Top Three Orientation Takeaways
1. Having a growth mindset is an ongoing process
Throughout this intensive 5-day bootcamp/orientation, I have realized that I can’t just snap my fingers and have an ongoing growth mindset. Having two hours to prepare questions for frontline workers about their mental health and then being thrown into the fire with interviews is uncomfortable. Coming up with 300 ideas overnight is uncomfortable. Choosing a product concept to test with users within 15 minutes is—you guessed it—uncomfortable! So, what have I been learning? That truly having a growth mindset requires you to check in with yourself consistently. As someone coming into design with a fairly unrelated background, this experience is going to test me. It’s going to require me to be brave and to challenge myself to test the limits of what I previously thought I was capable of. What drew me to this field was the potential for creativity. It’s a muscle that I haven’t gotten to flex too much in the professional world, and with this opportunity comes the work of showing up in an honest and open-minded way every single day. I can’t wait to dive in.
2. Active listening while having an agenda
I was shocked at how challenging the interviewing component of the design process is. I figured, “I’m an empathetic person—shouldn’t be too hard.” The truth is that design research and interviewing does not just involve having a conversation with someone; it is about keeping in mind what you are setting out to learn and attempting to guide the interview in a way that highlights the question at hand. I found myself focusing on which question I would ask the participant next, which made it nearly impossible to hone in on the details of what they were saying in order to guide the interview to the next level of depth. Experiencing this component of the design process at the beginning of the program (and before we really know what we’re doing) was eye-opening. It allowed me to recognize the importance of staying in the present moment to fully understand what the participant is saying.
3. Progress, not perfection
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” A lot of us are perfectionists, and a lot of us feel like it’s one of those useful yet crippling double-edged swords. I think I’ve been a perfectionist since the day I was born. I have memories of having “braid wars” with my mom, continuously undoing her hours of hard work and telling her, “they’re not quite right.” Or coloring in my coloring book (which was supposed to be fun) and ripping out a page any time I made a mistake. Over the years, I’ve had to let go of some of this. It’s just not possible to do all the things you want to do if you’re trying to do them perfectly. I’m excited that being a designer is going to force me to shed even more layers of this tendency. These past five days have taught me that what matters as a designer is creating something that’s useful for people. The rest of the details are—well—details! The importance of hitting a deadline and covering the breadth of a topic outweighs attaining perfection, especially at the beginning of the design process.
