A Letter to our New Graduates User Experience Designers and Design Thinkers
I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end, the end result.” — John Wooden
Dear new graduates,
Beyond learning your craft through empathy, design thinking and “Why?”, you’ve unveiled solutions around complex and behavioural topics:
- from an ecological point of view with plant caring, rubbish collection and carbon footprint awareness.
- from a time and value perspective with saving time in queues and post-dining in order to exchange that saved time to find love or change other people’s lives by volunteering or through health tracking.
- from simplifying choices to simplifying ways of getting curated and personalised experiences with wine pairing to diet recommendations.
Other products were more niche i.e improving the way users manage product notifications, getting personalised tailoring and the Uber-ification of the handyman just to quote a few.
As designers we are involved in influencing, defining, improving and solving tough problems through customer-centric storytelling.
As we know, the insight is the vision.
All your projects implied change or transformation. Because it all started with a problem to solve and ended up with a vision. As we know, the insight is the vision. And you did well to enable your insights to define and inform each of your design solutions.
There’s magic in each and every one of you; all we did was help you unleash it, nurture it and realise it.
By the way, it’s because of great individuals like you that I feel ever more optimistic than I am right now. That gives me a lot of confidence and a lot of faith as a first-time instructor.
You decide to take on the chance to make of your lives what they will.
Therefore, I know you guys are going to keep on working hard. You’re going to continue making great products. If you stay focused on making sure every thought and execution is as great as your final project, I will be looking out for you. I have no doubt that you’re going to continue to grow wherever you decide to take on the chance to make of your lives what they will.
What a journey! What a success!
Proud of you all.
– Ulrich
