Creative Production Flow

The Day of Seven Interruptions

"Hey, quick favor—"

Fourth time before lunch. I kept a tally that day. By 5pm: seven "quick favors," three "urgent" requests, two "can you just..."

I'd opened Figma for maybe an hour total.

Checked with the team. Same story. Sarah spent her day in meetings about meetings. Marcus did revisions for three different stakeholders who weren't talking to each other.

We had eight designers doing everything except designing.

The Form Nobody Wanted

Next week, I set up a simple intake form. One form for all design requests.

The resistance was immediate but polite. "Seems a bit rigid?" "What about urgent stuff?" "Can't we just Slack you?"

Nope. Form or nothing.

The form asked basic questions:

• What do you need?
• Why do you need it?
• When do you actually need it?
• What happens if you don't get it?

First week was rough. People kept trying to bypass it. "Just this once" became my least favorite phrase.

The Surprising Side Effect

Something interesting happened after a month. About a third of the "urgent" requests just... disappeared.

Turns out when people had to write down why something was urgent, they often realized it wasn't.

The requests that did come through were clearer. Instead of "need a banner," we got "need a hero image for the product launch email going out March 15th."

Instead of "make it pop," we got "increase contrast for accessibility compliance."

People started thinking before requesting.

Simple Scoring

We scored each request on three things:

• Does it directly impact revenue or fix something broken?
• How many people does it affect?
• How much effort does it take?

Nothing fancy. Just high/medium/low. Takes two minutes.

The banner for the internal newsletter? Low/Low/Low.

The checkout page bug? High/High/Medium.

Easy decisions.

The Weekly Flow

• Mondays: Review and score new requests
• Tuesdays: Assign based on capacity and skills
• Rest of week: Actually do the work

No daily standups. Status visible on the board. Questions in Slack.

If someone needed an update, they could look at the board themselves.

What Actually Improved

After six months:

• Fewer interruptions (not zero, but manageable)
• Better briefs from stakeholders
• Designers had blocks of time to focus
• We actually knew what everyone was working on

It wasn't revolutionary. We didn't double our output or transform the company.

We just... worked better. Designers designed. Stakeholders got what they needed. Nobody burned out.

The Best Compliment

A year later, a new designer joined. After her first week, she said: "This is weird—I'm actually designing instead of sitting in meetings."

That's when I knew it worked.

The system isn't perfect. Some weeks are still chaos. Some stakeholders still try to bypass the form.

But most days, designers open Figma in the morning and design until lunch. Then they design some more.

That's all we wanted. A way to do our actual jobs.