Start to think as a designer

Start to think as a designer, I need to work on the following aspects.

1. Mindset

Between growth mindset and fixed mindset, as I examine myself, I cannot assure that I'm 100 percent on the growth side. Sometimes I tend to eschew challenges or spend seconds considering giving up when things get tough. However, for most of the time, I'm curious about new things and believe in the change and growth of myself. I'm happy about other's success and am willing to get along with successful people. To prepare me the proper mindset to become a designer, I still need to swift the perspectives I see this world. Embrace ambiguity, failure, and negative feedbacks; hold optimistic views towards issues and actively seek solutions, be more confident in myself and believe that I will make it. These are the things I've written down and decide to look for a while every night before falling into sleep.

2. Problem Consciousness

Rushing to the solution before totally understanding the question, that sounds like me. Never patient enough to read the instruction book of electric devices and think easily about others worries and arbitrarily offer some suggestions. These habits would never make me a designer since I lack the precious problem consciousness. It is said that great Einstein once affirmed: "If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Although considering the intelligence gap, 5 minutes may not be enough for us to find out any solutions, at least we need to grab as much information as we can about the problem, to ensure our seek of the solution is in a correct direction.

3. Procedures to follow

After defining the problem, a design is a long procedure of prototyping, iterating, reflecting and refining. There is no shortcut to take, but some useful ways and tools are introduced in the class. For example, to state I like, I wish and what if; to ask your users four whys; to draw a mind map or a journey map to help you think more clearly. Here is my journey map of taking the Java class. After reflecting on this whole experience, I'm more aware of the gap between my expectation and the reality and hopefully I could gain some empathy in this way which could be useful when it's my turn to design something for others.