After reviewing my Tumblr posts and midterm feedback, I learned that my sense of desirability is highly rooted in practicality, much more so than aesthetic beauty or emotional indulgence. I am much more likely to find something desirable if it is practical than if it is beautiful. For example, all my #WhatIveGot posts are items that solve a problem I experience in my day-to-day life. The items are sometimes ugly, but they all solve my problem well.
Even in my taste-testing post, I chose to evaluate products that are very healthy, but don’t necessarily taste delicious (apples and salad). This is pretty consistent with how I approach eating; I am usually more likely to pick a healthy food than a delicious unhealthy one.
Similarly, when I work on team projects, I am very efficient and organized, and my biggest critique is that I am sometimes too blunt (I focus on the substance of my words more than the style). I am really good at identifying the problem and coming up with creative solutions, but I am less good at drawing artistic prototypes or appealing to people’s emotions. This is not to say I don’t value design (quite the opposite), but that when it comes to designing a product, I focus on making it “simple, intuitive, and easy to use” instead of “beautiful”.
In my life going forward, it is useful for me to know that I value things that are practical over things that are emotionally pleasing. I will probably want to work at a company that shares these values, but I also need to surround myself with people who are different from me (i.e. have a great artistic eye and appreciation for beauty), because these people who complement my skill set and will point out things I am missing. For the remainder of this class, I want to improve on my weak areas so I will probably focus on improving the emotional desirability of my products.
For my representative image, I am using a screenshot of Craig’s List, because the webste is highly functional and intuitive, but really ugly. This may be where I am positioned now in my design sense, but it is not where I hope to end up!
