reflection after reading “Metamorphosis “
I feel really excited when i saw Marty’s post of Metamorphosis because it provide me a quite systematic way for me to reflect what i have learnt from the past project. I did not realize by myself with some of these problems, but after i see them and think for a while about them, i got a much clearer idea about myself. And most of the problem i struggled with in the past projects are in level of “p”, which mean i am definitely in the stage where i was supposed to be.
▪. Best solution. Naïve designers hold onto the belief that there is a best solution; experienced designers believe there exist many solutions and judged by critical criteria and presented through a design argument or explanation. (P)
Me :I, sort of, hold to one solution instead of opening eyes to explore and find more. And I also could not came up with many concept, maybe it is because when I came up with one, I just fall in love with it and not that willing to find more.
▪. Me and we. Naïve designers defend their own designs; experienced designers look to their team for inspiration and solutions. (P, T)
Me: Yeah, I am naive in this point, and I think maybe this is why sometimes when other teammates explain their concepts, I just came up with some critique first rather than see what is good in that concept. And our mentor Jeff in project 5 also pointed it out in a meeting, ”a designer is like a baby, it wants to put everything in the month. “
▪. User research. Naïve designers underplay the role of user research; they know what people want. Tools such as personas are resisted rather than embraced naturally in the design process. Experienced designers do not make assumptions about human desires and motivations; they study it instead. (P, T)
Me: Yep… in the past two projects, we basically forgot our persona in the design process; and we spent tons of time on arguing for things what we think users will do. We choose people living in the shelter after a disaster as our target user group while none of us are familiar with what exactly happened in that situation. We all “know” that we need to do research to find out the real context but we just did not do it well. And sometimes, we do some research just to ground our assumption about our design, which is actually a bias-research. The result is that we even more believe what we think about the context is right. Until two days before the due day, we did an interview with the red-cross staff who was an expert in emergency management, we realized how wrong our assumption about the context is and how wrong our design is … The lesson I learnt is, don’t hesitate to reach out to do some first-hand of research as soon as possible in the beginning of design, all the efforts will deserve. And avoid a bias-research.
▪. Algorithm / design paradox. Naïve designers expect to memorize algorithmic solutions to problems; experienced designers learn to deal with ill-structured problems, seemingly paradoxical situations and design thinking. (P, T)
Me: Ok, you know what, once I tried to figure out what should be the best design process and ask Marty for a right answer … And I just sticked to the “ answer” I got which lead to some problems in the project 4. Also in our post-mortem, our mentor pointed out that even he or other mentor said what we should do, it dose not mean what they say is totally correct. And one lesson our team learnt from project 5 is that only following the results of “voting on board” may lead to a overlooking of some important information from the minority.
▪. IT domination. Naïve designers tend to overemphasize efficiency, effectiveness, scalability; experienced designers include experience and emotion. (T)
Me: In most of the project I did in the IDP, I have to say that I put far more emphasis on the efficiency, and effectiveness part. One reason for this I could think of first is that I did not know much about how to design for experience and emotion.
What could contribute to a good experience in addition to these IT factors? My naïve answers now are a resonatory interface, a suitable way of interaction. Hope to learn more about this in class of next semester!
▪. Notebook. Naïve designers sketch for a particular project; experienced designers sketch continuously, deriving inspiration from all contexts. (T, D)
Me: It seems I have a long way to go in this because I have no idea of how to sketch continuously … All my sketch are for a particular project.
▪. Research and philosophy. Naïve designers find solutions in the HCI literature; experienced designers explore philosophical foundations of design as well. (D)
Me: I really want to figure out what my design philosophy is, but I need more time to think about it and need more practice to clarify it.
