I have to be honest that I have really been struggling with Exploration A during this quarter. I haven’t felt inspired, but confused and unsure of what the project is about. I found myself talking through things with my classmates and posting sketches, but it still felt boring and expected. I was ready to just throw my hands up and then I read an article for GRDS 701 Bootcamp Bootleg that presents new ways of design thinking. I read through the article prepared to write a blog entry for my other class about it and found myself stopping my blog entry to brainstorm for Exploration A. Ideas were racing through my mind and I kept flipping the pages of my sketchbook to try and get down the images in my head. It was great! I finally felt “unstuck” and inspired to share it with one of my partners that was feeling a similar frustration. We went through some of the different design thinking methods and caught ourselves saying “Oh! What if you tried this!” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if it did this.” I felt so relieved after our last brainstorming session and perhaps what I will turn in will actually be good!
As I sat down to read through some of the other discussion posts and saw our original Unit 1 discussion questions about Creativity and Design Process, particularly Jonah Lehrer’s video that poses the idea that the creative journey begins with a moment of frustration. When I originally responded to the post I didn’t agree with that statement, but after our assignments in Exploration A, I would most definitely agree with the idea the journey starts with frustration. If I hadn’t been so frustrated, I would not have stepped away and reconsidered new ways of approaching my design opportunity. Then I started to think, perhaps all of our exercises up this point was to get us to this level of frustration that we then force our old ways of design thinking to submitting and making way for new opportunities. Whether that was the goal of the exercises up to this point I have not idea, but I do have to admit that my brainstorming would not have been as productive if I hadn’t felt that level of frustration.