Is there a right answer to anything?
It depends
In my last semester I have been reflecting on the things I might have learned at school here at Michigan, and there is one thing that pops out and it is this simple idea of not jumping on solutions.
Is it good?
Is it the best thing to happen to an engineer who is powered by the ability to think and create cool things. The engineer who can bring to life the very required web service or app that this planet filled with humans require.
I don’t think so. I’d say it depends.
It depends.
This is probably the most used phrase that I might have used in the last 8 months of my teaching the course Interaction design when students come and ask me about what is the right way to do it and in a field, as subjective as design there isn’t one right answer to anything. There are many correct ways to do it but no can definitely say this is the ONLY one.
Annoyingly enough, people are never satisfied with this answer of mine, but what I’m trying to do here isn’t to confuse you or demotivate you. I just want you to go ahead knowing that this isn’t the final solution and that you will have a lot of iterations and variations of things you create.
Why is this important?
Iterations are important because *we humans aren’t perfect*. We will make mistakes, and we will learn, grow and iterate; that’s how life is. I try my best explaining this to students by sketching whatever is there inside there head and bringing it out and then throwing that idea away. This probably is the best way for me to tell them how easy it is to move on from one idea and to test and verify if it will solve the problem we are going for.
Humans (Probably my favourite word)
Taking this a step further, I feel that everyone is aiming for that perfect life working at their Dream companies and having a person they love, having a good invest, etc (this list always keep changing and might look different for you). But we are missing the point there, it’ll never be perfect. Are we happy based on our external environments? Hell no, research shows that based on your external conditions one can only estimate up to 30% accuracy your happiness. (#PerfectWorld)
Wait, where was I going with this?
Iterating, we are living our lives and iterating it to become perfect or something like that. But it’ll never be complete, just life a software always keeps on changing, developing and adopting a new hardware, new software, new design standards. So are we as HUMANS.
What have I learned?
Three simple things.
1. Iteration is a part of life.
2. You will never get it right the first time.
3. There are more variations of things out there, no one knows which one is perfect but we can always, test, evaluate and iterate.
#ItDepends #NoStraightAnswers
