sarahnichols

[sarahnichols]

Process Journal:​ Evaluation​

Take a pause and reflect - is how I define the act of evaluation. Whether individually or with the group, it's been the same process of slowing down and checking in on where we stand with the project.

The culture of our group has been open and welcoming of formative feedback throughout the project. Thoughtfully considering areas of shortcomings, checking in on how well we're meeting the goals we set out, and measuring our progress internally and externally with group voting and user polls. We've done the formal rankings by gathering summative feedback and accessing findings, and we've spent time deliberating amongst ourselves more casually during group time. This 'jury of peers' approach has worked for our team in every step of the creative problem solving process.

It's led us to irritative evaluation, where we're continually assessing the outcome so that we can ultimately improve the product we're building. One method of evaluation our group helped me understand better is the reward and celebrate wins and misses. I appreciated the time taken to acknowledge everything holistically along the way. I've been so impressed with the levels of engagement and dedication in our group, there's this continual upward movement towards uplifting and encouraging each other's personal best - so inspiring!

[sarahnichols]

Process Journal: Ideation

Our group ideation process involved lots of brainstorming, post-its, attribute weaving, questions, lively discussions, and certainly a good dose of chaos and ambiguity (as shown in the pictures of our FigJam workspace below).

In all of the "how might we...?" questions asked, we started developing key areas of focus for our project and innovative tool. The questions that intrigued us the most were were:

1) "How might we create a tech product that the everyday user (home owner or renter) can use for their homes to make them resilient for future climate change?"

2) "How can we help people understand and anticipate local effects from climate change (problem - people are not connected to their local environment)?"

3) "How can we make a product that helps us make right decisions on buying a home based on future climate changes?"

Its fascinating to think these questions born in this ideation phase are the roots of the problem statement we'll be solving for... and that the answers to these questions will yield and exciting new product at the end of this term.

IYA Team work!

[sarahnichols]

Process Journal: Implementation, Part 2

As our group continued deep into the implementation phase, we ebbed and flowed into both arenas of success and failure. Success came out on top eventually because we trusted the process... however failure snuck in several times because we got tangled up and didn't hear each other well enough at points, and felt confused and lost in the mess of all our ideas.

Through this lengthily stage, we didn't need to pivot from our main idea - but instead we needed to define it better through our personas. Things definitely came easier when we focused on how to tell the story of who & why we were solving for with our innovative app. I personally enjoyed developing each persona character and their individual needs and wants.

Visually I collected well over a hundred images on Pinterest, and built a catalogue of photos to help us see our personas and imagine their problems and how this new app would help them. For the group, I noticed that after seeing the characters brought to life in the images, everything moved into focus much faster, and we became unstuck, making leaps and bounds towards building out our concepts, and business canvas model, wireframes, and app renderings.

[sarahnichols]

Process Journal:​ Implementation, Part 1

We're in it to win it. Ownership, engagement, respect, and individual responsibility have played a large part in successfully implementing our group work - we've been putting in the time and actively working to creatively problem solve for our project.

The methods we've employed thus far in our creative problem solving of this assignment? We've diverged and ruminated in the ideation phase, discussed the problem statement, digested research, processed each other's opinions and body language. We've converged together, reexamining and streamline our focus, we've gotten outside feedback, accommodated differing view points.

With this movement towards our final presentation pitch - we've made plans to break out and work on specific tasks, and scheduled time to review, prepared rough outline schemes of how we progress through to the finish line.

To effectively pitch our idea to stakeholders, we'll have to successfully tell the story of our concept and product idea. We'll need to visually communicate the objects through wire frames, paint a vivid picture of the personas and show the images of their environment we are solving for. We've gathered data to help explain our full process, and will detail the interactions involved in how we plan to implement our project.

[sarahnichols]

Definition - Becoming Clear

Sandwich. Deadlines. Heaviness. Swimming. Hospice.

These key words are all part of the problem I'm defining, the situation I'd love to find a creative problem solution for. My father had two heart attacks last week. The option to install a pacemaker was taken off the table due to his age and fragility. He's just come home last night and hospice care has begun.

I deeply ache with the understanding that I cannot solve for father time, or heal the old tired body. I look at this life problem, and there is no easy answer. Breaking it down, the problem isn't about my father at all - it's about my over packed schedule. I'm right at the mid-life sandwich point, in-between raising kids and dealing with two aging parents, all while holding down a full time job and doing grad school at night. The relentless deadlines at work, the mental health challenges of my eldest son, and now the end of life for my dad leads to a mind of swimming thoughts and heaviness in my heart. Its hard to think straight, I have to remember to breathe.

The gravity of the reality - this is life. We all come in and go out. We all have responsibilities and obligations. My father has been blessed with 90 years. This is natural. I must prioritize better so that I don't miss this bittersweet stage by numbing and consuming myself in work. I'm starting to conceptualize, and bridge the gap from where I am today, to the desired space of being peaceful with the process of death, and becoming clear that I want to be more emotionally and physically present for my family at this time.

Dad's bday 2020

[sarahnichols]

Analysis Paralysis

Above drawing by Jason Yip.

The struggle is real, too many choices can be overwhelming - In my line of work as an interior designer, I regularly find my self ruminating over a seemingly infinite number of design ideas and directions which can cause me to get stuck in the dreaded zone of analysis paralysis.

Fear of failure is probably the culprit behind freezing up and not being able to make decisions confidently. As covered in the lesson module, I now see with my pack rat tendencies I set myself up for added stress and lost time when I literally gather thousands of design ideas for each category I research for clients.

I believe Jason Yip's bottom sketch above helps illustrate the collector technique best, which is one of the more preferred methods of analysis, and something I will be making a conscious effort to adopt. Filtering and selecting ideas as I go instead of amassing piles of materials to sort through will really help me alleviate anxiety and save time in the long run in my design projects.

(unknown artist)

[sarahnichols]

Interpretations of Acceptance...

"Acceptance is the key to everything." - Michael J. Fox

Words from those who've experienced life's heaviness and hardships seem to carry extra weight and wisdom. Michael J. Fox's words in the quote above on acceptance sound sobering to me, knowing only surface level headlines that he's suffered with Parkinson's in his later years.

Through the good and bad, we learn to accept that there are things we can change, and then, there are many things we cannot. When it comes to the exercise of creative problem solving however... this is the realm of things we can change.

My personal acceptance of any new challenge, new project, new task, or problem to solve begins with weighing it internally. In the past, I've tended to be optimistic and willing to take on risks, sometimes (many times) too quickly, and not digesting/or seeing the whole picture clearly. More often now, maturity and hindsight help me pause and think it through more carefully. I appreciate that I'm allowed to say no, give up, and not pursue if I find the benefits aren't equally rewarding.

I realize I've been too accepting, most of my life. Said yes to new asks, new challenges, new projects, when I should've said no. Examining my flawed behavioral patterns of acceptance, the roots are tangled up in the desire to please others, and to do the expected things I "should" do. Now, self-preservation and better life balance are becoming the deciding factors on what I take on solving.

But when I look to the heaviness of life's uncertainties, the humble and courageous words of Michael J. Fox give me pause - we are here to live this life in the unique way that each of us are gifted it. The truth of his perspective on acceptance encourages and enlightens, and welcomes me to bring my whole self into the process of accepting or rejecting opportunities unapologetically.

In another quote below, Fox elaborates further...

[sarahnichols]

Exploring Creativity

Creativity for me personally is like entering into a quiet storm; when I'm in this zone there is calm, frenzy, peace, freeness, control, disorder... a symphony of pulsing thoughts whirling together - it is like an energizing rain that saturates my brain in a wash of possibility. It is a pure luxury to get lost in that space where time stretches and warps, and creative solutions are found.

Ultimately, connection is the goal of my creative endeavors. The challenge is always the same, how to bring all the ideas together succinctly, so that it makes sense to whoever else gets to experience the outcome. Success is measured by how well the creative solution connects with its audience.

Creativity is very much an expression of a moment in time. Very much a verb taking an organic flight into the unknown. While it is often blissful, it is equally terrifying... in the blizzard of choices, finding your way through, grabbing the fantastical flakes of ideas, then ordering the chaos of the seemingly infinite number of options... it can quickly turn into a frightening experience of -- oh snap, how am I going to do all this? Reality becomes the heavy anchor that pulls you back down to the realm of what's actually going to happen.

Allowing yourself to explore creativity can be a most interestingly human process... you may just find when you unbuckle your expectations what I have -- unifying joy, pain, sorrow, healing, renewal, and deep purpose.

Below is a screenshot of a 2017 late night post on Instagram, enjoying being wrapped up in the zone I said:

"Late in my quiet hours… lives peace, calm, love, creativity, gratitude, appreciation and SO much possibility… #silenceisgolden #shhh #imthinking #abouteverthing #aboutnothing #introvertlife #myparadise #mytruth #justmemyselfandi