Design Diary Entry - Week 4

The first month at Runius Design has flown by with so much happening since I arrived. The projects and priorities are both in a constant state of motion, for better or for worse. Going from a university in the United States to a consultancy in Sweden has produced quite a shift in cognition. What is sometimes difficult to comprehend is I am still in the infancy of my design career. I haven’t yet found my niche and that can be quite a challenge when developing a concept and moving forward on a real project. Every decision I make is a tiny step towards defining myself as designer. And there are many decisions with even more sub-decisions. When in school, there is room for experimentation, for trying and failing. On the job, there is much less. You have to have a direction and an identity. You have to put that identity into a product, and that is difficult to do without a solid understanding of your own. The co-op program forces you to professionally develop a bit more quickly than you would if our degree were just 5 years of pure academia. When I go back to school, I will be able to reflect on my time here at Runius Design and comprehend and appreciate the role that the school semesters plays in my education and thus, use it to it’s full potential. It is a time to explore, gather and practice. The co-op semester is a time to put that to the test, and it is important to remember that now.

I have big goals and aspirations, so it’s important not to get to ahead of myself. I do not yet know what exactly I want, or have, to do to create the change I want to see in the world (shout out to my man Gandhi). Design is a changing landscape, such as that of technology, but the needs of people and their psychology stay the same, relative to their upbringing. For now, it’s best to explore, observe, and learn about people and the objects they use.

One very popular topic Christian and I often discuss is storytelling. Up until now, I didn’t fully understand respect the power that storytelling holds. It has many forms and applications. All design must include some level of storytelling, it is what communicates your ideas on a sketch page, concepts to a client, a product’s purpose to a potential user, what orchestrates all the seemingly unassociated tasks of the design process into a narrative for an onlooker to understand, and so on. It happens both above the surface and below. Storytelling takes everything that has happened behind the scenes and displays it for any and all to understand. Storytelling is a powerful tool that can be used to influence and persuade; we search for its positive implementation.

That’s all for this week. Check back next time for more thoughts and philosophy. Thanks for reading!

Codee Adams
Product Designer