Things I learnt from my first offering to a community
As a designer, I have always shied away from reaching out to a large number of people. I feel I am a different person when I interact with them. There is a part of me which feels that I am putting up a show, and that feels unnatural to me. But Ihave seen a lot of designers who are extremely comfortable in talking and dealing with people. Probably that is the reason that I consider myself to be a more of a hands on person and less of a researcher. But last 5 weeks forced me to come out of my comfort zone. I had to pick a community of my choice and study them to offer something of value in return. Although, I chose a community that belonged to my country, but I confess that I had to push myself really hard to make a connect and get myself talking to them. I also offered them something which I thought had value, but the experience was more valuable to me than to the intended audience. Here are a few things that I learnt in the process.
- Lose your inhibitions
If you want to get into the shoes of a designer who wants to study its user group, you should lose all your inhibitions and become fearless. Think of yourself as someone who has nothing to lose in the process and only new learnings to gain. Once you are in this mindset, it would be much easier to approach people. Also if you try doing that with a smile, people would be more welcoming. And this trick is so difficult for me to learn. I must admit, that I am working on it.
- Use the power of the Social Media
Leveraging the power of social media can really work wonders if you are trying to reach an audience that is scattered and you are not sure who would be interested in talking to you. To my surprise, the world is full of people who would want to offer you help without expecting anything in return. I happened to get in touch with a few very enthusiastic people who shared the same passion (or even more) and interacting with them was pure magic. It fills you with an infectious energy and drives you towards your goal. So just understand the fabric of these social media platforms and try to use it to your advantage.
- Start with something small
As enthusiastic design students, we are most often over ambitious in our goals. But I have learnt the value of scoping the hard way. I wasted a lot of time trying to make something which was difficult in the given time frame. Attempting something small but with success is more rewarding than attempting something big but only half baked.
- Iterate and get feedback
It is very important to make rough drafts of your solution and test water with some of your intended user groups. Everything has a scope of improvement and specially if it is your first draft. Sometimes getting a critical feedback can be disheartening but it would only help you to make a better version of the product. So lose your ego and get feedback on iterations as much as possible.
- Effective Time Management
The most important lesson that I learnt (and still learning) is how to better manage your time. I realized that it is not always important to do something with precision by investing a lot of time on it. Rather, one should effectively manage time on all the important activities according to priority. Time bucketing can be one very powerful tool in address this issue. It helps you dedicate a reasonable amount of time on all your priorities and also helps the mind to discipline itself in effectively consuming a limited resource known as time.
