shiuli - learning so far

Reflecting is the best way to analyze and learn things. This is the first thing that I learnt in this class of Design Methodology.

The first class where we began with introducing ourselves was interesting. It actually took me for a while to think and communicate my fear. This helped me to understand my colleagues and myself a step further. The next few exercises where we were asked to design the million-dollar comb or to buy an object worth Rs.10, it was in a state of confusion. To design a comb, an object that is very commonly used and that can be bought at a very reasonable rate, it was a tough job for me, but observing everyone’s ideas opened a new door to my thinking process. This taught me to widen my perspective.

To learn the concept of ‘Bi-association’, and ‘Affordances’ were interesting. They were so simple, yet not very observed. Thinking of a wooden block, T scale or even the bottle, in the weirdest form was fun, but then it gave the freedom of thinking. This taught us to think in a direction that it had not been previously thought of. The movie “The Deep Dive”, where this aspect of learning was taken a step further.

The further exercises improved my observing power. It taught me to observe the minutest details, and identifying the problems, then again to understand the reason of the problem followed by how can it be solved? The week ended with the brainstorming session, it involved all the skills that we had learnt throughout, it required us to observe things in great detail, understanding the character of the object and thinking of new concepts while retaining those features. Making prototypes was equally interesting since we started understanding the object three dimensionally.

It ended with confusion, frustration and enthusiasm. Confusion of not being able to understand what to do, frustrations when not being able to do what I set out to, and the enthusiasm to make something new. At the end, reflecting back, I can say that I learnt to work in a team and respecting people, increased my observation power and understanding the subject, and I learnt to view things in a new dimension.