Stop thinking, act now
You should stop overthinking and start designing
For me the best way to summarize, in a simple manifesto, the methodology that I learned in this last months would be:
“Stop thinking. Design now.”
The main problem of service design, and maybe design in high level studies is that we focus so much on the concepts that we forget about who we are and what we are the best at doing : design. Shure, concepts and thinking is a great part of making design that matters not just styling, but… when you start designing, drawing, sketching, showing, you see the problems, you create a language that isn’t limited by language and you see new problems and new opportunities. So just don’t forget the design part in “Service Design”.
Be a “do” nerd
When using or learning methods I believe that learning by doing or producing is one of the key points.
It’s quiet easy to enjoy the class lectures, you seat comfortable, you have your bottle of water, temperature is perfect, the guy in front of you is saying something that makes sense and it’s easy to take notes because you write them on your computer. The same goes for ready articles online, like this one. You are comfortable, and you get some more knowledge. So basically there is no negative thing about it. That’s the problem. If there is no problem it’s that you are not learning.
If you want to learn to bike you have or to fall and hurt yourself or be frustrated to bike with the help of kids wheels because you’re not that good at it. Frustrations or wounds make you go forward to arrive in a new balance where everything is positive. It’s in this process of wanting to escape the mediocrity of this moment where you are not the expert that learning really begins. So maybe after having read a lot of books about Design Thinking, or having read an article about the last method to be successful we should focus more on the first part of these method: designing, doing, working.
I think this is certainly something that is particular for our degree of studies. We are used to believe that concepts, thinking, theories are what define Universities and therefore we focus naturally on them. Because of this natural focus that we have on the theoretical part we should not in fact stimulate ourselves more in that way because it’s already done, but we should focus on what we forget. For designers practicing in other environment this focus on doing should maybe decreased and the focus on theory enhanced.
Going further
A good exercice to start working on your project instead of overthinking it is to use the “Shit Ideas Method”.
