This redditor's story and approach to rapid language learning blew me away:
I AmA polyglot (multilingual person) from Ireland. I only spoke English when I was 21, but now I speak 10 languages and can sign ASL. I've given a TEDx talk to inspire adult language learners.
A video I recorded (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITzFRlVhMVs) is currently on the front page of/r/videos and several people have requested that I do an IAmA in the comments.
I am NOT naturally talented in languages. I took German and Irish (Gaeilge) in school, and barely passed German and had to drop down to a lower level in Irish for a basic university entrance requirement. I have a degree in Electronic Engineering and when I moved to Spain at the age of 21, I only spoke English. I even managed to spend six months in Spain and not learn the language to any useful degree. I've given a TEDx talk about my story and what I changed to become the polyglot I am today.
I've had a completely different approach since then andcan now speak ten languages and sign American Sign Language. To watch my TEDx talk, and then see me use several of my languages with a native speaker in a spontaneous interview,check out the videos on this pageormy Youtube channel. About six of these languages are genuinely fluent- this would be a European Common Framework level B2-C2, with officially recognized diplomas in several, and the others are various degrees of conversational. So for example, my Spanish is C2 (mastery) and I've worked as an electronic engineer in the language, but my Chinese is B1 (conversational, but still hesitant).
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about my thoughts on how to go about learning a language efficiently.
You'll want to read his Q&A. Wow. Just, wow. And while you're at it, don't miss his TEDx talk.
Innovators in both of two domains are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.
I have been living and working in London for over 20 years, but started life in the semi-rural county of Lincolnshire. Using old maps, atlases and other found paper, I create beautiful, delicate and intricate paper cuts of flowers, birds and insects. My inspiration comes from nature and the urban environment in which I live and a desire to re-use the discarded, unwanted and obsolete. I exhibit my work nationally and internationally, showing regularly in London as well as other parts of the UK. I have also exhibited my work in the USA and Italy. My work has been published in many magazines including: Vogue (UK and Greece), World of Interiors, Inside Out (Australia) and was featured in the book 'Paper:Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, cut' (Blackdog Publishing 2009)
Reason #527 why I love the Internet: serendipitously finding breath-taking art like this paper-map bird. Thanks, Internet! Thanks, Claire!
Every new idea in the modern world, every new initiative, just about every effort, public or private, personal or business-related, includes some form of digital expression. Software is the medium for that digital expression. Today, software is everywhere, whether we know it or not. Not just on our computers, our tablets, our phones, and our gaming devices (which could all be the very same object) but in our cars, in traffic lights, and in our thermostats. And in the future, this pervasiveness will only increase — dramatically. Imagine a world where every surface (and plane) is a potential display. Software is the primary language of the digital world we are creating.
Whether it’s a birthday party requiring invitations, selling a house and advertising it on a web page, a new business, a new non-profit, a new curriculum from a third grade teacher, they all generate a need for digital expression. And that digital expression is more often than not sloppy, unfriendly, dumb, and in many cases… insulting. Whether the person with the idea is writing new software from scratch or using existing software to create a digital experience is irrelevant. The time we spend interacting with these creations is only going to increase. And the need for modern and talented technologists and software designers who share a holistic perspective on making these experiences positive has never been greater.
Software is the ubiquitous and universal medium that blankets our exponentially expanding digital world. More software is coming — whether we like it or not. The only question is whether any of it will be any good.
Them is fight'n words: "Bauhaus is no longer relevant" and the future of design
I'm sick. One good about being sick is that I'm catching up on some fascinating ideas and people on Twitter. It's what lead me to a lively debate between Helen Walters and John Kolko on the future of design education -- which is really about the future of design itself; my guess as to why it was such a heated exchange. Wow. I was shocked by how passionately and vehemently Kolko wants to throw visual design out the window. Among other things, he says, "Bauhaus is no longer relevant."
JK:The problem of “what is wrong with graphic design education” is that we are still teaching graphic design, to anyone, period.
HW:see, I *love* graphic design, and I think it’s incredibly hard to do well. So I don’t begrudge its being taught. Why do you?
JK:we have a) tons of graphic designers and b) bigger problems facing the world than rebranding Monsanto or whatever.
HW:“Why not just say no? The option isn’t considered.” isn’t that the nub of bierut’s argument?
JK:“just say no”, yet keep training them in type, color, and all the old garbage?
HW:funny, i don’t think type, color etc are garbage. they’re foundational… stepping stones for success. yet you’re the designer!
JK: no. They WERE foundational. Bauhaus is no longer relevant. The foundation has changed.
JK: principles of good visual design are a commodity. Use a template. That’s enough for most. GREAT design? Something else.
HW: I’m not sure what you’re arguing. That designers step away from the day to day of design work. “Use a template,” you advise clients?
JK: my clients aren’t paying 30k for a logo. They are paying for a comprehensive strategy. Use Helvetica for the visuals.
HW: maybe i’m showing my naivete, but most firms don’t just offer a logo but an identity system. and that can be useful, no?
JK: there are so many better things a designer can be doing than making an identity system. Problems worth solving.
HW: again, i TOTALLY agree. that was the sum of my speech at the IA summit. but i also think at SCHOOL, students should start with basics
HW: I agree that great design is rare, and only few designers have that skill. But clients sure aren’t going to love that sentiment
JK: The clients I’ve had who pay 6 or 7 figures for design aren’t getting “graphic design”. They’re getting business strategy
HW: but this gets back to precisely bierut’s (and my) point. that design needs to speak the lang of business to be at the table
JK: is that what you read from his article? I didn’t. At all.
HW: yep. cf last paragraph
JK: huh. I guess to each his own interpretation He’s still advocating graphic - visual - brand - mark - aesthetic design.
In the exchange with Walters, Kolko shared a link to an essay we wrote titled, Craftsmanship, in which he discusses and defines the craftsmanship of Interaction Design. I found it immensely helpful in thinking about what I'm aiming for in what I do. It also got me excited about the field. I made bold the portions that especially stood out to me:
For McCullough, Cooper and Wroblewski, craftsmanship comes through intimate understanding of medium and material. The medium of painting is fairly obvious, as is the material of clay. But both the medium and materiality of service design, interaction design, and public policy are vague, abstract, and seemingly invisible. They are, however, not without definition.
Richard Buchanan has continually described the four orders of design - a framework that include symbols, things, action, and thought. In the third and fourth orders, the output of a designers work has shifted from two dimensional communication and three dimensional artifacts to behavior, organizational change, policy, and systems. The material, here - the thing that is shaped - is behavior, action and thought. Frequently, the tool that is used to shape this material is language, rhetoric, and argument. Unique to fourth-order design problems is their recursive and inclusive nature, for systems design output typically includes printed material, objects, environments, software, policy, rules, ideas, and actions. And so an interaction designer's material is frequently a wide array of physical, digital, and cultural substance that can be shaped over a long period of time to affect change.
*
At Austin Center for Design, we're attempting to develop craftsmanship in the context of interaction design and social entrepreneurship. Bauhaus craft focused on fundamental knowledge elements, like color, form, and texture; we too focus on fundamental knowledge elements. But for us, these elements are no longer static compositional and formal qualities. Instead, our "foundations" focuses on empathy through narrative, prototyping and public action, and inference.
Empathy through Narrative. Narrative implies a compelling, culturally sensitive, and emotionally appropriate story that unfolds with, around, and for a given user. At the most basic of levels, this is a use case or scenario that captures the steps a user takes to achieve a goal. But more importantly, a narrative captures the subjective and political qualities of the society in which this goal is accomplished. Creating a narrative is, like sketching or painting, a skill that is learned, critiqued, and revised over time.
Prototyping and Public Action. We continually force a culture of action, one where the debate about what "could be done" or "should be done" is cut short by an actual prototype that can provoke action. This is a skill that requires cultivation, as most students are not used to the exposed quality of producing a critiquable "thing" in front of others.
Inference. Through practice, design students learn to trust informed intuition enough to provoke the action described above. This informed abduction - a logical and creative leap - is a skill learned by trying, failing, and reflecting; it requires first a deep understanding of data-driven design, and then a realization of what "just enough" means in the context of synthesizing disconnected ideas. And, like Narrative and Public Action, inference through synthesis is learned through continual and rigorous practice.
Bauhaus drove craft in materiality, and students developed an intimate understanding of what a given material could do. Painters learned how various pigments "wanted" to flow, and built up tacit understanding of how the physical material would best perform. We too focus on developing a core competency in a given material. But as described above, the "materiality of interactions" are typically people, behavior, and attitudes, and so we drive tacit knowledge of these qualities through both rote and interpretative exercises related to our medium. This demands constant interaction with people, through facilitation, conversation, and immersion, constant reflection on psychology and sociology, and a process of reflection-in-action, in order to consider why the medium of behavior responds as it does to stimuli and to shaping.
The State of Design Education: A (Spirited) Discussion
Yesterday, Fast Co Design published an essay by Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, entitled The Main Failing Of Design Schools: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves. In it, the legendary graphic designer, Pentagram partner and longtime advocate of design divides design education into two camps: process-driven or portfolio-driven, and concludes that neither serves anyone in this day and age particularly well.
Modern design education… is essentially value-free: every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside any cultural context. Some of the most tragic victims of this attitude hail not from the world of high culture, but from the low. Witness the case of a soft-drink manufacturer that pays a respected design firm a lot of money to “update” a classic logo. The product of American design education responds: “Clean up an old logo? You bet,” and goes right to it. In a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the meaning of the mark in its culture is disregarded. Why not just say no? The option isn’t considered.
It was Bierut’s conclusion that had me clapping my hands in agreement:
It’s the broader kind of illiteracy that’s more profoundly troubling. Until educators find a way to expose their students to a meaningful range of culture, graduates will continue to speak in languages that only their classmates understand. And designers, more and more, will end up talking to themselves.
"85% of Tumblr users post more than 20 times a month on average."
Why is this? Creativity, yo!
"[T]he creativity is found in [Tumblr's] most dedicated users. Photographers, designers and musicians can be followed, liked and ' reblogged.'" .... [David] Karp [Tumblr's founder] could evangelise on the force of creativity for hours."
The Guardian --> Interview: David Karp, founder of Tumblr, on realising his dream
Inspired by Scott Berkun's emphasis on building good relationships in his excellent talk on the top mistakes UX designers make, I've decided to make public an edited version of my job search "cheat sheet." I originally drafted it last month in preparation for an interview. Now, in addition to researching the specific company I'm interviewing for, and drafting questions particular to the role, company and hiring manager, I also re-read this writeup. It's a nice refresher on who I am and what I bring as a person and potential teammate. Particularly helpful to have in my mind when I'm nervous! One of my biggest strategies going into interviews, by the way, is to be myself. I do the research, draft the questions, review what hard skills I can bring to the role, but I put time aside to remember and work on the fact that being myself is one of the most important things I can do in an interview.
It never would have occurred to me that this writeup could be useful to other people except that I left a hard copy on the kitchen table and my roommate happend to see it, then asked if she could have a copy. It's been in the back of my mind to perhaps share it more widely. Blogging about Scott's talk prompted me to finally do it. This cheat sheet mostly concerns my soft skills and personal work and UX philosophies (not what prototyping tools I'm most comfortable using, for instance):
What do I want in a company
Ability to grow and learn and get better and better.
The ability to have impact.
Work on important problems.
Good relationships. To be around people I personally like and respect and where there’s a feeling of camaraderie. Where people help each other succeed. Where someone else’s success is also my success.
What do I like about X company
From my research and what I can tell.... (You'll need to modify this for each company)
X company is working on problems I care about/am interested in, etc... (your research will lead you to reasons why you're excited about working for X company)
The UX role sounds exciting because....
Personal Work Mottos:
Relationships, relationships, relationships. Relationships are the grease that makes things happen.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
Ask for help when you need it.
Be clear on expectations. What other people expect of you and what you expect of them. Communication is so important!
Have fun, listen, be humble, think big.
Make friends with smart people in your industry. Have a pulse on what’s going on.
Share knowledge. Appreciate and acknowledge success.
Contribute your expertise to the whole team. Do what you do well, and share what you can with others.
Have fun!
Personal UX Mottos:
Problem solving is fun.
You are not the user.
Important question: how do we understand the user (goals, motivations, who they are)?
What other pieces of the pie do we need to understand to prioritize: business needs? Budget? Decision makers? What story do we need to tell to make our case? How do we involve people in the decision-making process?
The field is constantly evolving. Keep your eye on smart people who are part of building the new platforms.
Make sure to keep an understanding of the big picture (cultural trends) and small picture (best practices + tested methodologies).
Strengths
I'm passionate about UX + [hopefully something else connected to what the company is doing. [Give an example. For instance, a tweet, article that inpsired me, conference I've been to, etc]
Idea generation and brainstorming
Optimism and creativity
Passion, enthusiasm, and domain knowledge about X
Listener and empathy
* I love really listening to people. And am trained in it!
*Good at understanding behaviors and motivations.
Thinker
* Big-picture strategy, context, and details.
* Connecting the dots: “You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference." ~Steve Jobs
* Enjoy thinking through the different elements of what will make a good experience on a website or app.
* Natural ability to see what kind of information would be good for people to interact with and have good ideas on how to present it to them.
Making things happen, putting ideas into action.
Drive for developing my craft
I’m eager to learn and absorb everything I can related to UX so that I can get better and better and better and better (into infinity!)
Collaborating with others
* I’m good at identifying good ideas, but open to being proven wrong. Not forever wedded to an idea.
* Adept at picking my battles, and knowing what are the ideas that are worth advocating for, and really pushing on the things that matter.
Fun to work with, and have a good sense of humor. I love people, and it shows in my work environment – both with clients and co-workers.
Final thoughts: be sure to think carefully through and come prepared to answer the question, "what are your weaknesses?" Also, research the hiring manager's (and other people who will interview you) LinkedIn profile, website, Twitter feed and whatever else you can get your hands eyes on. See if you connect with anything that person cares about or is interested in. The point is to make a human to human interaction more possible in the interview. If you end up not getting the job, then at least you've made a human connection with someone and gotten better practice for the next one.
As I tweeted earlier, the ability to craft and facilitate a truly interactive talk (not just one billed as "interactive") is difficult -- few can actually pull it off. Scott Berkun (@berkun) made it look easy at his Puget Sound SIGCHI talk on The Top Mistakes UX Designers Make. The night was my first time volunteering with PSSIGCHI after Josh LaMar invited me to get involved during an informational interview he graciously agreed to. I found the PSSIGCHI board members and people who attended to be a warm and welcoming bunch. That night Scott asked for a scribe which I also volunteered for -- and got a copy of The Myths of Innovation for my effort (thanks, Scott!). Scott included my notes in his writeup. What I like most about his talk is that it focuses on culture. As Scott explains, "Rather than talk about tactical mistakes, such as in prototyping and running studies, I focused on the ones we overlook the most, about attitude and culture." Understanding how to be successful in a particular work culture is, in my opinion, just as important as designing amazing experiences. If your ideas aren't listened to, aren't bought off on, or no one will help you build them, what good are they, really?
I encourage you to read the whole thing. Here are some snips I particularly liked:
Pretending you have power. Most specialists play advisory roles. They give advice. There is nothing wrong with being an advice giver. The challenge in being an advice giver means the critical skill for success is persuasion and sales. You need to be an expert at selling your ideas. To pretend that you don’t need to sell your ideas, is to pretend you have power. Advice givers should be evaluated heavily on how much of their advice is followed. Giving advice is easy. Getting people to follow it is where your value is.
...
Never make it easy. The first users you have are your co-workers. How easy is it to follow your advice?
...
Forget your coworkers are meta-users. Unless you write production code, you are not actually building the product customers use. You make things, specs, mockups, or reports, that are given to others who must convert your work into the actual product. This means you must design both for you actual customers, and for your coworkers, who are the first consumers of your ideas.
...
Never get dirty. In many tech cultures there is plenty of dirty work to do: mainly finding bugs and reporting bugs. Anyone can do it, but no one wants to do it, and everyone avoids it. Often there are bug bashes or engineering team events to find and deal with bugs. As a specialist, its easy to go home early while the development team stays late to do the dirty work. If you’re part of the culture, you’d stay and help when there is dirty work to be done. But if you’re a consultant, you’d go home. How do you want to be perceived? For people who don’t know what you do, helping out with the dirty work may be the first way to earn a positive reputation, or to make that first friend or two.
...
Dionysian pretension. For designers, its the dreamer mentality as an excuse for not having to do the thinking required to make an idea real. “I just come up with ideas for things, its not my job to figure out how to make it work.”
...
Don’t know the business. Everyone should know why they have a job. Who decided to hire a UX person instead of another developer? What argument did they make? Find out. Find out how the company makes money and which kinds of decisions are likely to make profits grow. Having a better UX doesn’t guarantee anything: many market leading products are UX disasters. How can this be? If you don’t know how that’s possible, then you don’t understand how many other factors beyond UX are involved in your business.
...
How do you become credible? (Audience question)
Ask your best ally (who is not in your job role) that question.
Don’t always change the conversation in meetings to ask the same question you always ask. You’ve become a UX robot, always saying one of the same 3 things.
Saying the same things over again and again, but not affecting change isn’t helping anyone.
Know and be aware of “what conversation are we having?” for each meeting (tip from audience)
...
How do we educate our co-workers of our value?
Most people have no idea what you do.
Part of your job is always being able to give the 101 talk well.
You can’t do it en masse so divide and conquer:
Ask your co-worker, “I’d like to talk to you about what I do so I can get your feedback on what I’m doing.” The next meeting you’ll have one more person (hopefully) on board and who understands what you do.
...
Another Mistake: Never Make It Easy
Designers have multiple users along the way, for instance, developers who get our wireframes, with color codes, pixel sizes, or CSS they can reuse, are happy developers.
Developers are always busy juggling 9 things they need to get done.
Set it up so the devs get some reward every time they work on your design.What positive reinforncement of the behaviors you want do you provide?
...
Inspire people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Have vision (observation brought up by audience member)
There’s a thin line between being inspiring and being a douchebag. One person’s inspiration is another person’s annoyance. The most inspiring thing a person can do is to work hard on problems they care about that align with what the team cares about, share that work with others, gracefully take feedback, and continually produce.
I've been poking around, looking at how different agencies describe User Experience (UX), and whether or not they call it UX explicitly. Though obvious to UXers, you can sure learn a lot about how an agency thinks about itself from its information architecture! I analyzed the information architecture and content related to describing UX for POP, ZAAZ, Razorfish, Forum One, and Neudesic. I'll first list two summaries of my observations -- one on hierarchies, the other on term usage -- then I'll do a brief walk through on each company with screenshots.
How Hierarchy Communicates Importance and Focus:
Important note: I'm only just starting to learn about these companies. My takeaways are purely based on my interpretation of the websites' information architecture, not from first hand knowledge of how the companies operate in practice.
POP lists User Experience second under What We Do.
Forum One lists Design as it's second item under Services. Four of the five items under Design are facets of UX, the fifth item being visual design. (I think of visual design as something separate from UX).
----Takeaway: UX/Design is central to these companies.
Razorfish has a facet under Offerings named, Marketing and Experience Design. Most of the items under this facet are directly related to marketing.
---- Takeway: Razorfish is a company that focuses heavily on marketing.
ZAAZ uses three main categories under the heading, Capabilities: Creative, Performance, and Engagement. UX is listed under Creative. Four other facets of UX are listed under both Creative and Engagement.
------ Takeaway: UX is important, but it's not the primary focus of the company. UX is on an equal playing field with marketing and analytics.
Neudesic lists UX under Expertise. It is the last of 7 items listed under Expertise.
------Takeaway: UX is important, but it's not the main thing they want to emphasize to their clients.
Term Usage
Here's a rundown of what companies are using what phrases to describe their offerings:
User Experience: POP, ZAAZ, Neusdic [Razorfish calls this "Marketing and Experience Design," and Forum One lists various aspects of UX under "Design"]
User Research: POP, ZAAZ, [Note: Neusdic calls this simply Research, and Forum One calls it Audience Research]
Usability Testing: POP, ZAAZ, Forum One [Note: Forum One is the only one who has a whole section describing Usability Testing.]
Information Architecture: Forum One, Neusdic
Emotion: POP, Neusdic [Note: Neusdic is the only company that uses the term "emotional design."]
POP
POP lists User Experience second under it's What We Do section. I'd surmise that UX is fairly important if it's listed so prominently:
After clicking on User Experience, POP describes UX by giving a big nod to its connection to "emotion." They also list specific actions and deliverables UX is responsible for with four bullet points:
ZAAZ
This is a screenshot from a section of ZAAZ's homepage. The links are not clickable, so there's not a way to dig deeper into what the different terms mean to ZAAZ. For ZAAZ, content goes hand in hand with Design and UX as shown by this bullet point: "Design, Copywriting & User Experience." In comparison to POP, ZAAZ places UX under Creative while POP lists UX and Creative as separate, equal facets:
Razorfish
For Razorfish, UX is tightly coupled with Marketing, although it is never explicitly called UX. The company lists Interaction Design under the header "Marketing and Experience Design:"
The text describing interaction design is unlike any other description of interaction design that I've ever come across. This is probably because marketing is paramount here, and design is subservient under it. Below is the full text of the blurb. I think it falls flat describing interaction design. Even from a marketing perspective which it mostly is, I don't personally connect with what they're saying:
Forum One
Though never explicitly saying "User Experience," Forum One lists different aspects of UX under Design in their list of Services: Audience Research, Usability Audits, Information Architecture, and Usability Testing. Interestingly, Visual Design is grouped together with these facets of UX. None of the other agencies call out visual design explicitly, though a bullet point from ZAAZ reads, "Design, Copywriting, and User Experience." Perhaps ZAAZ wrote that thinking that most people will think of visual design when they see the word "design."
Neudesic
User Experience is listed as the bottom bullet point under Expertise in Neudesic's What section:
While Neudesic's visual design is the least sexy of the other companies I've profiled so far, they do the best job, I think, of describing in plain, easy-to-grasp language what UX is, and why it's a necessary ingredient for success. In fact, it's probably the best I've come across period. Like POP, they speak to emotion, and how users feel about a product:
No matter what function your application serves, it will never enjoy wide spread adoption if it lacks the right user experience; one that is easy, affective, meaningful and valuable to both your users and your business.
Neudesic's User Experience professionals deliver software that actually aligns with what users feel, think and really do. We can deploy our UX services at any stage and on any size project to ensure end-user productivity is always an important part of the conversation, and your project is ultimately kept on a successful, strategic track.
Neudesic UX begins and ends with users’ goals, tasks and behaviors. Our UX design not only focuses on the look and feel of a product; it also takes into account what it is, what it does and what goals it serves. By leveraging strategic choices to support the user's goals, Neudesic UX design creates a positive emotional connection to the experience.
Typical areas of engagement in the UX process:
• Business requirements engagement
• Research into user goals, tasks and behaviors
• Design strategy and ideation
• Visual, creative and emotional design
• Information architecture and content strategy
• Interaction, interface, and prototype design & testing
• Functional specification
• Technical strategy
(emphasis mine)
I think Forum One does a good job explaining simply and powerfully some key facets of UX, but for me, I liked seeing the overall picture of why UX matters. Neusdic's description packs a lot of punch, makes sense and isn't wrapped in marketing mumbo jumbo language.
In conclusion I'd like to say that this is the most meta post I've ever written. That is all.
We map the terrain of domains using research and empathy, see opportunity spaces, create definition around solutions that makes change manifest in the world.
Sarah Brooks on what Interaction Designers and User Experience Designers do. Sarah has issue with her definition --"Wait. That’s as vague as the rest of the descriptions that drive me nuts. " -- but I happen to like it. :)
About three months ago, I was transformed by a talk Sharon Ann Lee gave on redesigning success. Lee is a cultural trend analyst and author who runs "a think tank/studio on trends, culture and creativity." Her talk has been buzzing around in my mind since watching it. Lee recommends: 1) know your numbers 2) live in the power zone 3) create a poetic vision of your life. Because a poetic vision serves as your North Star, keeping your heart/dream/life-purpose mission at the forefront of your mind and guiding decisions about what projects to take on, I've wanted to start drafting mine. Well, today I did! I filled out the worksheet she emailed me and created my very first draft. Your poetic vision is a project that is in perpetual beta, constantly being tested and redefined, so although I need to work on it, I'm pleased that I now have a good first draft. [Note: I began drafting this post on January 9, 2012, which is the day I drafted my poetic vision.]
Lee's talk was also important to me in a long journey I've been on to reclaim myself as an artist. Identity, and how you think about yourself is so powerful. Though I liked drawing when I was younger and creating visual art, I didn't particularly have more of an affinity for it than most children (though I think children are amazingly creative and artistic!). I wasn't labeled an "artist" by my family or education institutions nor did I think of myself as one. The way I thought of myself as a "creative" person ebbed and flowed. But more and more, bit by bit, I started thinking of myself as belonging in the Creative Camp. Though I didn't think of myself as a (capital A) Artist, I knew creativity was important to me and I just felt like I belonged with poets, artists, dancers, and other creative people. Several birthdays in a row in my late twenties, I modeled my birthday parties after those a 5 year old might have, with coned party hats, and lots and lots of paper, magazines, scissors, crazyons, markers, tape, and glue spread out on a long table. The idea was to create an environment for people to create, engage, and connect with one another through art with no judgements attached - after all it was modeled and branded as a birthday party a 5 year old might have! There was no way to have "bad art." The point was to have fun and connect and explore art-making.
In July 2010, I went (hesitantly) to a night for artists to work on something deemed artist liberation. The basic idea behind the evening was to work on the idea that art is important, that what we each were striving to do with art was important, and that while oppression against artists was damaging and hurtful -- and real -- we could keep going forward with what we believed in.
I knew this group was very open and non-judgemental about who qualified as an artist, so though I decided to self-identify enough to go, I didn't feel like a "real" Artist, and wondered if maybe I shouldn't be there at all. It was amazing, and I had probably the first major breakthrough in beginning to think of myself as an artist. Afterwards, I tweeted (lightly edited for clarity):
Inspired by artists and thinkers I met with tonight. Some thoughts I had: 1) Ideas are (one of) my medium. 2) The Internet is a giant playground 3) The open, social web *is* art & creativity, realized (and other stuff). 4) designing play & interaction is art making. 5) I love humanity.
I didn't have to think of myself as a visual artist to be an artist. Being an artist was a way of looking at the world, of being in the world, and interacting and influencing the world. I could look at problems, I could look at situations, I could look at the wonder of the universe with an artist's mind. Lee's talk took this idea that had already been percolating in my mind, and made it more real by describing the way she came to think of herself as an artist.
(Context: an audience member asked Lee, "can you inspire us with your poetic vision?" Starts at 30:18)
I am a person who for my entire life has bristled under any job title I have ever had. Even if it had VP in front of it or president or CEO or anything that was lofty. I absolutely hated it. It was a label that I could not connect with. I didn't feel like it was me. So when this happened, I was in search of a title that I felt really good about, that let me be free, instead of put me into a box. And I was sitting with my husband one day when I was really struggling with this. And I said, is there some word that I'm not thinking of where you're taking -- you know, I'm inspired by culture and I like collecting all that information, but I'm not just a researcher. I like to take that information and then create something *new* with it. Is there some word in science or some other field that does that? Like a polymath? So I was looking for some kind of technical term. He just looked at me and said, I think they just call that artist.
It never occurred to me. First of all, in my Asian parents' success manual, artist was *not* an option. It was doctor and Connie Chung. And also when you've had a business you get labeled, "oh you're a business person, you're not creative." So I never felt like I had any rights to it. But it was the first time when I thought of it, and I'm not thinking of it in the terms of I want to paint and have a gallery show. No. I'm thinking about it in this broader term. Suddenly I relaxed under it because I just felt free. It didn't tell me to be anything, it was just this open door to make whatever I wanted to make out of it.
And for me the definition of an artist is "to animate the magic inherent in the world." The world already *has* magic in in. The role of an artist is to galvanize it, to rally it. And to genuinely connect with people, stir a response and leave them a bit transformed.
I was inspired by something David Hockney said. As a painter I really admire he said, "In the end I'm just trying to connect. I'm just trying to connect with people." And so when I did this for myself, I just thought I can relax under that and it gives me freedom to do whatever I want. So that was a pathway for me.
For me, a lot of my interests when I filled out my worksheet was: I'm inspired by culture and people, all the weird nuances of what people are doing with their lives. I'm so interested, and I love it. And also for me, I understand the world through metaphor. So the metaphor for me was bioluminescence. Bioluminescence is really like animals who emit light, like jellyfish and fireflies. What I learned from these weird frontier science books that I was reading, is that we are also - humans are bioluminescent creatures. We don't show the light but there's light inside of our bodies. They've measured it with photon measurement tools. That was this amazing leap in my metaphor. I'm really drawn to bioluminescence for some reason. For me, if my work can show the light inside of people, then that's my poetic vision. So mine was:
Lead with my heart.
Imagine the impossible, and believe it's possible.
Reveal the light inside of us. (human bioluminescence)
Like Lee, thinking of myself as an artist in this broader sense of the word is helpful. Freeing. Liberating. I've realized that I can be a researcher and designer and whatever else I want to be and still be an artist. It's almost as if art is a guiding principle in the way love is for me. I deeply resonated with the way Steve Jobs' sister described the role love played in his life. I felt like she was describing me:
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods.
...
He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere.
...
He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort.
As I wrote last month, art matters. For all kinds of reasons. Sadie, who's 7 or 8 years old in this video, shows us her drawings as a way of reminding each person that you, yes -- YOU personally -- can do anything:
You know why I'm showing you these pictures? Because I'm trying to encourage you to do something you know you can do. Do something you want to do. Cuz you know what? You might not know who the heck I am, but you know, everybody's all connected. When we're connected, it means we all believe in each other. And I believe that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and all the time. So do it.
Art reminds us that the seemingly impossible is possible. It opens up windows in our imagination. It makes room for hope and possibilities.
Interestingly, identifying as an artist is opening up all kinds of possibilities for creativity in a variety of mediums. I started drawing again. But that's just one example, the larger point is that I feel more permission to be the real me. The creative real me. Part of this means falling much more deeply in love with life, appreciating the wonder and awe, the love and beauty, the magnificence that we are all surrounded by but that somehow gets obscured by anti-cruise forces. I've taken to noticing how utterly miraculous it is that I get to experience the exact moment I'm in, with the wondrous person I happen to be with during that moment. I feel blessed. Happy. Grateful.
Never could I have imagined that reclaiming myself as an artist would be so important in terms of the way I interact with the world, my sense of happiness, and how I think about and approach success.
Thought provoking questions from Stuart Candy on the future of play:
"How can we encourage the spirit and freedom of play? Are games taking over the world or have they already? Do games and playfulness diverge the more we try to integrate gaming into life?"
There is often an assumption that games equal play, but Candy's last question brings up an important distinction: Games and Playfulness are not one and the same.
Another one of my favorite songs, by the amazing Pogo. Best when watched and listened to at the same time.
Here's a blurb I wrote about the song a year or two ago:
"Gardyn" is happiness - visually & rhythmically delightful. A touching backstory as well: the young mixer/musician made it as a gift for his mother for Mother's Day. Every time I hear it, I feel so happy, joyful, grateful to be alive - now - in this beautiful world we live in. I somehow feel connected to everyone else who happens to be inhabiting the world at this same moment in history. I remember how capable we are of love and creative expression.
Emily's Playground @cunningham-emily - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
