It feels like modern movies are more often starting to shy away from the standard hero's journey structure. I've been seeing more movies lately that follow more unpredictable and unique stroytelling structures which I feel is a good thing. The problem with the Hero's journey is that it gets old fast. I personally would get very bored if I saw another movie that followed this exact structure because it has been used so many times before. I want to see something more chaotic like our life often is.

This reminded me of when I had to take my little brother, who’s in a wheelchair, to this one older building. The front entrance had a big staircase, and we had to go around the back just to find a ramp. It felt like he wasn’t really supposed to be there, like the design forgot people like him exist. I realize that it's hard to accomodate everyone, but it's important that every design tries its best to do that because the feeling of being an afterthought is very unpleasant and even humiliating.

I observed this design problem on several instances in different applications. Recently, I was playing a video game where tried purchasing a new car and I was one click away from destroying my previous car that I worked hard for (you're only allowed to have one). There was just one warning which looked like any other generic warning in the game that this would happen and I almost pressed yes which would've been pitiful. It's really important when designing interfaces to pay attention to these little things that can make or break the user experience.

This reminds me of the concept of MVP and the importance of first testing the idea and only then building a good product based on that idea. For example, before TurboTax was built, the founder first was interested if anybody would even want to file their taxes online. So instead of building an intricate system, they first built a super simple one that only filed a specific tax document that only a percentage of the population was eligible to file. It was done for the sake of simplicity to test out the idea without spending too many resources. The tool went viral and only then they started making it more universal for other tax filers too.

Whenever I head typography in the context of digital experiences, I always think of Apple. Steve Jobs happened to really like the typography class in college and once he was building their first Macintosh, he was the first to put such an emphasis on typography and aesthetics which changed the course of how computers look and feel like.

Prototyping isn't only useful for designers, but also for startup founders. The concept of prototyping and releasing a minimal viable product was described very well in a book I read recently called Lean Startup. All of the successful startups like Uber, DoorDash, AirBnb started off with products that looked completely different than what they look like now, but revolving around the central idea of their product.

This reminds me of ordering food at restaraunts. If I was just asked open-endedly on what food do I want right now, I would answer something completely different from if I was choosing a dish from a menu. Especially, if there are too many options on the menu, it's always very hard to choose "the best one" that I want to order. I imagine a similar psychology is involved in surveys.

I recently saw an ad promoting an app that helps you replace social media doomscrolling habits with bite-sized knowledge from books. I downloaded the app and signed up because I like the idea. The sign up and onboarding was great and easy, but once logged in, I just got confused on how to use it! It was very counterintuitive to how I typically interact with social media apps that this app is trying to replace which made me want to use it less. The interface was too cluttered and it felt like it was hard to find the content that interested me. I think if they did a better competitor UX analysis they would've made their interface more user-friendly.

This statement opened my eyes to a little different definition of design in my mind. When thinking of it this way, every designed product is a spectrum. For example, a design can be simple, but not so simple that it cuts off too much powerfulness, etc. The designer basically has to make decisions on which side of the design spectrum their product would fall in that would best fulfill the needs of the target users.

This is a very interesting concept to come up with possibly more efficient/better designed objects. It's cool to see that different creative processes are targeted towards generating different types of ideas. I guess a very creative person is just very efficient at switching their frame of mind and viewing the world from different perspectives. When put from that perspective, creativity is definitely something that can be acquired and trained.

I always felt like I get the most creative and refreshing ideas while traveling and this is definitely why. Living in the same place, I get used to my surroundings and don't pay much attention. But whilte travelling, I pay a lot of attention to my surroundings and that attention gets converted into more creative ideas because the context of my being has changed.

This is a similar concept to a marketing term "Target Personas" which are the people that you envision would want to buy your product. In marketing, that helps optimize your ads and content so that it appeals to that type of people. It's interesting to see the concept of personas used in different fields which must mean that it's pretty useful.

I remember from INFO 200 that one of the best ways to figure out how people interact with things (by things I mean the ones that are relevant to what you're researching) is by observing them. I remember our professor told us a story about the founder of some software company that waited for people at Staples to buy the competitor's software, then ask them if he could watch them use the program for the first time. That way he learned which parts of the competitor's design that users struggled with and improve on that in his software. This requires way more effort than just conducting an interview, but again, sometimes people don't know what they really need or want.

I remember myself as a younger kid thinking of design careers as just playing with colors and acting super "creative" (wearing cool clothes and being artsy and whatnot). "Anyone could do that, right?" I thought. But my opinion completely changed when I first had to design a piece of marketing material for a construction company that I worked at. Staring at a blank slate, I couldn't figure out how to best convey the information that the company wanted to convey. I realized that creating a good design is actually incredibly hard and requires a lot of experience and knowledge about the stakeholders of your product. Now, my opinion completely flipped. In technical fields, there is usually the right answer to most problems. In creative fields, there are many answers to problems and there never seems to be the "right" way to do something (as there are so many) which makes it a harder skill to master in my opinion. I look forward to improving my design skills in this class and learning how to present information in more efficient ways.