#experiencediary

Career Funda 23 – Maintain an experience diary

Our memory is very weak. At least weaker than we Think how strong it is. You need to maintain your experience diary. Note down what experience you are gaining, what particular event happened that lead to some or the other lesson that is pushing you ahead in your career. What event happened that made you a better person. What happened that revealed something new about human behavior. We are…

I had a short presentation day in class to share about this note project idea. I presented about the concept, story behind the concept and asked for opinions and help. As it was first time to talk officially about the idea of "Experience Diary", I was bit nervous to explain this conceptual-analog-self-motivated project in ENGLISH. However, not surprisingly, I could get great comments and feedbacks from wonderful SVA IxD family. It is amazing to be surrounded by thoughtful and brilliant people everyday.

Some useful & notable comments are :

1. Focus on the people who would be my patron. Thanks to the internet we can find people who would like something I'm passionate about.

Those could be : Sociologists/ Designers/ Researchers/ Artists / Students / People who are very organized / Rifle paper fans / Blogger / Design sponge

2. Things to consider when naming the product :

People like "diary" because of it continuous feeling.

Sites to help when naming : http://www.visuwords.com/

3. What people want to be mindful about :

 Space, Time, Diet, Sleep, Habit, Exercise

4. Topics people are interested in (Things that people want to get better at):

Architecture / Interior Design / Conversation / Behavior / Space / Signage / Travel / Food / Exhibition / Event / D.I.Y / Meeting / Discussions / Web design / Music / Graphic Design/ Psychology

5. Note variation :  

Size/ Type for different type of people 

6. Make modular system :

Keep the fundamental elements such as date / location / people as the same format so that can be developed to make modular system. I like this idea.. which can be related to branding aspect.

7. There are ways to overcome language barrier 

After I started to share my thoughts with people, I was introduced to amazing projects such as :Simple diary , Magma Sketchbook , Sketchbook Project, Baronfig, Lean Canvas,  Whats in your bag, and so on. It is amazing.

It's interesting to see how others describe this "Experience Diary", and with which they associate the product. Understanding how others perceive the product helps to have more clear concept of it and way of communication.

I have learnt importance of communication this week. Even if I'm not clear about my concept and what I want to say, feedback can lead us to the next stage. 

By comparing with others, we can better understand ourselves. To envision the product concept more clearly, I felt that it is crucial to know what's out in the market to understand what category should it belong and how can provide unique value. I went to the Urban Out Fitters and Anthropologie for the quick research, and found out stunning amount of notebooks. It was interesting to compare how the selections of note differ from each brand's image. Notes at Urban Outfitters were more young and for teenage girls, while Anthropologie had more french chic girlish collection.

I'm ambitious to keep making notes on various topics, but I decided to start with the "Experience Diary", about space for mainly 2 reasons :

First of all, space is a combination of almost everything : Graphic, Color, Typo, Product, Finishing, Interior, Architecture, Fashion, Urban Engineering, People(characters, what do they do..), Branding, Marketing, Business, Emotion and so on. All those are elements of experience. Living in the digital age, one of the ultimate goal for designers is to design user experiences.  

Also, now a days "Space" is hot for everybody. People find out the most fancy restaurants, and Yelp , Foursquare, Opentable are very popular. There would be some portion of people who are interested to explore more about the place they are at. 

Experience Diary

It's been 3 years since I started to write about interesting places on "Experience Diary". It's like a personal analogue foursquare with more deep check-in experiences. I've designed this "Experience Diary" for my own needs, developed it to frame better contents, and it is now ver #3.  It generally takes 10mins to jot down, and helps to observe from the smallest details -such as finishing, typography-, to the whole picture -such as branding, business perspectives-, and also the personal feelings. It is the nice way to capture the moment -not only the visual aspect of it but also emotional and logical experiences. 

How did it all start?

About 5 years ago, I had a chance to have dinner with my favorite designer, JOH, thanks to my great mentor JK. At that time, I was majoring in Business at Korea University, and considering expanding my career to a designer. While talking casually on random topics, I was amazed by the depth of thinking and the way he sees the world. He had a holistic view, he started to talk about from typography to architecture to branding and business of the space. We were at the same place, but the amount and the quality of observations were tremendously different. I wanted to mimic his flow of thinking, way of observing visual elements. I started to think in his shoes, and then slowly came out of an idea to make a note to organize those thoughts and observations to be habituated.

Expectations

Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes. The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That's what you really want - to initialize their way of looking at the world.  

- Austin Kleon from Steal Like an Artist

  Everyone has their own perspective and frame to see the world.This unique frame would be developed through the process of learning, accumulation of experiences, combined with one's personality. However, I think we can make this process more efficient. 

My goal for this project is to find out the overlapping points between the things I'm really passionate about and what others can be benefited from. I believe that the best way to please others- family, lover, friends, society, and even the world- is to bring out the best of myself.

“Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

  Process would be :

1. List out the projects I've been working or interested. 

2. Research : market trends, competitive products, products to benchmark, price, user groups, designers

3. Make it  : Start small & easy way, prototype a lot.

4. Test it with others

5. Repeat 2 through 4 until the deadline.

Starting something new is thrilling, but it is also quiet intimidating on the other hand. Being initiative by myself would pay off, but it means lots of efforts, responsibilities and works to be done. Maybe those fears would have been excuses for me to postpone starting this Kickstarter project until the very last minute. It's sometimes good to be a student, to have deadline and to be pushed by others, with lots of love.

  So, What am I really afraid of?

1. What if I fail to fund $1000? While all the other fellows succeed to get funded !

It is shameful to say that I am afraid of the result, but honestly I am.

In this case, I would call all of my friends and ask them to donate some amount - seriously.  

2. What if people don't understand my English?

Being a non-native English speaker, sometimes it is really intimidating to use English in the official occasions.

I've recently watched the "Modern Family" and attracted by Gloria (acted by Sofia Vergara) who has a strong Columbian accent but so lovely. - Maybe I could just say Whatever! 

3. What if I'm not satisfied with the final product even for myself?

What a silly question - Start small, develop step by step, and do the best I can. I already know what to do! I should always love & care about my project.

  There is one really important motivation that I want to finish this race regardless of the result : 

As a designer, I would love to keep doing my own daily projects for the rest of my lifetime even after I get a regular job or start own business.

This Kickstarter project would be a good practice for me to be the designer I want to be. 

Finding myself increasingly connected to Twitter to get the latest headlines. It's an easy way to digest info without being kicked off a newspaper's website for reaching my 20 page view limit for the month. I never thought I'd move away from digital newspaper reading until the subscription limit kept me from freely clicking attractive headlines.