I wrote, designed, and published my own deck of design thinking cards, and each card leads a stuck designer away from the work and back with fresh eyes.
Aha Moment Cards is my own product. Each card names a quality, such as craftsmanship or honest humor, explains what the quality means, and leads a person through a timed set of short exercises. I made the cards as printable PDFs and e-books in 2015, built workshops around them, and later designed the deck into an app on a live design show.
Client
My own design studio
My role
Creator, writer, and designer
Focus
Timed exercises that help designers break through creative blocks
Result
Published as print and e‑book cards, then built into my workshops
Most of the working designers around me had never used a creative technique deck, so I made one for them.
I grew up with brainstorming card decks, and I kept using creative prompts and method cards after I became a designer. Each deck helped, but I never found one that fit the way working designers actually spend their days.
Then I learned that most of my colleagues had never heard of any such techniques. The few who had were executives. That did not seem fair to me. The people in the design and development trenches needed fun, useful, and affordable tools too, and they needed tools that fit inside a workday.
The research on creativity pointed the same way. Pressure, fear of judgment, and stress force the brain into a narrow focus that is good for deadlines and bad for new ideas. Insight tends to arrive after a person steps away from the problem and feels safe and at ease. I wanted a deck that would give designers permission to step away on purpose.
Every card follows the same four moves, so a person always knows what comes next.
I wrote each card for a designer at work with a real problem on the desk. The exercises take between 20 and 30 minutes, and anyone can stretch or shrink that time. Click or tap a card to turn it over.
Nobody can force an aha moment, but anyone can set up the conditions that invite one.
An aha moment is the instant when the answer to a problem, or the next step, suddenly becomes clear. Brain research shows a burst of activity just before that instant, and the parts of the brain that make surprising connections work best when a person is not concentrating on the problem.
That finding shaped every card. The exercises move a designer's attention off the problem, add something enjoyable, and create a little safety, then hand the problem back. I also designed each card to work for a single person at a desk or for a team in a room or on a call.
- Each card gives a busy designer a legitimate reason to take a break.
- The exercises ask people to draw, write, and photograph, so ideas leave their heads and land somewhere they can see.
- Two of the cards build in a moment of letting go, such as tearing up a page of harsh judgments or returning found objects to nature.
- The cards work for one person looking for a spark and for teams running a brainstorm or a team-building session.
- Every card ends at the same place, which is the design the person brought to the table.
In my words
We have to be kind to ourselves and others to create the comfort and safety we need for breadth-first processing, and subsequently, creative and innovative designs.
Ashley KarrFrom my 2015 workshop, Design Thinking with Mother Nature
Turn the cards over and work through an exercise yourself.
I rebuilt the deck as a clickable prototype in my original look, with AI writing the code from my designs. The meanings and exercises come from my own cards, lightly edited, and I drew new line icons for this version. Change and Movement show only their fronts here, because their full text is still in my print files.
Things to try
- Choose Draw a card, or open any card in the deck.
- Click the big card, or press Enter on the card, to turn the card over and read its meaning.
- Choose Start the exercise and run the timer for the first step.
- Work through every step, write a note on the last one, and choose Finish.
- Open Movement or Change to see a card front from later in the deck.
Heavy black rules, one warm gold, and simple line drawings make every card feel like a printed object.
The prototype keeps the style I set for the printed cards: a white card with a thick black frame, a geometric sans serif for names, a gold label for the quality, a black bar for its meaning in brief, and a classic serif for reading. Every text color passes current contrast standards.
Color
- Aha gold
#E8C263The card name label, primary buttons, and the current step, always with ink text - Ink
#111111Card frames, rules, line drawings, text, and the top bar - Card white
#FFFFFFCard faces, the timer panel, and secondary buttons - Linen
#F3EFE6The table the cards sit on - Warm gray
#57534CLabels, step lengths, and steps still to come - Sand
#E4DDCFThe empty part of the timer bar
Type
Card names and headings
Craftsmanship
Jost
Labels and buttons
Start the exercise
Jost
Meanings and exercises
With the care of a master craftsperson, write your name.
Libre Baskerville
Timer
5:00
Jost
Components
Card front
A line drawing, the quality's name on a gold label, and its short meaning on a black bar sit between two heavy rules, just as on the printed card.
Card back
The meaning appears on the back, so a person reads and thinks before any exercise starts.
Fanned deck
The whole deck sits in a gentle fan with Shuffle and Draw a card beside the deck, so choosing a card feels like play.
Step timer
Each exercise has its own countdown with Start, Pause, and Reset, so a person can work at their own pace.
Progress list
Square markers show finished, current, and upcoming exercises beside a small copy of the card.
Principles
- A card turns over only when someone clicks, taps, or presses a key, never on hover.
- The meaning comes before the exercise, because reflection sets up the insight.
- Every exercise names its time and supplies up front, so a busy person can decide whether to start now.
- The last screen always points back to the design the person brought.
The deck became printed cards, e-books, live workshops, and later an app I designed on air.
Aha Moment Cards was my own small product, so its results are about what the cards became rather than sales figures. Click or tap a card to turn it over.
Good ideas need a little safety first, and the cards taught me to design for that safety.
As a principal designer offering AI-native product research and design, I plan workshops and research sessions that give people room to think, step away, and come back. If your team feels stuck on a product problem, I would be glad to plan a working session with you.
There is plenty more where this came from.
Names, brands, and data in my case studies are changed to protect my clients.
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