Critical Reflection

I went into this year scared, excited and eager to get started on my project. Like many who have been in my position, I didn’t have a clue where to begin. I started by trying to think of topics I could tackle and, in hindsight, tried to think far too early of products that I might create. I was a bit confused to begin with but I knew that I wanted something that would challenge my research and design skills.

Social Anxiety was quiet a challenging topic but I had some goals in mind when I started this research. I wanted to gain meaningful information about what it means to live with anxiety. I quickly discovered that no two humans are the same, especially when it came to mental health. This is why I wanted to try and learn what it is about mental health that connects everyone who suffers with such issues. This was certainly going to challenge my design research skills; I have not really had enough or indeed any experience of applying our methods in the field. I was quickly picking up interview and ethnography skills, which I feel, are essential in any good designers toolkit.

Another goal for this project was in setting my tone correctly. I wanted to get personal insight and not make assumptions about a health issue that I have never personally struggled with.  I wanted something to challenge me and this aspect was one of the toughest hurdles of this project.

I did carry out first-hand user research, but struggled with finding ways to speak to people about their own personal experiences of anxiety. That’s not to fault the research I carried out through Reddit as people were keen to open up to my direct questions on the Social Anxiety and Anxiety Sub-Reddit feeds.

I spoke to a very close friend of mine about her anxiety.  Having a good basic educational understanding of the issues, when she spoke about her personal experiences it really made an impact on my learning. Her openness and ability to answer my questions cleared up a lot of queries I had and was a major turning point for my project. 

Throughout my concept generation I wanted to create something that was built on my insights. By this stage in my year I had completed a large amount of research and gained a lot of insight: now I had to turn this into something meaningful. I found this quiet difficult, I spent some time shuffling my insights, and looking deeper into what I had discovered throughout my research. I’m glad I did this, I wanted my project to be strongly people-orientated and with validation of that research to back-up my thinking.

When it came to start making a prototype product there were many skills I needed to learn from scratch, this was again pushing my boundaries as a fledgling designer.  I found this to be very rewarding, to create something physical and I am happy I put the effort.

I suppose the principal experience I will take out of my fourth year is learning how to combine physical product design skills with my Interaction thinking. This last year of my degree has encouraged me to find and develop in myself a range of new skills, both practical and intellectual that I can now put into practice in the workplace.

Being an Interaction Designer I did make mistakes throughout. I do have regrets, I wish I had been earlier into the workshop, but it was a learning curve I dealt with. Creating a complementing application was an aspect I enjoyed with this being a lot more in my comfort zone.  Although it was a challenge to identify the need, generate the solution and its application, and then to make the product to meet that concept; it was the only way to ensure a satisfactory user experience.

Throughout this year my project has changed a lot and taken me down many of different paths, I enjoyed this. I think the challenges I have faced have developed me as a designer and completely changed the way I think about the whole disciplines surrounding good design and its implementation.