Hit Walls, and Break Them
How Hyper Island is changing my tomorrow through Experience-Based Learning.
Almost two months ago, I began my adventure at Hyper Island as a Master student in Digital Experience Design. I had heard a lot about Hyper Island from industry leaders but never could have know how much impact it really had until now. In this read I will share some personal experiences and learnings from my journey so far.
My background
To understand the impact of my experiences — I think — it’s good to know a little bit about my personal background. I’m a Dutch digital strategist and -designer with an academic background in Communications, Cultural Studies and Neuroscience. I’ve worked for several design firms and collaborated on many challenging projects. Besides work, I consider myself as a wanderer and adventurer. Discovering new places, cultures and experiences is one of the things I love the most. The last, and maybe most important part of my character are my friends and family. I’ve always believed that the people you surround yourself with, form you as the person you are right. I am lucky to have good friends and a insanely supportive family. Without them, my step to Hyper Island wouldn’t have been possible in the first place.
Why?
This was the first question after my announcement to study Digital Experience Design abroad. The answer to this question is simple and if you look around, you will also figure why ‘experience design’ is desired in our modern day — over connected — society. Technology is advancing quickly and will soon reach a level at which it theoretically can have human-like cognitive capabilities. Smartphones, tablets, laptops and other smart devices are just the start of what is turning to be a robotized future. Our role as designer is changing and moving towards a more experience-focused approach of design challenges. Products today rarely rely only on physical aspects because consumers demand more. Their expectations are higher than ever.
My aim with this Master course is to get a good understanding and vision of human needs in relation to future-technology. The dawn of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning has my personal interest in this regard.
Hyper Island
Yes, everything you have read about Hyper Island and their experience-based, life changing, learning experience is true. They flip your personality and professional mindset around and push your Creative Confidence. The foundation week is hereby my personal favorite. After 5 days working on our crew culture (as Digital Experience Design team), we almost felt like family. We shared intimate and very personal stories, did group activities and received challenges that pushed us to become a team.
Feedback is a gift
One of the activities that is really rooted in the Hyper Island learning experience are reflections and feedback. As a crew and design team we reflect on a daily basis and give each other often feedback. Both are essential for our personal growth as designer, whereby feedback is considered as a gift. This openness, rhythm and continuity of giving and receiving feedback creates a good individual understanding and sometimes exposes valuable blind spots (Read: Johari Window). Feedback can hurt. Badly. Especially if it’s in regards to blind spots. But despite this, at Hyper Island, feedback is a gift. I have hit a lot of ‘walls’ already and the key of processing feedback, is to accept & understand it. This so-called ‘Experience-Based Learning’ works really effectively when you recognize and work on your personal challenges.
Team is everything
Great players win matches, great teams win championships. That was our input as cultural statement. This quote reflects the way we approach design challenges at Hyper Island. The ‘team-is-everything-approach’ was a challenge for me in the beginning because I was used to work individually on projects. I could adopt quickly to this new mindset and way of working because the team dynamics resulted in great creative ideas that were impossible to come-up with, without working together as a team.
Industry leaders
A great asset and benefit of studying at Hyper Island is their network and strong relationship with industry leaders. We are taught by really inspiring people from different companies. For example, in the current module — Understanding People — we are taught by designers from IDEO. One of the most memorable Keynote speakers was Jonathan Briggs, Founder of Hyper Island, who spoke about Growth Hacking.
Personal Sacrifice
Although you are reading this on a device, this article is written by a man of flesh and blood. Like many fellow-students, I left family, friends and loved ones behind. The pain and hurt I felt was not foreseen because I met my girlfriend about a month before I left. Unexpected, unwanted but the best thing that ever happened to me. Dealing with this in a foreign country and in a high-demanding environment is still difficult for me. This important person, and -chapter of my life evidence how quick reality can change and how little our power as individual is in directing it. She is a great source of inspiration for me.
Change your Tomorrow
Like I shared my personal story with you, so did my 60 fellow-students shared their stories with me. In order to change your tomorrow, it is inevitable to sacrifice and fail. Hitting walls isn’t bad, as long as you break them. The process along this journey and the team you surround yourself with are key.
Like Steve Jobs would say:
The journey is the reward
