Our Tales of Design (TOD) series has been receiving all the attention we anticipated. We are glad to see the design community engage in a meaningful dialogue with global design experts through this initiative.
Meir Benezra, Founder of Design Playing, was the guest speaker in our last session. He shared his design and entrepreneurial journey. He encouraged the participants to look beyond their professional roles and be open to challenges. The session had a lot of meaning and depth one could apply in design and life in general.
Here are 8 key takeaways from the session:
1. Be authentic and strive to create meaningful connections
Try to connect with people on a deeper level and understand their pain points. Listen and show that you genuinely care about them. When people sense that you are authentic, they start relying on you. Hence, they also start to believe in your work, and that your solutions can solve their problems.
2. Design is about collaboration and co-creation
A great idea can come from literally anyone. When we create designs, we are aiming to solve problems for a particular target audience. We need to be interested and curious to ask good questions to improve our designs. Design isn’t a solitary endeavor. Collaboration helps in building deep understanding of pain points, have clarity on solutions, take feedback, brainstorm ideas together, and build successful design.
3. Be open to feedback, it improves design
Any piece of work can be improved when you take feedback. When you receive a good idea, take it and learn from it. Try to understand other people’s perspectives, listen to it and find ways to shift your mindsets together for a better and improved design. Being too firm with your ideas may lead to designs that do not appeal to the users.
4. Embrace fear as it fuels growth
Fear of failure often blocks curiosity, stopping us from exploring new ideas. Fear does not go away easily. The impostor syndrome can kick in at any time. Instead, one must learn to embrace fear and rely on our knowledge and capabilities to explore new ideas. Your curiosity about how you can grow in an area must be more powerful than the fear of failure.
5. Help people learn. They’ll get excited about their work
Many times, people are not aware of their capabilities. There’s a possibility they don’t have the timeframe to try something new. If you have the right knowledge, help people realise their capability by sharing your knowledge. Let them know of new and smarter ways to do a task. Almost everyone gets excited about learning things that simplify their work.
6. Be adaptive to change your mindset on evolving technology
If the purpose of technology is to serve humanity, it will always need our input. For example, AI can be a helpful tool to aid your work, leaving you enough time to explore new ideas. Have confidence in your capabilities. While there are jobs that might fade due to emerging technologies, new roles will emerge. One must be flexible to adapt to these changes and learn something new instead of fearing about losing a job role.
7. Keep experimenting until you find what you enjoy the most
Life is about enjoying the play. It’s important to find what you love doing most. Otherwise, work, market demand, and job roles will only become a burden. And to know what you love doing most, you must keep experimenting.
8. Communicate!
Communication brings everyone together. It is the key to solving the complexities of a project, and the misalignment of a team. People can unlock the superpower of thinking together as a combined source of intelligence if they communicate often and clearly.
No Comments