Process Journal #9: Process Reflection
Improving on perfection is a challenge, but it can be done (see above). Surely, with final projects due tomorrow, and 15 weeks or 'Processes and Perspectives' under my belt, I can build a better mouse trap with the steel trap of my mind.
With Acceptance, I would strongly argue that consideration of joy and interest are understated. I have spent my adult life doing joyless tasks for money and didn't even think to question my self-imposed misery until I sold my company at 35 and had the luxury and ownership of my own time, along with the existential despair that comes from having time to ponder mortality. I vowed to make sure my next gig was not a gig but something I found challenging and engaging. This program has been mind-blowing in that regard - everyone seems to take having a fulfilling, challenging, interesting job as a given.
This is me from age 22-35.
Definition is, for me, the hardest step of all and might need to be part of Analysis as a preliminary step. I sense that Definition ought to be the hypothesis the analysis seeks to approve or disprove, at least at first. Or perhaps Analysis and Definition are more intertwined and iterative than implied.
In reality, in Design Essentials and in this class, there has been a ton of iteration in the Analysis-Definition-Ideation cycle, where the ideas born of brainstorming then spark another round of research and refinement and further ideation. I suppose this is saying that Selection is not final and decisive, at least the first time through - that it is a narrowing down that leads to a recycling of the initial ideas.
If this process and class were a Taco Bell dinner item (a strong case can be made for this assertion, said as an unabashed, lifelong, border-running, fourth-mealing fan of the Bell), we are taught that the trademark Seven Layer Burrito Innovation Process iterates at the last stage, Evaluation. This class emphasizes that it is then that a determination is made then that these delicious ingredients ought to be something else. The group would, say, at that point revisit the implementation and ideate, prototype, and then unfurl our burrito into, say, a Beef Bowl Supreme.
The Wisdom of Gorditas
In reality, we are always evaluating, revisiting steps, morphing the ingredients found in the inspired authenticity of the Beef Enchirito back into the proletariat's friend, the Burrito Supreme, when we have workaday concerns such as cost and market reach. Yet simultaneously we are considering the utility and beauty of a Gordita, having since decided upon a price point, and are still admiring the purity of the synthesis inherent in a CrunchWrap Supreme and its over-the-top hedonism, until at last, having built our castle in the clouds, we start to strip away the artifice of sour cream and third-party Dorito shells. It is then that we start approaching the pure genius of the Meximelt, the T-Bell menu item of the Gods, having taken a circuitous route from minimalism to utilitarianism to maximalism to essentialism in finding the perfect Taco Bell item for our order.
Fin
I think a better parallel can be found in parallel processing in computers, where multiple threads crunch numbers and commands simultaneously. A thread completes, and a queuing superthread is notified. Our minds hold opinions that shift, valuations that fluctuate, and opinions that ebb and flow. We work on different ideas, and certainly have a focus but are also processing and learning as we go, and weighing new variables and changing our assessments of past variables once dismissed. While we work on something, a new thread completes, or another thread takes a new idea as a variable and starts churning away on some calculations.
That is not to say that this process is wrong. It is not! Or rather, I have no reason to think it is wrong, and it is a framework that I am glad to have learned. What I mean to say is that the linearity implied is not to be taken literally, and that we can have several of these processes running, multithreaded and asynchronous, informing each other, all at different individual stages, all at once. We advance to a prototype knowing already that it isn't that good, already considering the replacement. We solve a problem knowing there is a bigger, better problem around the corner, knowing our solution is looking like a compromise or bridge to a better opportunity. Our minds are churning away on new ideas and ideating at each stage and evaluating at each step, just waiting for us to take a shower or jog to hit us with a completed thread of another thought.
A question I have is why it seems the iteration takes place at Selection so often. I suspect that there is a cost in prototyping both in time and in political capital as we have to divvy up jobs and boss each other around. In practice, building websites for myself and clients, I prototype first and keep prototyping, having running concepts going and just trashing them or banishing them. It is not unusual to have 10-12 versions of a site or parts of a site, and I think that is because the cost is lower when its just me tooling around. Perhaps it is group work - or our unfamiliarity with collectively being able to just scrap dead ends and start over - that is forcing this early, frequent iteration at 'cheaper' stages.
















