Author: florian.thausing

Der Talk über „Political Design“ beim World Usability Congress war für mich ein sehr spannender, weil er etwas angesprochen hat, das im UX/UI und Design Business immer zu beachten ist und zwar, dass Design nie in einem luftleeren Raum, sondern immer in einem Netz aus Unternehmenskultur, Menschen, Egos und politischen Dynamiken entsteht. Obwohl man immer versucht sich im Studium oder in Projekten auf „best practices“ und Designprinzipien zu konzentrieren, merkt man irgendwann unumgänglich, dass die Realität viel komplexer ist.

Im Vortrag wurde Political Design als ein Prozess beschrieben, in dem UX Professionals nicht nur Interfaces gestalten, sondern auch lernen müssen, mit organisationalen Spannungen umzugehen. Nicht, weil sie wollen, sondern weil sie müssen!! Die Grundidee befasst sich damit, dass Design immer mit Neugier, Spieltrieb und Leidenschaft beginnt. Aber je weiter wir in echten Projekten vorstoßen, desto mehr stoßen wir an Grenzen, die nichts mehr mit Figma oder heuristischen Evaluationen zu tun haben, sondern mit Menschen, Macht und Kommunikation.

Ein Satz, der besonders betont wurde ist:

„No tension. No extension.“

Ohne Reibung und Konflikt keine Weiterentwicklung. Ohne Konflikte keine Innovation. Das klingt im ersten Moment sehr intuitiv und sinnvoll für mich und das ist es im Endeffekt auch. Viele der spannendsten Projekte, wurde erzählt, entstehen genau da, wo unterschiedliche Perspektiven aufeinanderprallen. Marketing will X, Engineering will Y, das Management will alles gleichzeitig und Nutzer*innen wollen etwas ganz anderes. In dieser Spannung entsteht oft der Raum für kreative Lösungen.

Was ich besonders gut fand war, dass der Vortrag klar gemacht hat, dass Political Design nicht bedeutet, sich „politisch”, im Sinne von manipulativ oder strategisch zu verhalten. Vielmehr geht es um Soft Skills wie: klar zu kommunizieren, zuzuhören und das Gefühl zu geben gehört zu werden. Es geht darum zu verstehen wie und warum die Menschen um uns herum ihre Entscheidugnen treffen.

Im Grunde wurde betont, dass UX nicht nur ein sehr technischer, sondern ein zutiefst zwischenmenschlicher Beruf ist. Wir designen nicht nur für Menschen, sondern auch mit Menschen und diese Menschen haben ihre eigenen Prioritäten, Ängste, Ziele und Blind Spots. Ein Design Prozess der das mitbedenkt ist weitaus effektiver und liefert bessere Ergebnisse.

Als Impuls nehme ich für mich mit, dass ich in meiner eigenen Arbeit noch stärker darauf achten möchte WIE ich kommuniziere und woran Ideen wirklich scheitern. Political Design nehme ich für mich weniger als ein Framework, sondern mehr als eine Haltung auf. Eine die neugierig auf Menschen zugeht und sich nicht nur auf das perfekte Interface beschränkt.

The master thesis “Designing for Slow Reflection: Using a Physical Artifact to Reflect on Screen Exposure” was written by Dimitra Gkounta and Hasini Wijayantha, from the Master’s Programme in Human Computer Interaction and User Experience at the Umeå University in 2025. It explores how design can encourage people to think more deeply about their screen habits before going to sleep. In the current world, where most echnologies are designed to be fast and efficient, the authors experiment with slow technology; a design approach that promotes patience, reflection, and awareness instead of instant gratification.

Their research question is clear:

How can slow technology design qualities be implemented in an artifact to foster reflection on screen exposure before sleep?

To explore this, they used a Research through Design approach and created a low-fidelity prototype figurine that changed it’s appearance based on participants self reported screen time and sleep quality over the span of three days. The figurine represented the users behaviour visually through torn clothes or dirt (representing poor sleep or excessive screen time) or a neat appearance (representing healthier habits).

Pre-Evaluation

The figurine is well documented in this thesis. The authors describe its material, design choices, and the reasoning behind each visual change, such as torn clothing or posture adjustments. Photos and diagrams show the figurine in different stages of transformation thus painting a clear picture of the development process. It is also explained why the figurine was kept low-fidelity, giving a very well documented impression overall.

Though it is not publicly accessible the detailed explanation of the process would allow an interested party to recreate a similar setup.

The theoretical arguments and the practical implementation align convincingly which can be seen by a clear representation of three slow technology qualities (explicit slowness, ongoingness, and pre-interaction). There is a deliberate delay between data reporting and visual change (explicit slowness), the figurines gradual deterioration (ongoingness), and the morning audio journaling (pre-interaction). Though some participants reacted poorly to the delayed feedback, that just confirmed the expected challenge of introducing slowness into an environment that is accustomed to fast-technology.

Overall the documentation is clear and comprehensible. Each methodological step is described in detail, easy to follow and participant quotes give quick insight into how the figurine was perceived.

In my opinion, the quality of this thesis fully meets the standards expected of a master’s thesis and could be used as a shining example. It demonstrates a strong link between theory and design, creative experimentation, and careful reflection.

Main Evaluation

Overall Presentation Quality
The thesis is professionally presented and well structured. There is a clear line leading from theory to practice and both the term slow technology and the design process of the figurine are explained well. The thesis reads very easily without loosing its scientific tone which was a pleasant surprise.

Degree of Innovation
I think this work is highly original, at least I haven’t seen anything similar before. It combines slow technology with self tracking through data which is very interesting. The delayed feedback approach was very new to me since most technologies focus on near instant feedback and quick responses. The figurine also introduced a certain ambiguity to the data which is a refreshing idea, hopefully leading to more meaningful engagement. Overall the thesis provided a fresh perspective by focussing on designing for reflection rather than efficiency.

Independence
The authors show strong independence and creativity. They designed and created the figurine themselves, developed the study setup, and critically reflected on their own design choices. And though it was not without its challenges (e.g. participant misinterpretation), they adjusted their method accordingly.

Organization and structure
This thesis is organized very logically. Each section builds upon the previous one and has a clear focus. The transitition from theory to practice is clear and the documentation of both design and analysis is easy to follow. Photos of the figurine add to an easily digestable reading experience.

Communication
The writing style is professional yet clear and easy to understand. Concepts like explicit slowness, ongoingness, and pre-interaction are well explained. In my opinion the authors successfully combined technical language with narrative elements such as participant quotes which made the whole thesis engaging to read.

Scope
The scope fits the level of a master thesis. The project focuses on a specific, manageable question and a small user group of six participants. My only critique would be that the study frame was very short (three days) and could’ve been expanded.

Accuracy and Attention to Detail
The study reads very careful and precise. The theoretical foundation seems solid and the design and analysis are documented in such detail, that it makes it easy to understand how the figurines transformations came about.

Literature
This thesis makes great use of literature by connecting classical theories of reflection (Schön, 1987) with more recent studies on slow design and personal informatics. The authors also situate their project in a broader research context by showing how their study fills a gap in applying slow technology in self-tracking before sleep.

Overall Assessment

This thesis was super interesting to read, gave plenty of new perspective, food for thought, and was overall a thoughtful piece of research. It had a strong theoretical foundation, a creative new concept and a more than sufficiently reflective analysis. I think the application of slow technology principles, through a physical figurine into personal informatics is innovative and refreshing and made for an engaging read. A minor weakness is the short duration of the study, which limits insight into long-term behavioral change and could question the validity of the study outcome. Still, this thesis offers some inspiration for designers/researchers who want to rethink the role of slowness and reflection in todays fast paced environment. Slowing down could actually help us see ourselves more clearly.

As you can read from my previous blogposts, I have been super into finding out and researching how boredom impacts creativity. There are plenty of studies suggesting that the mind, when left unstimulated, starts to wander, associate, and imagine which in turn spurs creative thinking. Naturally I wanted to test it myself.

Designing the Prototype: A minimalistic Approach

My setup was intentionally simple:

• A section in a quiet neutral room
• A lined block of paper and a pen
• Windows to look out of
• A 15 minute timer

I held this test with a single participant who was instructed to remain in the room for 15 minutes with no access to digital devices or other forms of stimulation. Though instructed to try not to plan out all the things they needed to do, there were no explicit tasks. Just to “be with yourself or the materials in front of you”. They could draw, write, look out of the window, or nothing at all. The idea was to simulate a situation of controlled boredom. Low stimulation, low task demand, but enough autonomy to allow for spontaneous engagement.

This prototype was based on boredom induction methods used in studies like those by Mann and Cadman (2014), who asked participants to complete monotonous tasks before measuring their creativity through established assessments like the Alternative Uses Task.

The Method

The prototype consisted of two sessions held three days apart.

Session 1: Intentional Boredom
The participant was placed alone in a quiet, naturally lit room. No phone. No music. They were given no tasks except to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes.
Immediately afterwards they were given an Alternative Uses Task, a common test of divergent thinking that asks participants to name as many unconventional uses as possible for a common object. In this session the object was a brick.

Session 2: Digital Stimulation
Three days later the same participant was asked to play Block Blast, a mobile puzzle game, for 5 minutes. Right after this short period of digital stimulation, they again completed an Alternative Uses Task. This time the object was a plank of wood.

Each set of answers was then evaluated with the help of ChatGPT, which provided a standardized scoring of each AUT across four dimensions:

• Fluency (number of ideas)
• Flexibility (range of categories)
• Originality (unusualness)
• Elaboration (level of detail)

Results after 15 minutes of boredom

When asked to list alternative use cases for a brick the following responses were recorded:

• Wall
• Pavement
• Stairs
• Many different kinds of walls
• Towering walls, scary and cartoony ones
• Walls in a house, in an industrial one but also in an aesthetic farm house
• Brick Bricks Bricks the song from Phineas and Ferb
• A super red cartoon brick
• You can hit someone
• Break through a window with a note on it
• Lay patterns
• I wanna build my house with bricks partly
• The saying “to be stupid as a brick”
• I feel like a brick

Fluency (good overall)
14 answers in total. Even though some ideas revolve around similar themes (e.g. walls) we treat them as separate if they introduce different contexts, emotional tones, or conceptual shifts.

Flexibility (moderate)
The answers can be sorted into 4 distinct categories:

• Structural Uses (Walls, Pavement, Lay patterns, Building a House)
• Aesthetic/Cartoon Imagery (Towering/cartoonish walls, super red brick, phineas and ferb reference)
• Violence/Action (Hitting someone, breaking a window)
• Linguistic Metaphorical (I feel like a brick, “stupid as a brick”)

Originality (high)
ChatGPT marks 5-7 medium-highly original responses:

• Towering cartoon wall (Adds mood and genre which is unusual)
• Walls in house/factory/farmhouse (Nuanced thinking across domains)
• “Bricks bricks bricks” song (Cultural reference and playful)
• Super red cartoon brick (Specific and stylized)
• Breaking a window with a note attached (Narratively imaginative)
• “Stupid as a brick” (Linguistic/metaphorical use – clever)
• “I feel like a brick” (Reflective and metaphorical – unusual)

Elaboration (good)
Several responses go beyond one-word answers and include:

• Emotional tone (towering walls = scary and cartoony)
• Specific stylistic categories (“aesthetic farmhouse”, “cartoony”, “super-red”)
• Personal reflection (“I feel like a brick”)

Results after 5 Minutes of Block Blast

Alternative Use Cases for a Plank of Wood as stated by the participant:

• A jumping thing
• Pirates when they send people to jump
• Hit someone
• Cut it and make thin planks
• Make a wall
• Put hot water to make it flat again when it’s bent
• Scratch yourself
• Put a nail in it
• Drill holes and put shot glasses in there
• Hang pictures on it
• Put it on my table

Fluency (solid)
11 answers in total.

Flexibility (good)
6 distinct categories could be noticed:

• Play/Physical Interaction (Jumping thing, Pirates plank)
• Violence/Defense (Hit someone)
• Construction/Modification (Make thin planks, Make a wall, Put a nail in it, Drill holes)
• Restoration/Repair (Flatten it with hot water)
• Body related Use (Scratch yourself)
• Home Decoration (Hang a picture, Use as part of table, shot glass tray)

Originality (average)
ChatGPT marked 3 medium-highly original replies:

• Pirate plank (Fun, narrative-based, less common)
• Flatten bent plank w/ hot water (Repair idea – unusual and clever)
• Shot glass tray (Very original, social and visual)

Elaboration
Several responses include implied or explicit detail:

• Pirate Plank (evokes a full narrative scene)
• Flattening a bent wood (shows process awareness)
• Shot glass tray (strong visual and functional specificity)
• Table extension & picture hanger (clear spatial ideas)

Conclusion

Comparing the two Alternative Uses Tests reveals a clear shift in the participants creative output depending on their activity before. After 15 minutes of quiet stillness their responses were more associative, playful, and metaphorical, hinting at a more open, explorative state of mind. After just 5 minutes of playing Block Blast, the ideas were quicker, more functional and anchored in conventional uses.

This contrast supports the claim that creativity is positively stimulated by spaciousness, not stimulation. Boredom, when given structure and permission, acts like a mental rest. It opens doors to thoughts we don’t usually have time to notice. Designing for creativity might mean not giving people more to do but more space to let the mind breathe. More silence. More pause.

QnA

After the first session, which was preceded by 15 minutes of rest, I asked the participant several questions to understand their mental state during the rest. The answers and reflections were strikingly calm and therapeutic.

• How easy or difficult did it feel to come up with ideas
  “Pretty easy. The thing is I kind of wanted to do the task right, so if I was hesitating it was because of that. But it felt quite easy.”
• Did your thoughts wander to a specific topic?
  “I was thinking about the future… imagining a farm and imagining life whether I have a corporate job or not. And then I had to push away thoughts of what I need to do right now. But that was kind of easy.”
• Do you feel more or less creative now than before?
  “Difficult to say about creativeness. But I do feel more relaxed. Less stressed. I’m eager to begin one of my tasks.”
• Any surprising or enlightening thoughts?
  “Not really… but I got a sense of calmness. I’ve been stressing a lot about leaving. I got a moment to exhale.”
• Did you fell bored?
  “I tried to think if I was bored. But I felt comfortable. Maybe I wasn’t bored. I was very content.”

In today’s “always on” design culture, productivity is king. We strive to fill every moment. Jam-packed sprints, brainstorming marathons, synchronous ideation sessions. If you don’t grind, you’re behind.
But what if this relentless pace is not fueling creativity, but smothering it?

Hustle Culture: a Creativity Crisis

Hustle Culture thrives on the belief that relentless striving equals success. In this mindset, being busy comes a virtue. But some research shows that this might be backfiring.
For instance, a Deloitte report (215) found that 77% of employees had experiences burnout at their current job. And research in cognititve psychology shows that chronic stress impairs key cognitive functions such as memory, decision-making, and creative thinking (McEwen & Sapoisky, 1995). Under pressure, the brain reverts to routine and risk-averse solutions. recisely the opposite of what creative work demands.

There is an apparent paradox at play: the harder we push for ideas, the less room we give them to surface.

Even in innovation-heavy workplaces, this reality is sinking in. Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program incorporates mindfulness and reflection breaks into employee schedules. Arianna Huffington, who famously collapsed from exhaustion, founded and entire platform, Thrive Global, to advocate for well-being and balance. Why? Because rest isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s often the source of it.

Creativity isn’t Constant. It Has a Rhythm

Creative output doesn’t follow a linear or constant trajectory. One well-supported theory in psychology is that creativity emerges from the interplay between focus and defocus, the so-called “dual-process model” of creative cognition (Sowden, Pringle, & Gabora, 2015).

Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle and colleagues discovered that the brain’s default mode network, which is active during idle moments, plays a significant role in ideation and problem-solving (Raichle et al., 2011). In other words: the brain doesn’t shut down during downtime. It reconfigures.

This is echoed by the classic four-stage model of creativity proposed by Wallas (1926):
1. Preparation: Immersion in the problem
2. Incubation: Stepping back or taking a break
3. Illumination: Sudden insight or “aha!” moment
4. Verification: refining and testing the idea
That quiet moment during a walk, in the shower, or while zoning out can become the birthplace of powerful ideas. It’s not laziness, it’s neurological efficiency.

Alternating Creative Current

IF we accept that the creative sweet spot lies in the tension between focus and reflection, how can we implement it into a design process?

1. Alternate Focus and Pause
   Pretty simple, yet important to mention because often overlooked: incorporate regular 10-15minute low stimulation breaks. Not for scrolling but for the mind to rest.
2. Ritualize Rest
   Normalize quiet moments. A “blank block” at the beginning of a meeting could prime the brain for originality, not just efficiency
3. Mindful Transitions
   Deliberate shifts away from focus (by journaling, walking, breathing exercises, or similar) could help move from convergent to divergent thinking.

No matter how it will be implemented in the final design, we need to rethink what “productive time” looks like. The pause is not a distraction from the creative process but a necessary part of it. And it needs reiteration.

Is Busyness a Creative Delusion?

In my opinion, one of the most harmful assumptions in contemporary creative culture is that busyness equals progress. Corporate Design Agencies over-schedule, over-plan, and over-communicate, mistaking motion for meaning. But the cognitive processes on which creative thinking rests (associative processing, divergent thinking, insight, etc.) require something that busyness inherently denies: mental slack.

I already mentioned this in a previous blog post but I think it relevant to repeat that according to research by Baird et al. (2012), participants who were denied a chance to daydream were significantly outperformed by participants who did when it comes to creative problem-solving-challenges. The authors of that study concluded that mind wandering facilitates creative incubation, especially when daydreaming was done during a cognitively light task like washing dishes or copying a text.

This aligns with psychologist Mihaly Cyikszentmihalyi’s concept of psychic entropy, which posits that our minds need time to meander to restructure ideas and find novel assocaiations (Cyikszentmihalyi, 1996). When we’re constantly responding to emails, deadlines, or Slack notifications, there’s no room for that restructuring.

Towards a Balanced Design Ethos

If we want to deign to just with speed but with depth, we need a philosophical shift in how we understand our time. Instead of viewing reflective or idle moments as inefficiencies, they can be reframes as integral parts of the creative process.

This isn’t a romantization of laziness. It’s an invitation to reclaim cognitive space. Just as we respect physical ergonomics in design work, we should start advocating for mental ergonomics: structured time for wandering thought, non-goal-oriented exploration, and emotional detachment from constant outcomes.

Imagine a design team where unstructured time is built into the sprint cycle, or where “creative sabbaticals” of even just an afternoon are embedded into deadlines. These aren’t indulgences. They could be an essential practice grounded in cognitive science and supported by a growing body of research. And just like bodybuilders who schedule rests to gain optimal results it is time for creatives to do the same and to recognize the importance of mental offloading.

References:
Deloitte. (2015). Burnout survey: 77% of employees have experienced burnout at their current job. Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/

Sowden, P. T., Pringle, A., & Gabora, L. (2015). The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory. Thinking & Reasoning, 21(1), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2014.885464

Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W. Y., Franklin, M. S., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1117–1122. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612446024

An immediate big issue that presents itself when thinking about how boredom affects creativity is: “how do we measure creativity??”. After some research I can present you some approaches that seem sensible.

1. Divergent Thinking Tests

The most widely used creativity assessments are divergent thinking tasks.
Divergent thinking tasks are designed to push your brain beyond the obvious, encouraging you to come up with as many different ideas, uses, or solutions as possible. They’re the opposite of convergent thinking, which focuses on finding a single correct answer.

Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT)
In TTCT, participants might be asked to list uses for an ordinary object (fluency), switch categories (flexibility), come up with unusual ideas (originality), and flesh out details (elaboration). These scores have been shown to predict creative achievements decades later, with reliability ratings between .87 – .97 across diverse cultures.
Guildford’s Alternate Uses Task (AUT) is a classic measure which covers all these scores. Simply: given an everyday object, how many different uses can users think of? This one test scores on fluency, originality, flexibility and elaboration.

2. Convergent Thinking Tests

Creativity isn’t only about generating many ideas. It’s also about finding the right idea.
The Remote Associates Test (RAT) measures convergent thinking by asking participants to find a single word linking three unrelated cues (e.g. “Room-Blood-Salt” -> “Bath”). This captures associative and insight-based creativity.

3. Semantic-Distance & Novel AI Measures

Modern testing like the Divergent Association Task (DAT) and its AI-enhanced variant, S-DAT, ask for unrelated words or ideas and measure their semantic distance via algorithms. These tools offer scalability and objective measuring beyond manual scoring.

4. Process & Product Based Assessments

The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) involves expert judges evaluating creative products (stories, designs, etc.). Similarly domain specific tools like the Engineering Creativity Assessment Tool (ECAT) assess fluency, originality, flexibility, and technical depth in engineering contexts.

Useful Sources:
What do educators need to know about the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: A comprehensive review
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
The Convergent Validity of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and Creativity Interest Inventories
What We Measure Matters

How Long to Be Bored? Timing & Incubation

Once we can measure creativity, we face more nuanced questions about practical timing:

• How long should boredom last for optimal creative priming?
  Most lab studies (like Mann & Cadman from the previous blog post) used 15 minutes of boredom inducing tasks and find improved divergent output afterwards. Would shorter or longer periods produce stronger gains? We don’t know yet. It seems to be yet untested in real-world creative scenarios.
  
• How long does the creativity boost last?
  I couldn’t find any good answers for this question. Controlled studies are still necessary to see how long ideation remains elevated after a boredom bout.
  
• How frequently should boredom pauses occur in heavy ideation sessions?
  In the absence of precise guidelines, a plausible starting point is alternating focused ideation blocks (25-30min) with short boredom breaks (5-10min) where participants engage in minimal stimulation. A similar structure to a classic Pomodoro.

For the Reader

If you’re curious about how boredom might boost your creativity, here are a few small experiments that you can try at home:

1. Schedule a Boredom Break
   Set aside 10-15 minutes during your workday to deliberately do nothing stimulating.
   No phone, no music, no reading, just stare out of the window, take a walk without headphones, or sit with a pen and blank paper. Then try a creative task (like brainstorming ideas or sketching concepts) and note any difference in how your ideas flow.
   
2. Swap Scrollign fro Staring
   Next time you’re in a queue or on public transport and feel the urge to check your phone, resist it. Just be. Let your thoughts wander. You might be surprised what floats to the surface when you’re not trying to be entertained.
   
3. Keep a Post-Boredom Journal
   After intentionally boring moments, note down how you felt and whether any interesting thoughts or ideas came to you. Over time, this could become a valuable creativity tracker and personal insight tool.
   
4. Read something
   More specifically one of these:
   – The Upside of Downtime by Sandi Mann
   – Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi

Not long ago I realized something that stuck with me: I am bored a lot more than I thought.
Until recently I didn’t even register it as boredom. I thought I was unmotivated and innately resistant to getting things started. In these moments it was much easier to reach for my phone and fill this uncomfortable pause by checking instagram, watching some reels, or scroll through some reddit posts. Anything to not confront myself with that itch of restlessness.
It occurred not only at home, but also when waiting for the bus, standing in line, or sitting through a dull section of a lecture.

This probably doesn’t sound groundbreaking to anyone reading this. We all do it and most of us have this reflex of reaching for our phones when we feel bored. But it wasn’t until i stumbled across a video by journalist Johnny Harris that I started questioning this habit more than I usually do. A video that I can highly recommend to anyone by the way: Why Everything is Making You Feel Bored.

In the video, Harris talks about the modern relationship between boredom and motivation. He mentioned that the constant drive to eliminate boredom can paradoxically erode our motivation and creative capacity. And that embracing boredom, sitting in it rather than avoiding it, can actually enrich our creative process.

Since then I’ve been looking into the topic and changing the way I think about attention, bordeom, and creativity.

Boredom and the Creative Process

The first piece of academic research I came across was a study by Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, published by Consciousness and Cognition in 2014: Does being bored make us more creative?

Their experiment was quite simple: one group of participants were asked to copy numbers out of a phone book – a deliberately boring task. The control group did not perform any initial task. Afterwards both groups were asked to come up with as many uses for a pair of plastic cups as possible.

The result: participants who had been primed with boredom generated more creative and diverse ideas than the control group. Mann and Cadman’s explanation is that boredom encourages mind-wandering. A state in which our brain forms new associations and explores different mental territories.

Different Kinds of Boredom

Research by Thomas Goetz and colleagues called Types of boredom: An experience sampling approach identifies five types of boredom:

• Indifferent Boredom: A relaxed, indifferent state
• Calibrating Boredom: A slightly unpleasant feeling, prompting thoughts about different activities
• Searching Boredom: A ore intense desire to find engaging alternatives
• Reactant Boredom: A highly unpleasant state, characterized by restlesness and a strong urge to escape the situation
• Apathetic Boredom: A particularly unpleasant form, marked by low arousal and feelings akin to helplessness or depression

Understanding these nuances could be important. While certain types of boredom, like searching boredom, can stimulate creativity, others, like apathetic boredom, might hinder creativity.

Make the User Bored?

In addition to changing how we approach the creative process, boredom could also be an important emotion to instill in users. Instead of the conventional approach of minimizing user boredom at all costs perhaps we should consider how to harness its creative potential.
Intentional pauses in digital experiences could on the one hand allow users for their minds to wander and encourage moments of reflection, but might also result in a lot of frustration for the users if they are not receptive for it. A specific ruleset could be interesting.

Developing a new Design Process

In most design processes today we tend to optimize for efficiency, flow, engagement, and constant stimulation. We pack brainstorming workshops, sprint cycles, and ideation sessions filled with activities and prompts. We check notifications while waiting for feedback and often leave little room for mental idleness.

But if boredom can foster creativity, as research suggests, maybe we should design boredom into the design process instead of avoiding it. Creating space for disengagement and intentionally embracing boredom could be a valid and valuable phase. For example, before an ideation session, designers could schedule a period of low stimulation, spending fifteen minutes on an undemanding and repetitive task such sorting materials, going for a short walk without media input, or simply looking out of a window. This would allow the mind to wander freely and tap into its associative processes.

Throughout longer creative phases, alternating between focused work sprints and unstructured, boring breaks could encourage the brain to process ideas in the background and make unexpected connections, which aligns with creativity research by Sio & Ormerod from 2009 that suggests that incubation periods can enhance problem-solving and originality.

The exact structure of a new design process and the utility of boredom in it still need to be thought about but the potential effects are fascinating and, to my knowledge, have never been considered in the context of a framework before.

Research to be done

At this point, much of the existing research on boredom and creativity focuses on correlations or experimental effects in controlled settings. Studies like those by Mann & Cadman (2014) and Bench & Lench (2013) suggest that inducing boredom can temporarily boost creative output. However we still lack a clear understanding of how structured boredom impacts real-world creative processes over time. Can boredom really improve creative output consistently in a corporate context?

There are still several open questions. How often and how long should boredom phases be integrated to yield great creative benefits? Are certain types of boredom more conducive to creativity than others? We know little about how boredom plays out on a team level. While boredom may foster divergent thinking in individuals, does it have the same or a similar effect in collaborative settings, or does it risk disengaging the entire group. There is a challenge in balancing boredom with professional constraints (tight deadlines, fat-paced workflows, client expectations, etc.) which remains an open and practical concern.

Why I think this matters

As design culture becomes increasingly optimized for speed, constant creativity, and measurable output, we risk losing one of the most human elements of the creative process: the minds ability to wander, reflect, and synthesize. Exploring a design process that makes space to slow down and embrace the feeling of boredom offers a way to reclaim this ability – ideally without reducing productivity and instead fostering deeper creativity.

I find myself stuck, or at least hesitant, about settling on my master thesis topic about gamifying strength training. I’m in a stadium where I overthink a lot of it because there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what can be done which is exciting on one hand but a bit overwhelming on the other. So I am taking a break from it and zooming out to explore other possible master thesis topics. Aim higher even, maybe..

This might sound like a complete curveball but I’m seriously considering steering my thesis toward something connected with diplomacy or international affairs. Why, I am not absolutely sure yet. Whether this is long-term ambition speaking, aiming to possibly working as a diplomat or ambassador with the BMEIA, or just a hyperfixation on something new that will fade in a month, remains to be seen.
Nonetheless it feels worth taken a look into.

At first glance it might seem like a big leap from interaction and information design to diplomacy, but I believe that digital design and interaction can offer fresh, valuable perspectives in diplomatic communication, cultural exchange, and public trust. All essential for today’s complex, interconnected world.

Could this mean a collaboration with the BMEIA for my thesis? Who knows! After refining my research topic and making sure that this is a long-term interest I might reach out and explore that possibility. Even if a formal partnership isn’t possible, the idea of crafting a thesis that bridges design and diplomacy feels worth pursuing.

Designing for Transparency and Trust at the BMEIA

How can interaction and information design improve the BMEIA’s online presence to make it more transparent and trustworthy in the eyes of users worldwide?

Here’s the thing: I took a look at the current BMEIA website and honestly, it feels cluttered and complicated. I find it hard to clearly understand what exactly the ministry does or where to find reliable, transparent information. If I feel that way, I can only imagine how confusing this must be for Austrian citizens abroad, international journalists, or foreign stakeholders trying to grasp Austria’s diplomatic efforts.

Diplomacy is built on relationships and trust. Nowadays, digital channels are often the first, and only, touchpoints people have with government institutions. If a ministry’s website or app is confusing, outdated, or overwhelming, it risks undermining public trust, whih can have real consequences on how policies and actions are perceived internationally.

I my thesis I might want to explore the following points:

• How different user groups perceive the current BMEIA online presence in terms of clarity, transparency, and trustworthiness
• What design elements currently help or hinder these perceptions
• How can interaction design and information structure be improved to communicate the ministry’s roles, processes, and values more clearly
• What concrete transparency-building features (like interactive timelines, simple navigation, or trust signals) can be introduced to improve user experience and confidence

The following methods would need to be employed:

• User Research, Interviews, Surveys with a diverse audience of austrians at home and abroad
• Usability testing and heuristic evaluations of the current website to identify pain points
• Comparative analysis of foreign ministries from other countries to learn from best practices in digital diplomacy
• Co-design workshops to ideate and prototype transparency-driven design solutions
• Iterative prototyping and testing to measure how new designs affect trust and clarity

What’s next?

I’m still figuring it out tbh. There’s a lot of groundwork to do: refining my research question, learning from existing literature, etc..
For now I’m diving into readings on digital diplomacy, trust in online services, government UX, and civic design.

If you’re curious too, here is my reading list:

• Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust.
• Van Bavel, R., Rodríguez-Priego, N., Vila, J., & Briggs, P. (2020). Building trust in government in the digital age: A review of empirical research.
• Bjola, C., & Holmes, M. (2015). Digital diplomacy: Theory and practice.
• Carter, L., & Bélanger, F. (2005). The utilization of e‐government services: Citizen trust, innovation and acceptance factors.
• Case Study: GOV.UK Design System

This thesis direction feels like an interesting change of pace. Potentially working with a government institution is something I hadn’t considered yet before and I will need to think on this for a while before I decide for or against it. Nonetheless I think it could be an exciting challenge and produce an impressive Master thesis.