Five Questions is a monthly series profiling argodesign creatives, highlighting their influences and inspirations.
How do you Think by Making?
I’m a visual and kinesthetic processor, so making thoughts tangible is how I process and build ideas. In the early process of information gathering, I note anything that might seem important or ideas that pop into my head onto physical or digital post-its that I can move around to organize and make sense of later. They often start off as random, disconnected pieces, but as information builds, having the pieces in front of me allows me to draw connections and see patterns. Moving things around also allows me to pivot around different ways of organization, which helps me with divergent thinking and ideation. When designing, I often build different versions of the same thing, scaling and moving things around so I can get a feel of how things look and work, and experiment with different approaches. Lots of happy accidents happen that way.
Making things tangible, like models, diagrams and prototypes also allows me to invite others to validate the accuracy of my mental model. The more tangible things become, the easier it is for everyone to experience, evaluate, and stress test concepts.
Essentially, Think by Making allows me to solidify my thoughts, invite others in, and provides many opportunities for happy accidents to happen.
Be open and curious. Don’t hold anything too tightly. Let go of your babies.
What’s one of the gnarliest design problems you’ve ever solved?
Trying to build a responsive, personalized nutrition coaching program on an app. I wasn’t a fan of how calorie-tracking apps often threw users into a drastic calorie change right away without much support or consideration of the adjustment period, sustainability, and quality of the diet. Factors such as lifestyle, food preferences/constraints and even how your body reacts can impact how effective a nutrition program is. I wanted to build a program that took all that into consideration. It would help users transition at a personalized rate based on how things were going for them, and educate them on making healthier and more sustainable nutrition habits. I essentially built a massive “choose your own adventure,” “if this than that” map. I learned a lot about what it takes to build a robust feature like that – from building content, to the data architecture, to designing all the possible pathways, and figuring out the roadmap and launch strategy. I also learned a lot about nutrition, motivational science, and behavioral change. It was a massive undertaking that didn’t see the light of day at the end, but it’s still a passion project I’m proud of and would love to one day create.
What’s your current obsession?
Landscape photography. Like everyone during the pandemic, I started venturing outdoors and became captivated by the beauty of the mountains, deserts, and everything else the great outdoors has to offer. I was really disappointed that the photos I was taking failed to convey the beauty and majesty of what I saw and experienced, and it became a mission to improve my photography skills to do it justice.
I’m still new to it, but I’ve been enjoying the challenges of planning a trip – like researching sunrises/sunsets, looking at maps to understand light and shadows for the best shot, studying other people’s works of the location, walking around a site to explore composition and framing, and then taking it home to the editing process to recreate the beauty, colors, and mood of what stood before me in that moment. The amount of intention that goes into the process is such a creative challenge and has pushed me to slow down, explore different perspectives, and led me to discovering the great outdoors in new ways. I’d liken the entire process to painting, and it’s been a fun way to apply my design sensibilities in a different way.
If you could remove one word from the design dictionary, what would it be?
Hmm..probably ‘Design thinking’. Specifically when used in front of non-designers. We’ve mostly distilled the process down to methodologies and exercises for non-designers, but I think the term still intimidates non-designers and makes them think they’re not able to do it even though they are oftentimes already utilizing those methods. The term itself can cause a mental block and hold people back from what the design thinking exercises and methodologies are meant to unlock. I’m also sad to see that younger designers and career changers often blindly utilize these methods like a static playbook or a checklist, and it’s not really yielding the same desired outcomes.
Who is your design hero? Why?
I don’t really have a design hero. I’m more enamored by how problems are solved and the different approaches people take. Diagrams, sketches, and process books are what I geek out over. I’ve always found that I can learn something from anyone no matter how long they’ve been in the industry, and I’ve been very fortunate to work with many designers and non-designers who inspire and teach me new approaches every single day.
