Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium James Zhou

The end of July marks the half way point of my year at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction design. The pace has been intense and relentless. In a very short amount of time, we have completed at least fifteen different design projects with more than a dozen instructors. We barely have a moment to digest before marching on to the next challenging problem. This is why we have midterm reviews to reflect on the successes and the failures.

Here is a summary of four learnings from the last six months taken from my midterm presentation.

01 — I am learning to work in a team

One of the most valuable skills that I am learning at CIID is working in teams. I believe that the quality of a project is determined by the quality of the teamwork and not the quality of the idea. In order to contribute effectively to team collaboration, I’ve learned that teams need to set the quality bar at the beginning of the project and to make retrospectives a habit.

At the beginning of the projects it’s important to define the quality bar with your team. We all have a different mental image of what constitutes as “polished” or “complete” outcomes. I’ve learned to ask each teammate to show examples of polished projects to give everyone a sense of the quality bar.

At the end of each phase, I learned to have frequent retrospectives so that team can reflect on the successes and frictions. Although retrospectives can feel tedious, regular reflections create a consistent space for improving team dynamics. When retrospectives become a habit, the team knows that there will be a space to revolve issues and to celebrate achievements.

02 — I’m learning to trust the process

We talk a lot about trusting the process at CIID. When things are uncertain, we are told to trust the process. In my mind, the process feels like the double diamond. Simple and logical.

In practice, the process twists and turns. It’s more like a messy ball of yarn than a linear diagram.

Design is not a science. As designers we can’t blindly follow the process.

Design is not a science. As designers, we can’t blindly follow the process. We need to assimilate the various processes to formate our own mindset. The various design processes are tools that help to deal with ambiguity. Having a considered approach is more important than blindly following the process.

03 — I learned that I can impact people with my design

In the Immersive Experiences course with James Tichenor and Joshua Walton, my team (Annouska Karg, Stephanie Lee, and Bora Kim) created The Other Side. Using VR, we created an afterlife service to leave behind an intimate memory for your loved ones. In order to increase the realism of the experience, we asked our participants walk in a sandbox to simulate walking a beach. We used artificial light, and fans to simulate a breezy beach. We even reached out and held the participant’s hand while they were in VR to simulate the presence of a loved one.

To our surprise, we moved some of our participants to tears. We didn’t expect that our experience to have a profound emotional impact. We felt extremely unprepared to deal with the consequences.

As a designer, I learned that I need to think critically and ethically about the experiences that I design in the future.

As a designer, I learned that I need to think critically and ethically about the experiences that I design in the future. The things that I create can make an impact.

04 — I learned to recognize failure

In one of the courses this year, my team and I struggled to achieve our goal. We were in complete disarray on the eighth day of a ten day project. We did not have any prototype and we could not agree on where to take our project. At that point, we were suddenly faced with the unpleasant possibility of failure.

Failure axis by Mindy Lee taken from https://blog.prototypr.io/failure-has-nuance-7da04980c6b

This was not a small and expected failure. It was a large and surprising failure. At that moment, I suddenly realized that we could not move on because we did not want to admit that we failed. Large and expected failings are difficult to recognize. We did all we can to avoid it. Even if it means becoming stagnant as a team.

But once we were honest with ourselves and asked ourselves the question “why did we fail?”, we were able to let go of our original idea and move on. After a heartfelt team retrospective, we realigned our expectations and choose to work on an earlier prototype that we had abandoned. Coming to terms with our failure allowed us to continue forward with a design that we are proud of.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about what I have learned at CIID. You can always reach me at @flodyssey and www.jamesxzhou.com

What I’ve learned in the past six months at CIID was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What I’ve learned in the past six months at CIID

Cool stuff, every week

More Articles