7 in 72
Whew! It’s Sunday, Applied Dreams are over as of last Friday, and my life is finally returning to some semblance of normalcy…or at least what passes for it around here. Guess how much sleep I got between Wednesday and Friday?
Applied Dreams: I was very pleased with how things turned out. Which was a nice change from how I felt after the last presentation. I don’t know if I completely nailed it, because I’ve had my head in this stuff for two weeks and it makes sense to me, but I think I got my message across. Most importantly, the person we most wanted to see my project was able to be in the audience and he “got” it and seemed pretty excited about the concept. Certainly the physical form of my project could be improved (I don’t claim to be an industrial designer), but the core concept is strong.
I worked like a dog, though, to get it into presentation form… Over the weekend I started to have doubts about where things were heading, and I ended up just brushing them aside while I focused on some of the things that people were saying from my crits. This turned out to be the worst thing I could have done.
The biggest lesson I learned from this project is that you have to care about your work. Caring about your work imbues it with quality. (Note: I was surprised to find the complete text of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is available online.)
So on Monday I had to face the facts: my project was “heading towards banality”—not an easy or pleasant thing to hear, but it was true. And it took me the rest of the week to turn things around to the point where I cared about the project. The difference being that I was in control of the project, and I wasn’t just implementing someone else’s suggestions or beliefs.
As a designer, I can’t just do what someone tells me. I have to know what my beliefs and values are, and stick to them. Otherwise what I do isn’t really worth doing: if I don’t care about my work, then who will?
So part one was redefining what I wanted to do, and part two was making it happen. And that’s the part that was most painful, seeing as most of the work took place in the last couple of days before the final presentation.
A key part of redefining what I wanted to do was taking control of the situation. Was I going to sit back and try to work with what content I had access to, or was there a way for me to go out and make some content?
I really like the author Harlan Ellison, and someone once made a comment about him that he’s the kind of person you’d want around in an emergency, because he’s the kind of guy who would commandeer a gurney in a hospital, make a racket, get the doctors to look at you… I admire that ability, not because it’s about getting things done your way or being obnoxious, but because it’s about imposing your will on a situation. It’s about getting things done.
There’s definitely a philosophical side to this education for me, because it’s forcing me to confront and define what exactly I believe in, and, more importantly, how to express and communicate those beliefs and values. It’s not easy, but it’s very rewarding.
It’s sort of hard to express my state of mind right now, partly because it’s rushing around at a thousand miles an hour. Anything I try to write doesn’t really capture the essence of what I’m thinking. But here’s a shot, courtesy of Torolab: Propose rather than protest.