letting go…

In one of the lecture sessions that have gone by, Marty talked about something that ironically stuck to me like glue…”letting go”.

As a designer, we tend to design and come with ideas and concept ever so often. But, ‘letting go’ is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do as an amateur designer. I’m guessing you professionals out there are used to it by now (or may be not!).

One of the projects I’m working on currently for CHI Student Design Competition, involves the homeless population. The problem description can be found here. To be honest, my group has struggled with its dynamics and we are just starting to work as a ‘team’. Solving team issues is a whole another experience, something I will blog about at a later stage. Anyway, as we started generating ideas and concepts, none of the ideas i came up with appealed to me except one. This particular idea, stuck to me like glue. I was excited, and like any other amateur designer, thought to myself, “this is it…this is a winner..”!

I now realize was wrong. Its funny how Marty mentioned the same thing a month or so back, when he said we will come up with ideas that we think are the in disputed solutions to the problem and after further research we find that its not so great after all. So its not like I didn’t know this would happen, but its only when it happened multiple times, that I start getting the feel of it.

Many people would argue though, saying that there have been many cases where designers have stubbornly gone ahead with an idea which turned out to be a winner. That brings up an interesting question,

When do you know “this is it” and when do you think “this is it” ?

~ by Vignesh Ramesh on November 2, 2007.