As a part of the the IBM Accelerate Program, each design participant had to present a final 5-minute presentation reflecting on their experience and growth as a designer. For my presentation, I reflected on my own personal journey of learning to grow confidence in myself as a designer; confidence that I gained as a result of participating in the program. A transcript of my presentation can be found at the end.
Presentation Transcript:
Now, I’m going to be honest. I thought about this project over and over about a billion times. Over the course of these weeks, I’ve been playing different ideas back and forth in my head to the point where I just felt stuck. No idea felt “good enough”. But with all that thinking, and as sessions past on and I spoke with more IBMers, I came to the simple realization that this presentation wasn’t some elaborate thing that would ruin my future career if it wasn’t “creative enough” or any of those silly yet convincing lies our brains tend to tell us designers sometimes. And with that gradual realization, and the experiences of coming out of my comfort zone as a result of this program, I knew my journey didn’t have to be rocket science, but it was more akin to learning how to let go of all the fear.
This was me at the beginning. Lots of fear and self-doubt. Since I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I almost didn’t apply to this program. But when it was almost last minute and I was a bit delirious from having COVID at the time, I thought, “Why not?”. I’ve always been quite shy, and prone to pass up opportunities due to feelings like imposter syndrome, but something in me knew this was something I shouldn’t pass up, so I applied and made it in to my surprise.
And I was scared. Imposter syndrome hit me like a truck. It was something I already experienced being in a small UX design program in my college surrounded by so many talented designers, and I was scared that here I would just shrink further into that feeling – realize that maybe I even chose the wrong career path. I questioned my creativity, my ideas, my design process, my experience.
But in these 8 weeks of coming out of my shell and letting myself grow as a designer, but also as a person, here’s what I learned, in no particular order:
Do not squash your curiosity. Allow yourself to just not know things because there’s nothing wrong with constantly learning. You don’t look dumb or stupid – in fact, you look like a person on the quest to grow. There’s no competition between who knows this and who knows that. I think of that quote from Dr. Cheryl: “curiosity is what is going to make you a great designer.”
People love to talk (most of the time. And it doesn’t mean anything if they don’t.) I think what I learned a ton from the people I was able to chat with through our coffee chats is that no one is going to fight you if you reach out to them. In fact, people tend to love talking about themselves and their career (or it seems like they do at IBM). And everyone I’ve met is extremely nice and not against lending a helping hand – so don’t miss out on opportunities just because you think someone won’t want to talk to you.
Don’t say no to your ideas when you're in that brainstorming phase. Sometimes I get stuck brainstorming because I’m already convinced I have created something terrible. And if I make one bad thing, the next will probably be bad. LIES! Sometimes you just gotta let it all out to get to the ones you’re proud of.
Embrace the weird. I think as designers we sometimes need to let all the weird, seemingly impossible ideas out to get somewhere we’re happy with. Sometimes we have to reimagine situations like we’re in a sci-fi movies where maybe we design a society cohabited by humans and slimy green aliens. Outlandish ideas can help lead us to those great ones.
And maybe something cliché: you don’t know until you try. If I didn’t do this program I don’t think I would’ve grown out of all these fears I’ve had as a designer, or I would’ve, it just would’ve been later on in my life.
And how does all of this influence me as a designer?
After our first session one of our journal reflection prompts was to define the word “designer” in our own words. At the time, I wrote “anyone who reimagines something” which I still think is true, though a little vague. Not to quote the marvelous Dr. Cheryl again, but I will forever remember how she told us during that second session: “being a designer is not for the weak”. And I learned that in addition, being a designer means being an advocate, it means speaking out, it means growing out of any biases you may have had, it means to constantly learn and ask questions and forever remain curious. It means to not withhold your creativity or your full potential out of fear – but to release that curiosity and creativity and in the end, hopefully use it for good.