Fierce and Dynamic
i. Fast
ii. Sharp
iii. Tigers
iv. Wild
v. Frantic
vi. Bold
vii. Fluid
viii. Movement
ix. Earthquakes
x. Jagged mountains
Whimsical and Delicate
i. Spider webs
ii. Rainbows
iii. Clouds
iv. Flowers
v. Pixie dust
vi. Fairies
vii. Deer
viii. Butterflies
ix. Unicorns
x. Snowflakes
Safe and Efficient
i. Boring
ii. Clean
iii. Minimal
iv. Predictable
v. Utilitarian
vi. Tight
vii. Simple
viii. Clean
ix. Deceptively difficult to achieve
x. Understandable
Unexpected Object Part 2
For my unexpected object, I chose a brown ceramic bowl. The bowl is from IKEA and is regular-sized, about 5.5 inches in diameter and 2.5 inches deep. Typical associations with bowls are that they’re used to hold cereal, soup, and other foods, both hot and cold. They are also often associated with a feeling of comfort in the home, including cooking, happiness, and family. One might also think of bowls as associated with relaxation and healing when they’re filled with hot chicken noodle soup. These associations were echoed by the class when I presented the bowl to them and asked people to call out associations that came to mind.
In a more abstract sense, bowls are typically used to hold or contain physical items. For my manipulated object, I wanted to contrast this typical sense and demonstrate how an object can be used in a different context for a different purpose without having to manipulate it in any material way. Just like most people, I love music and love making playlists on Spotify. But perhaps not like everyone, I have been a copyeditor for a music publication, I have run my own music blog, I have created music, and I have experience being a DJ. I often find myself ‘DJing’ parties or gatherings by playing music on my phone. However, not all places have a proper stereo through which to play music, and the volume of my phone is often not enough to overcome the volume of conversation. This situation is where a bowl has served me well many times before. My trick is to place my phone inside the bowl, shifting the bowl’s utility from a container of physical things to a projector of non-physical things – that is, sound waves. In this way, I have thus transformed an ordinary bowl into an unexpected acoustic amplifier. It is like having a miniature amphitheater in your kitchen. Who needs an expensive sound system, anyway? In a real bind, even a plastic Solo© cup can be used in place of the hardier ceramic bowl, though with lesser effect.
When I demonstrated this new use for the common bowl in class, I could tell that many students were surprised. The raised eyebrows and open mouths of some students indicated to me they had never seen such a thing. I could tell by the upturned mouth corners and smiling eyes on the faces of others that they had clearly seen, or even used, this exact trick before, but were still surprised to be seeing it again in a classroom setting. I would guess that both kinds of surprise were possible because I had, not 15 seconds before, just asked everyone to put into their minds the things they normally associated with bowls. To this point, I think that this kind of explicit mental or physical priming followed by immediate juxtaposition is an effective measure for inducing maximum surprise. I would also imagine that many students in the class would now associate bowls with music, phones, Spotify, parties, dancing, talking, laughter, smiling, and friends. Several students told me after class that they were, indeed, surprised by my ‘stereo bowl,’ so I would confidently say that my intended effect was achieved.
A Junior Designer in B2B SaaS
One of our interviews was with a user interface/user experience designer at ClickTime, a business-to-business SaaS company specializing in time tracking and budgeting products. She studied industrial design as an undergraduate and has been working professionally for the last year. For her, design is “the discipline of producing strategies and solutions for a goal or purpose.”
An important part of the design discipline is user research. She explains that “understanding the users and contexts is essential when I begin skinning a product or interface.” As part of the user needs research process, stakeholder interviews are conducted and personas are created. Some internal factors to discover and incorporate are the product’s positioning and communication goals. It is also important to consult, update, or create the company’s style and brand guide. She says that she also does a large amount of her research on user research and design trends online, where “the research resources are endless and there is so much information out there.” However, It is often “a matter of sorting out fact from opinion” when it comes to online research.
She then produces multiple design compositions at each stage of fidelity for peer and/or client review. Her work involves cross-functional collaboration, so team buy-in is important and her “creative decision-making is calibrated in order to work successfully toward a common goal, purpose, or aesthetic.” It can sometimes be a challenge to find the right balance of information to display on an interface. It is often that “having an uncluttered and easy-to-use interface helps define a successful user experience.”
When she needs to introduce users to a new experience, she builds associations by building context a little at a time. This can mean starting with something familiar, if possible, so that the new experience isn’t as jarring. She finds creative inspiration in trying new things and meeting new people, and she predicts that the future is in VR: “Interactions will be a full-body experience.”
Virtual Reality Designer – Google
I got the chance to speak with a virtual reality designer at a conference in Los Angeles. He has been doing this work professionally for only 6 months, but the field is still relatively new. He received his MFA in motion graphics with an emphasis on three dimensional technologies.
When I asked him what his concept of VR design is, he replied that the goal is to create an immersive and memorable experience without making the user feel sick. Unfortunately, making someone feel vertigo or motion sickness is common in the virtual reality field. In order to not make someone’s first experience in this medium and uncomfortable one, constraining the design guidelines to optimize comfort is a prevailing emphasis on his team. Taking cues from human factors and ergonomics creates three dimensional “zones” to place user interface elements that do not strain the user’s neck or eyes.
Another interesting concept was the emphasis on acknowledging the viewers agency in the VR application. Because virtual reality is a very intimate medium (the user is a part of the experience, not simply viewing it) it is important to tell the user how he or she fits within this experience. Part of this involves identifying what they can do. Can they move their arms and interact with elements, are they a ghost in a scene, or are they simply being taken on a ride?
Furthermore, there is a lot of experimenting taking place to see how to best guide a user’s attention. Since we cannot confirm where he or she is looking, how can we use motion, lights, and sound to coax someone to look a certain direction? Inspiration from immersive theatre, haunted houses, and even restaurants provide great examples on how to establish ambience within a scene that does not force a certain perspective on the user.
Overall, it seemed like a lot of the design process involved trying new things, and seeing if they work. It’s hard to know how something will be perceived once in virtual reality, so rapid prototyping then experiencing it in VR is paramount. While some design choices are obviously not going to be ideal in three dimensions, two dimensional design principles should be challenged often. Although there is skepticism over how this new medium will take off, it’s undeniable that it is an exciting space for design.
Principal Product Designer at Salesforce
Mark is a well-liked and highly regarded product designer at Salesforce. He is a key design lead for a young and growing product in the Salesforce ecosystem, Wave Analytics.
His design philosophy sees experience more as a feeling. It might fill a need, but instead of being strictly utilitarian about the purpose behind it, there also needs to be some sort of emotional resonance. The emotion can be something as simple as the sense accomplishment, ie: I did this thing and I can move on to the next thing. Data can be applied design, but the most important thing to mark is the feeling that his designs illicit.
He also spent some time about design being both a team activity as well as a solo pursuit and how one can go back and forth and how it’s healthy to keep other people in the loop, but it is also good to put your head down to get some concentrated work done. This sense of back and forth, or give and take in design is present through much of the interview. He talked about how a design is never really fully complete and how you can keep iterating on the work to try to push it further and better every day. Along the same lines, we talked about how some days may be very productive and everything will be snapping together creativity wise, but other days will be a sluggish push to produce anything. This ebb and flow of activity, creativity, sociability, and production seem to be a common trait.
When asked about what he would do if he couldn’t design, he paused because I don’t think he ever thought about his life without design, but he quickly knew how he would spend his time. It was related to how he was always curious with how things work. As a child, one of his memories is about taking apart a remote control car and understanding how each piece fit together. And he thought about how each piece was designed for a purpose both alone and how to fit into a system. From remote control cars, he now cares about bicycles enough to be happy fixing them if he wasn’t designing. Other things in his life related to design are his passion for music, animation, and painting. I think each of these relate back to his connection to emotion in design, as well as representing different forms that he can take part in constructing.
Designer Interview
Designer: Sarah
Firm: Rapt Studio, San Francisco
About Sarah:
Sarah is now a designer in a bay area based design studio. She holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from MIT. Prior to that, she studied film and media studies in Brown University. Sarah knew that she would become an architect when she was in high school. She was good at science and arts back then. After she found out that she could do her master’s degree without studying Architecture as her undergraduate major, she chose to do something else first. Sarah deems design as “problem solving with elegant solutions”. She thinks all her hobbies and interests are the sources keeping her energetic about design.
Process and Decision Making
In regards to the design process, Sarah always starts with an original concept. The concept may be from a variety of things that inspire her. Then, she would try to apply the concept almost everywhere to the design. For instance, she was asked to design a bunch of conference rooms for a tech company. The major concept for the whole project was “family”. Then, when it comes to the conference rooms, the concept was transferred to “living room”. Throughout the design iterations, she kept tracking all the ideas and decisions upon this concept and finally got to the final results. As the project moving to the construction phase, cost became a major constraint to the design. What Sarah did was trying to specify all the details and it worked out. She would be very satisfied to see people using the space really like it. Though as an architect, she is also exposed to a lot of other design field due to the studio she works for. She really enjoys the brainstorming process in her workplace, where she could have her colleague designers working at the same time to come up with ideas on a huge whiteboard.
Influences:
Her design process has changed as she becomes more confident and more experienced about the work. She also thinks as her ego turned down a bit, she becomes more capable of listening to others. To Sarah, thinking about people who will experience the space she designs mostly influences her work. Also, she also thinks having fun during the process will lead her to better work. Sarah has open-mind to almost everything, and she believes both her personal interests and work experience are important factors in her creative decision making process.
Perspectives of the design field:
To Sarah, aesthetics = simplicity, also it’s about making beautiful work. As an architect, Sarah appreciates details a lot. She values a lot on designer’s consciousness about any kind of details, on the drawings, at the construction site and so on. She thinks details reveal designer’s ability of control. In the future, Sarah sees the outlook of more hybrid practices in the design field, where people work across disciplines to create better work. As for most annoying thing about being a designer for Sarah, it’s the sexism in the construction field. There is such bias that the workers think architectural designers only care about design instead of building method and science. She’s working hard and making every effort she could as a way to advocate her attitude on that.
Existing Taste Associations
Grapefruit – sour, unpleasant, healthy, stringy, pulpy
Vinegar – pungent, intense, versatile, potato chips, salads
Lemon – sour, tart, seafood, salad dressing, zesty, refreshing
Chocolate – sweet, candy, desserts, brownies, rich, decadent
New Taste Associations
Grapefruit – bright, sweet, juicy, effervescent, refreshing
Vinegar – sweet, bubbly, thick, alcoholic, peppery
Lemon – citrusy, tangy, bright, sweet, refreshing, candy
Chocolate – powdery, dry, bitter, unsatisfying, unappealing
I enjoyed this workshop for two reasons. First, I liked that we put into practice some of the concepts we discussed in class. Specifically, practicing articulating our associations with these foods was a valuable exercise in getting me to think about such things more descriptively. Second, I liked how this exercise encouraged us to consider that an experience is more than just visual or auditory communication. Texture and taste can play an important role in the way we experience things, especially food. I went into the exercise with a positive attitude, excited to experience foods in a new way. I think that having this mindset enabled me to be open and honest with the sensations and associations of tasting each item. It was hard not to have any preconceived notions of what things might taste like, which led to even greater surprise when, for instance, lemons tasted like sweet candy to me. I am intrigued to try miracle berries again and show other people how they can completely alter the way food can be experienced.
I think that the tastes we tasted during this workshop are always present in foods. It was just a matter of masking or enhancing certain tastes that the miracle berries facilitated. I think tasting foods like this once a year would help develop one’s palette. This could lead to new cooking experimentation in trying to draw out or combine flavors that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. It could also lead to being able to pick out more subtle flavors or flavor patterns, like a sommelier attempts to do when tasting wines. I am actually very intrigued in trying this kind of experiment during a beer or wine tasting. If food tasted like this all the time, then we would become accustomed to these flavors and would be surprised if, one day, a lemon tasted sour. It would not be inherently good or bad if this was the case; it would simply be an adjustment of what we expected. In this way, both surprise and anticipation are damped when frequency increases. The less frequently we experience something, the less accustomed we are to it, and the more potential it has to surprise us.
Part 1
For me, snowboarding is a passion that I’ve felt since the second day I strapped on a board. I say second day because the first day was quite painful, but that second day was when things really started to click. It’s a physical, mental, and emotional release. It’s been a love/hate relationship full of ups and downs, but at the end of the day, I always want more. I love snowboarding so much that I dropped everything to be a ‘ski bum’ and teach lessons for two seasons in Park City, Utah, immediately after undergrad.
I’ve had a number of snowboards throughout my years of snowboarding, and I’ve had a somewhat different relationship with each. These relationships generally depend on a combination of the physical properties of the board and the memories I have from riding them. Each board has a different feel and is better at different types of riding depending on its physical properties. Generally speaking, however, I can say that my snowboards represent to me a part of me that is always striving to be better. That is to say, snowboarding, like any other endeavor, is a never-ending journey of improvement, and each time I step onto my board, I am reminded not only of how far I’ve come, but all that lies ahead. My snowboard calls out to me as a challenge but reminds me of all the fun that I’ve on it. With literally one foot forward and one foot back, I can straddle both the past and future. Of course, the ideal is to be completely present while riding, which my snowboards also have a hand in encouraging as they physically connect me to the mountain.
Snowboards are like a key to nature for me. You can’t ride up a ski lift without a pass, but you also can’t ride up the lift without a snowboard (or skis). In this way, my snowboards have been an instrument of exploration, of discovery and connection with nature. Yes, I have seen many sides of nature without my snowboard, but my snowboard gives me access to otherwise unnavigable areas of the mountain. And not only access, but the ability to interact with the mountain in novel ways. I sometimes think of my board as a paintbrush, and the mountain as my canvas. It is an outlet for creativity and adventure.
Part 3
If we took the time to dissect and observe every object in the world this way, we would find ourselves in a seemingly infinite spiral of analysis. Progress and production, as we define them in the capitalist sense, would grind to a halt as everyone became rapt in contemplation. This is not to say that deep observational-emotional analysis does not hold merit. This is what philosophers do with thoughts, artists do with their subjects, and engineers do with the things they’re engineering (though probably less with the emotional side). I think it’s important to be able to ground yourself and take a step back after these types of long looks into things. Regain some context, as it were. I do think that observing the world in this way holds benefit in that it helps foster admiration and the kind of shoe-gazing wonderment lost on much of the adult population. It also seems to help breath life to the emotions and passions that make us uniquely human, while giving those feelings a handhold in the often utilitarian world in which we live.
I think that more people, especially adults, could benefit from periodically taking this kind of contemplative deep dive into the objects and thoughts they come in contact with so frequently. This kind of analysis would seem to hold great benefit for individuals needing a creative or emotional release from the pressures of everyday life. Conversely, this kind of deconstruction and examination could help incite a creative spark. Most people would stand to benefit from the awe inspired by the complexity of engineering and design hidden behind even the simplest of objects. Given its reflective nature, I think this kind of exercise would be most useful later in the lifecycle of an object of frequent use or one related to an emotionally charged experience. Doing this exercise at a later stage of involvement will help give a more fundamental understanding of the object’s design and emotional attachment. A person cannot have built up meaningful associations with an object until after some time with the object. Surely people might have immediate reactions to new things, but only after some experience with the object can a person more definitely say how it makes them feel.
After having broken down my snowboard into formal steps, I do think that I have an even greater appreciation for how its precise technical engineering makes it a more sensitive medium through which I can experience the mountain. This technical engineering indirectly brings me feelings of connectedness with nature and calmness of the mind. Before this exercise, I had previously known about the different material and dimensional components of a snowboard, but I don’t think I had ever thought about all of them at the same time or how they act in concert to lend to the experience of snowboarding. I have always been grateful to be able to snowboard, but now I feel additional gratitude toward the countless engineers and craftsmen who helped design and manufacture my board.