What I Learned At Hyper Island - About Life, Design And Myself
Hi
I studied the Mobile Creative program at Hyper Island in Stockholm. It’s an experience many are trying to explain, but it’s best to experience by yourself. I know that’s a boring answer, but how do you really show life-altering experiences?
Here I will at least try to explain what I learned and what my experience was like.
Design thinking
Hyper Island did not teach me about design…Not really.
Sure we did have some lessons about UI design thinking and if you wanted to be the designer in the team, you learned a lot. Everyone in the team helped out and gave advice.
But what they did do, was to teach me how to find the information I wanted and the importance to ask questions. “Learning by doing” is one of the pillars of the Hyper Island teachings.
The design skill I learned and cherish the most from Hyper Island is the User Experience thinking. That’s what made me develop from graphic design to the UI and UX mindset. I now design with a purpose and with the user in focus.
Good design is important but if the product doesn’t help towards a goal or if it’s too confusing to the user, they won’t even use it.
Be a doer
This may sound like an obvious this to say, but just do it! Don’t sit around waiting for the right moment, for someone else to tell you what to do or how to do it. Because the right moment does not exist and you can’t rely on the knowledge of other people.
I learned that it is okay to take charge and not back away just because I’m not an expert. (This is my first published text and I’m learning a lot in the process of writing this!) And let’s be honest, not a lot of us know what we are doing anyway.
This also transfers to the workplace. This is the difference between saying:
“Sorry, I haven’t done that before. Ask someone else.”
And:
“I haven’t done that before but it looks interesting! I will look it up and teach myself!”
Today you are not always expected to be the expert in one single field. You are also expected to have knowledge in many areas to be able to develop the company and yourself. You do this by being curious and asking questions to people that are experts in other fields.
Who am I?
Hyper Island made me ask myself this question a lot.
Also: Why did I react like that? What do I want to become? Can I change how I think? Why did I doubt myself?
But all of that doesn’t make for as a catchy title.
I can say that Hyper Island is like living on an island. Where everybody is also going through a journey of self-discovering and learning new skills at the same time as you are. We sat in groups talking about our feelings. We did weird exercises where we danced and screamed.
I didn’t like all that in the beginning, though it was to “hippie” and didn’t do any good. But it really does. It opened my eyes to different methods. Now I do miss it.
It was a big change when I came into the workplace. It can be a big challenge to introduce the Hyper Island way of working in teams to a new group of people. But it’s another interesting new challenge where you’ll learn a lot together.
I also learned a lot about trying new things. Not saying NO just because it’s embarrassing or because I think I’ll be bad at it. I learned that I can open up to new people and share my skills. Not just because they will learn more, but I will learn new things as well.
And yes, I still do love Post-it notes!
How was your experience at Hyper Island and what’s your best take away? (Or perhaps are you just starting at Hyper Island?)
