Not me: “Hey, how’d your semester go? Learn anything interesting?”
Me: “To quote what I said at the end of my second semester of grad school, a whopping 6 months ago: “I’d be remiss to leave any sort of experience without determining a list of takeaways for said experience.” And so, as I have finished the experience that was my third semester of grad school and people’s top 10 lists crowd the internet as the year (not the decade, shoot me a text if you have any questions) comes to a close, here is my newest list of takeaways from a semester (and summer) that included making an interactive VR chair experience about flying horses, attempting to learn the difference between reactivity and interactivity, a week of non-stop happenings in Orlando and sampling every single food truck that stopped by the ETC.
10. Brainstorming is really hard. I am a self-proclaimed “idea guy” and/or “big picture guy” depending on who you talk to, but that does not change the fact that coming up with new ideas is a challenge. Over these 16 weeks, there were over 100 different design challenges that needed solutions and they all started from basically a blank page. Some days that blank page is inspiring and some days it is downright terrifying, but it is the basis of what our industry does and the more and more we (really, I) get exposed to it and the more practice we get attacking it, the better off we’ll be.
9. Speaking of starting from blank pages, one of the best ways to add words to that page is to ask “Who are you making this for?” A continuation of the target audience phenomena I battled last semester with The Neighborhood, Pegasus really took flight (sorry, couldn’t resist) once we decided who would really be playing this experience. Choosing a target audience to design for included lots of research, interviews, playtesting and more, but paid major dividends as we faced big design decisions throughout development.
8. People want to help, they really do. We realized early on that the VR chairs were the hot item of the ETC and that meant everyone wanted to stop by, try things out and shower us with their ideas. We never turned ideas down, but as a team, we had to learn quickly had to take some pieces of advice with a grain of salt and other pieces of advice seriously. All the feedback we got throughout the semester was valid and valuable to our design process in some way, shape or form, but we took pride throughout the semester in accepting feedback and rejecting it at various points because we knew the story, technology or goal the best.
7. Always be prepared to talk about what you are doing. In a similar way, with such a unique piece of hardware and guests stopping by our room seemingly every day, we had the opportunity to pitch our project and ourselves to lots of people throughout the semester. It helped us all in unexpected ways as a great practice for interview talking points, making sure we were all on the same page in terms of vision and design, and proving to ourselves that we do know what we are talking about.
6. With how much brainstorming and prototyping we did throughout the semester for Pegasus and I did for my elective and a separate we did for our theme park design competitions, these 16 weeks were major exercises in “yes and”. Brainstorming is hard enough (see 10.) and it gets even harder when you keep turning down ideas. No idea starts out perfect, but it is a creative’s responsibility to say yes to it and try and follow it to where it can be useful.
BONUS: Motion sickness in VR is very real… but there are lots of things you can do to move towards solving it. But I could write a whole separate blog post on that, so shoot me a text or a tweet if you’re truly interested.
5. Little things bring people together. Asking about a team member’s sibling at a team dinner or playing games with new people or walking around Universal Studios as preliminary design research… all of these things helped bring the teams I was a part of closer together, making them feel more like a family than a premeditation project team. These experiences helped us all learn to trust each other and learn to root for each other and their successes as well as our own.
4. Everything has a story. It is easy to think about storytelling when you are developing a video game or a music video or even a theme park ride and its constituent parts, but things like products and gadgets prescribe to the same design philosophy. When you make anything for someone else, the story of the guest (or the user or whatever you want to call them) has to be taken into account for the product or experience to make a real difference. The story can be the overarching idea or theme that all decisions are made and measured against, so each component of any design can point it towards the desired outcome or feeling.
3. If you say you can do something, be prepared to do it. I may have mumbled under my breath that I knew VR pretty well over the summer, and before I knew it, I was being asked to make VR mock-ups for my boss and their boss. *gulp* I ended up being able to accomplish what I needed to for that situation, but it made me think more about how many off-hand comments we all make that we may or may not be able to truly deliver on if pressed. I made it more of a goal to only promise what I can deliver and I feel like that helped team morale (by not being worried about me actually delivering on something) and personal morale (by not stressing out about if I can or cannot do something to the right standard.)
2. Every team is different. I was on four different teams this semester, all aiming at accomplishing very different goals. Some teams need constant meetings and checking in to reassure we are all on the same page. Some teams just need you to get out of the way and let them work. Learning what type of team you are on quickly and where you fit within it is crucial to long-term team success. Teams are tricky, whether you are making interactive theme park rides or playing club basketball, but there is nothing better than being a part of a great team. When everyone gels and you are more than the sum of your parts, really special things happen. This requires trust, honesty, dedication to the team, and the secret ingredient: weekly chocolate chip cookies.
1. I am going to amend my biggest takeaway from last semester: There is no better feeling in a project than watching people interact with your experience and then stay open late to let everyone interact with it. Our team fantasized about the ETC Festival for months and we could not have imagined the reception we would get when it finally arrived. People waited for over an hour to ride Pegasus and when they finally got off, they told us that the wait was worth it. Watching people laugh and scream and engage with their friends while flying though Ancient Greece validated our decisions, our process and our work and we could not have been more grateful for it all.
Once again, congratulations on making it through another one of my blog posts. I learned a heck of a lot from lots of different places over last 6 months, so thank you to every one and every thing that contributed to this list and my growth.
As the new year begins and I reflect on all of these lessons, I have a philosophical resolution (and my mom to thank for it because it finally feels like it makes sense after all these years): grow where you’re planted. Being present, not overthinking the future or worrying about the past, be where your feet are, however you want to say it, that’s what I want to be. I spent a lot of the last year wishing I would have done a variety of things differently in the past so that certain things in the future could happen or focusing too much on what would happen next week or in the summer or after graduation, losing sight of the incredible opportunities I had before me. Now, with the chance to work with some pretty awesome people at Universal Creative and be in the theme park center of the world, I’ll have nothing but opportunities in front of me and it will be my job to stay present, stay patient and stay open to take advantage of them.
So, that’s all I got for now. Be on the lookout for more #content, ice cream reviews or anything else interesting that pops into my brain and onto the internet before somebody stops me.”
Not me: “Wait, what?”
Me: “All was well.”
