Last week I submitted an entry for the Core77 1hr+ Design Challenge: The Future of Digital Reading. This is the first time I’ve ever participated in one of these challenges. I was intrigued by the premise of the exercise and by the juicy research results presented by Portigal Consulting. The task was to familiarize myself with the research and then spend 90 minutes creating and communicating visions of the future of digital reading.
So I set aside an evening to review the research materials and do some design. It turned out to be a very rewarding and educational experience. Here are a few of the things that I learned:
- My moleskine is not the best medium for concept illustration—get big paper. Once I started my design time, I immediately started sketching. I spent the vast majority of my time sketching and brainstorming over pages and pages in my notebook. My 90 minutes was broken into two stints (more on that below), so it went by pretty quickly, especially with time lost to context switching. I figured I could just cull the best sketches from my notebook and upload them with my submission. But once I started actually putting that together, I could see that it wasn’t going to be great. I’ll know for next time that I need to design an upload document for communication, not just proof of an idea.
- Make sure the design time is uninterrupted. 90 minutes is better spent without a 3 hour break in the middle. Unforeseen issues arose during the evening that necessitated a long break in the middle of my design time. Everything worked out fine in the end, but it definitely threw my mind out of the exercise. I would really have loved to have restarted my 90 minutes after I could get back to it, but I believe in playing by the rules. Next time I will do my best to shelter my design time and protect the ultra-valuable flow.
- Doing the write-up takes longer than I think it will. I left some of my 90 minutes for the write-up and uploading, but I’ll be honest—I definitely took way longer with that than I had allocated. And here I just said how rule-abiding I am! I really hope the writing time is not meant to be included in the 90 minutes. Regardless, I need to get better at estimating how long I need for writing. Having this blog is helping, but I’ve still got a ways to go.
- Just Do It! It was a great experience to rip myself out of refinement cycles and just put something out there. The thought, “this isn’t good enough—you can’t put this online!” went through my head more than a couple of times. Again, to be totally honest, it still happens. But the beauty of this challenge is the time limit. I COULDN’T scrap it and start over, or obsess about little details, or stay up all night to get it just right. And neither could anyone else—no one is expecting pixel perfection from a one hour (plus) challenge. So I got to keep telling that voice to shove it, and I got valuable and cathartic practice shipping my work.
Here is my submission: Separating the Book’s Brain from Its Body. Thank you, Core77 and Portigal Consulting, and I’m already looking forward to the next 1hr Design Challenge!
