Some Lessons Learned

Well I am now a Rescue diver! And I have logged my 30^th and last dive here. I decided to not dive the 2 extra days and give myself a few days to decompress so I don’t get Decompression Sickness on the flight home. They recommend at least 24 hours but I have been doing a lot of deep dives lately and I like to be on the safe side. So I am just touring around seeing some of the sights.

            So after letting all my work and notes from the Singapore project cool off a bit I went back through my notebooks a day or two ago and reviewed what I had learned. I have made a list, I don’t know if anyone who actually reads this cares at all but whatevs…reviewing helps me learn. And who knows…someone else may learn something.

LESSONS LEARNED – Singapore Design Project

·         Fight for an internship – Get real world experience

·         Learn to Sketch and draw – practice perspective, drawing mechanisms, practice is vital. This is HUGE for engineers…and it was something I had not thought about much before. But almost every company we went to the engineers said that the ability to sketch well was critical

·         In school focus on Application – Actually do things – don’t just learn theory, this was one thing I loved about Stanford you were always putting the theory you were learning into practice in everyday life. (personal projects on your own time are great for this – plus they help build your portfolio and look great for grad school)

·         Learn to write functional specs – learn this well and you will ALWAYS have a job

·         Make a design notebook – use it to practice sketching, write ideas, write problems you see and ways things could be improved. Essentially make a record of your thoughts and ideas

·         Observe – Develop a critical eye to products and systems around you

·         Be playful – absolutely essential for creativity

·         Be eager to learn – especially by things around you, don’t be afraid to ask questions

·         Improvise – take initiative, don’t accept the status quo

·         In Design look to the actual user and their needs – (you would be surprised by how many companies don’t do this)

·         The power of small – sometimes it is necessary to focus on the smaller picture rather that getting bogged down by the massive scale of a problem

·         There are patterns among problems and a pattern to solving those problems

·         Understanding the problem is key – go to the users in search of information. Don’t always think on such a macro level – sometimes take care of the micro and it solves the problem at the macro level

·         Try to avoid instantly jumping to solutions – try to understand what is really the problem

·         If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth 10,000

·         Reducing part count is one of the most important things in designing for manufacturing

·         Learn about different manufacturing processes so you can incorporate different processes right from the beginning of the design process

·         Sometimes you will have to make decisions off of limited data

·         You will learn the most about your design when you actually start building your project

·         When prototyping ask yourself – what is the question I need answered? – direct your prototype towards answering that question

·         When working as a group decide how to divide things up monetarily before money gets involved

·         A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow

·         Education is not just preparation for life, but part of life – a continuous part

·         There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing

·         “The wisdom of life is to keep on planting. Some…never plant after youthful imagination dies, and they reap only the one crop which they planted in youth. Plant every season, and life will be a succession of harvests.” – Henry Ford

·         You need to know and understand your process – you need a good support structure for this process

·         Good designs come from good questions

·         “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul…creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment.” – Pres Uchtdorf

·         “Great learners: 1 – Welcome Correction, 2 – Make and keep commitments, 3 – Work hard, 4 – help others learn, 5 – Expect opposition and work to overcome it.” – Pres Eyring

BOOKLIST – (I always keep a list in my planner of books professors suggest in their lectures…hopefully one day I will actually have time to read them;)

1.      The innovators DNA – Jeff Dyer

2.      The 5000 year leap

3.      Getting to yes – Negotiating agreement – Robert Fisher, William Ury

4.      Design for a contemporary world – Christian Boucharenc

5.      Future Perfect – Stanley Brown

6.      Books by Tom Kelley and Tim Brown