable Power of Amor Fati. [online]. Observer.
Johnson, B. (2014). Reflections: A Perspective on Paradox and Its Application to Modern Management. [online] The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
Mahajan,N. Ed Catmull explains how smart leadership sparks creativity. [online]. Roland Berger.
