Post 10: Progress Since Design Preview

Taking a UIUX Design Approach to Tangible Product Design

Since my first design preview with my peers, I noticed that a lot of the brainstorming/ideation I was doing has theoretically helped elevate the intentionality behind my work. However, something I began realizing was that a lot of the concept development I was working on in the background wasn’t really progressing my project in the front end. As a result, I have turned to one of my trusted frameworks in regards to creating: Design Thinking. There are many stages to the design thinking process, but in considering which of those would be most effective to pursue in order to progress my final project, I will focus on empathize, define, and ideate. 

Beginning with empathize, as a means to fully immerse myself into the minds behind my own personal aesthetic as well as my parents, I will create a moodboard. This moodboard will be a collage of images that evoke the emotions and states of mind behind both my parents as well as my own aesthetic. 

https://pin.it/3JvqmgWyI 

Although I would much rather cover my room with vintage magazine covers and posters of professional female surfers, I found with this exercise that I can still embody some similarly powerful, feminine, and deeply passionate imagery within my work that combines traits favored by my parents and their aesthetic. 

Now onto the define stage of the design thinking process, I will engage with this exercise by synthesizing the research I have done into a clear and actionable problem statement, centered around the user– in this case, both myself and my parents. Rather than having all these scattered ideas, goals, drawbacks, and specifications along with a backstory that prior to this hasn’t been explicitly told, I will formulate a paragraph that clearly defines each of these in a way that tells a story. 

Problem Statement: 

“As the end of the school year begins to approach, I’ve started thinking about moving back to my bedroom in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island, New Jersey, after graduation. Having lived in Boulder for the past few years, I’ve focused most of my attention on making my college room a safe space that truly reflects who I am, so my beach room has remained practically empty. Now, my goal is to decorate it in a way that feels like me and provides comfort and inspiration. However, my parents insist it matches the house’s pristine, coastal aesthetic, which isn’t my style, and they’ve made it clear it can’t resemble a college dorm. So, I need to find a way to blend my personal style with their modest coastal design. Despite the contrast, I’m ready to take on the challenge of creating a space that feels like mine while respecting their vision for the house.”

Creating this problem statement has given me lots of clarity with how I will move forward with my main project as it clearly expresses the who, what, where, when, and why behind each aspect of the work. With this newfound vision towards my main project, I feel as though I have regained some agency back into my creative process– not letting the constraints be the sole factor in dictating or determining the final outcome of my work.

Lastly, the third stage of the design thinking process I will partake in today is ideate. Even though I have done some extensive ideation into the minor and major details behind my work, I feel as though I never found time to truly explore the endless variety of creative possibilities without judgment or hesitation. As a result, I will take part in creating “wordscape” for my main project. In this exercise, I will give myself just three minutes to write down as many words as I can that are related to the combined aesthetic I will develop in this project. 

Despite the fact that this exercise initially felt pretty straightforward, I am very glad I chose to fully commit in doing so as creating a space for me to explore ideas without any tentativeness introduced me to a wide variety of new possibilities that I never previously considered. It allowed me to find some connections and common grounds between my aesthetic and that of my parents. Rather than approaching this design solution as a bunch of seemingly different elements having to magically mesh with one another, I began viewing the solution as a united entity that only grows stronger, the more diverse the visual identities. Thus, this “wordscape” exercise being part of the ideation stage of the design thinking process has allowed me to general a shared visual language for my final work that synthesizes the two aesthetics in unison rather than in opposition.