78 of us joined IBM Design this week.

Seventy-eight.

Humans.

Humans who want to design for humans.

That’s us.

We’re fresh out of school or fresh on to the scene. So far, I think everyone may feel the same as I do right now: out of breath.

We crammed a lot of stuff into our brains this week and started learning more about some of the first projects we’ll be working on.

The technology is incredible.

The potential is really fun to think about and ideating with my teammates has been really engaging.

Learning about IBM Design Thinking has been challenging.

There are journey maps and user personas, a lot of different design frameworks and exercises that I’m still trying to soak in. My mind tends to drift off into what I know about Agile methodologies, constantly iterating and shipping quickly.

But we’re here at IBM Design and apparently, the actual designing and building is the easy part. Our purpose is to promote IBM Design Thinking, to learn it here and apply it as a framework to the rest of the company.

I’m sure you’re asking what is IBM Design Thinking? Well, I don’t know how to answer that yet. But for the size, scale and complexity of what IBM does, I think it will be a good thing and I’m excited to be involved.

But behind all of the strategy, the design-thinking and all the tangibles of what we’re going to be doing — one phrase is stuck with me right now:

“Don’t be cool. Be good.”

I could say a lot about this phrase. But I think it has a lot of impact on it’s own without any of my own commentary.

But I will say that it’s a great discernment, being cool isn’t being good and I aspire to be good. I want to be good at what I do as a designer and developer without the need or desire (or care) to be “cool”.

Anyway,

let’s leave it at that.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. Week Two about to start.

Here’s a special gift we got from IBM Design