Act Like an Artist, Think like a Designer

Good Monday Morning!

This week is as good a week to get started on those ideas you’ve got stored.

As a product designer, it’s all in the plan. We plan down to the millimeter. (Literally. We work in millimeters). We start with a brief, then come up with initial ideas, then pick one of those ideas and expand on it creating more ideas, then pick one of those and create more iterations of the same idea; making prototypes - 3D and 2D, traditionally and digitally along the way. We rinse and repeat this process all with the aim of producing a product of the highest quality in line with the brief.

It sounds excessive and in some ways it is. But being in excess is a lot better than being in a deficit, right?

Well, Samsung didn’t wait until they had a foldable touchscreen mobile phone before they launched. In fact the first cellular product they launched was such poor quality they had to go back to the drawing board and relaunched three years later. And still they bring out new phones every year, each with new improvements. This is the same principal we see with all products.

You put out what you think is the best, and then you go back and you bring out something you think is better.

Every iteration, whether you publicise it or not is evidence of practice. And practice makes what? (Say it with me class)

Progress.

So see everything you do as progress. Like a savings account, every time you pick up that camera, sing a note or rhyme a word, you deposit some practice into your progress account. And you can withdraw those skills whenever you need them…. and you’re definitely gonna need them.

-B