senior-project-process-blog

[senior-project-process-blog]

On How to Grow and Idea: A Reflection

I really enjoyed this piece and the are.na site and found that they worked very well together. Specifically relating to my project proposal, I am interested in the processes that companies and brands go through to preserve their structure, and how that may fail sometimes. I find it interesting that sometimes, doing the least actually produces the most positive outcome.

Sometimes, all it takes is thinking differently, and I am interested in how thinking differently can produce a positive or a negative depending on how it was executed. The quote “This obviously requires a reworking not only of what we consider farming, but maybe even what we consider progress.” gave me great thought about what I consider progress to be. Does it mean always producing something that is useful? Or perhaps it means creating something over a number of yeas that completely changes the face of an industry. 

Does failure always look the same? Or is it something that is to be interpreted? Perhaps what seems to be failure to one person is actually success to another, just at a different speed. The quote below offers a similar question about what progress can look like:

“So what happens when moving forward actually means taking something away, or moving in a direction that appears (to us) to be backward?”

For someone, progress may mean stripping away all the unnecessary bits and pieces and getting back to bare bones in order to start building a product back up. It might mean taking pieces from nature or other industries and implanting them in your idea in order to create something new, something never seen or done before.

“The key, in my opinion, has to do with what you think it is that’s doing the producing, and where.”

Another thought-provoking quote fro the reading. I find it interesting how humans always assume we are the ones creating and producing new things in the world, yet, we would be nothing without the Earth and her resources. We gain so much knowledge from nature and the mysteries of animals and plants, yet we seem to be reaching a point where we don’t recognize this anymore. We are becoming overconfident in our abilities to produce that we are forgetting who the original producer was.

Overall, I really enjoyed the reading and will definitely be returning to it in the future to better absorb the information there and apply it to my own life in some way.

Additionally, from the are.na page linked to the reading, I personally found the Powers of Ten video extremely intriguing. Specifically, the similarities between zooming so far out into the universe and so far into the cells in our body, and how how both looked very identical: black backgrounds with specks floating about, as if we contain millions of universes within our bodies without even knowing it. We are part of the process of the Earth, and we are forgetting where we came from in order to create “progress,” something I’m not even sure we’ve fully grasped the idea of yet.

I also really enjoyed the Starling Murmuration video. I’ve seen similar videos before and I am always blown away by how coordinated and beautiful the images are. How is it that nature can produce such unity in itself, communication without words, and humans still haven’t grasped that idea. Or, perhaps, we had in the past and have “progressed” so far beyond that idea of unity as a species that we are not separated. Perhaps we need to practice a “do-nothing” style of evolution, to strip away the parts that are separating us and become more united in order to progress.

[senior-project-process-blog]

Research Diet

My research is normally in video form just because I gain more knowledge of media and information that way. With that being said, here are some videos and YouTube channels I gravitate towards:

Unnecessary Inventions:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB4NFn-8oipHct0IfAQBQrQ

I like this channel because the creator really just solves the most ridiculous problems in a really technical way, and I find it really cool that he is first of all able to identify these “problems” and then comes up with a solution that almost kind of makes sense if the problem was a real one that people experience all the time. I like watching these videos because it helps me identify some small problems in my own life and think about how I could solve them, hoping that eventually, with enough practice, I’ll stumble on a real problem that I can solve and I’ll actually have the experience to do so once I reach that point.

Riot Games: So You Wanna Make Games? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqRoXLLwJ8g&list=PL42m9XiTqPHJdJuVXO6Vf5ta5D07peiVx&ab_channel=RiotGames

This playlist of videos produced by Riot Games actually made me really interested in game design and using a different medium to create an entire new world. I initially watched this series over a year ago when I was taking a game design class, and it really helped me figure out what I wanted to do and, more importantly, how to do it. I have done some aspects of game design before including coding, narrative story-telling, and graphic and 3D design, but putting them all together was very new to me and this helped me come up with a way to really narrow my ideas and develop them into something I was capable of creating.

Kel Lauren:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvoKIJfodk4IhNAAjrBfx-g

This YouTuber does tutorials and design videos where she sits down and just designs (or redesigns) something. I find a lot of inspiration watching her videos and often find myself very motivated after a few episodes. I have learned so much about my own design workflow just from watching her videos and I think it’s a really great way to get started on something and be able to have a final result when thousands of people are watching you. I often struggle with getting work done, especially on self-imposed deadlines, and I think that having an outlet to get those things out would be really helpful for me. Until then, though, I’ll just keep watching her videos.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

This last bit of research is something I keep referring to, and that’s because this has been one of the most influential books I have read that applies to my career and what I want to do in the future. Reading this book and having actual terms and processes to follow has allowed me to narrow down my design process into something tangible and manageable and I plan on continuing to use this book in my design work, personal, academic, and career-wise.