Categories: design, graduate school, learning

Ever since this Project 1 was assigned, redesigning a thermostat, I’ve been having endless thoughts on how to get ideas out of my head. For the past few days, my team partner and I have been discussing ideas, creating personas, and feeding off each other’s thoughts. But for some reason we couldn’t get a good sense of what we wanted to accomplish or ideas generated. Its like we slammed into a creative brick wall.

Last night I was up late. Partly because my neighbors were a bit intoxicated and loud, but also because I kept on thinking about this darn thermostat and asking myself “What is the users model? How is it different from the system image? Crap, am I doing this right??!!” My mind kept on racing but my body was feeling tired. It was getting late and my body was definitely telling me “get some rest”.

I settled into my bed with my body completely relaxed. This was the first time, my mind was not thinking about thermostats for 20 consecutive minutes. I slowly dozed off…

30 minutes later, at 1:30am, something weird just happened. I woke up got out of bed, grabbed a pencil and some scratch paper. At that moment, a light bulb went off in my head. I began brainstorming, formulating my ideas, and drawing several sketches. My mind didn’t want to stop. This happened for a good hour.

I think I had my first graduate school design ephiphany. Or as Marty said, I’ve been inflicted with the “design disease”.

I guess this is the natural growth of being a designer.