Part 1: Examine and analyze my current life
It's been a while since I slowed down and looked at my life properly. Through the worksheet provided in the book, we can quantify and examine our current life status from the four indicators of love, play, health, work, and health.
Like doing UX design, you need to understand the problem before solving it. At this stage, by quantifying your current life state, design a balanced plan for these four dimensions.
Part 2: Create guidance for my life
After finding the problems, the next thing I have to do is clarify myself. What are my life goals and passions? This is a process of self-understanding, and the book provides two important values to help understand oneself: the value of work and the value of life.
First, The value of work is: "What does work mean to me? What is the meaning and value of it?" For future career planning, we need to understand the value of work to find a job that can achieve my purpose in the future.
The second is about the value of life. What is the meaning of life to me? I have to think about what makes life worthwhile. And what is the connection between me personally and others and other communities, and even wider to society?
Finally, compare the value of work with the value of life, and synthesize them to find the life guidelines that can be consistent between the two.
Part 3: Find a way from daily life
To find a way and idea to develop, the book mentioned doing Good Time Journal: record work and daily flow in life. This can help me find passion and bring positive energy to my life. The journal should be detailed including AEIOU: Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects and Users.
Part 4: Design Life Prototypes
By integrating the findings and insights from previous process, I first came up with an initial version of prototype. The point here is that the first version can be very vague and rough, since I can still modify it iteratively.
My life goal is to convey positive energy and warmth through art. The prototype I designed for practice and validation is to create a fan page on Facebook. Combining with my skills and experience in tennis, I tried to share some fun facts, knowledge and interesting stories about tennis on fan page. An important point is I make this information into illustrations and comics, which forces myself to stand out from comfort zone and share my works with public. This whole process is about using a smaller scope prototype, but with the same values as my life goal (convey positive energy and warmth through art).
As a designer, the design process is always an iterative cycle, the design is needed to be adjust dynamically. I did peer evaluation and fan page analysis to better know the reflection of every attempt.
Odyssey Planning Worksheet (5 yrs plan)
The Odyssey Project requires 3 projects, namely:
A (As usual) plan: the original plan, that is, the plan that was originally in progress or had ideas.
Plan B (Breakthrough): Plan when Plan A is completely unfeasible.
C (Creative & Carefree) Plan: Living the life you want without considering other people's expectations, resources, time and money.
Takeaway
About Design Thinking...
- The process before start designing is important: Exploratory stage is like the foundation of the following design
- Before solving problems, we should identify the problems
- Rolling-wave planning: Design is a long-term and iterative process, keep receiving feedback and make adjustment. Even it is not perfect, it keeps closer to perfect
About Life...
- Knowing yourself is always the first step to make changes
- Life is all about choices and trade-offs
- I can become a better person: The goals I set are not just dreams, but a journey that can be achieved and accomplished
- There is not only one choice or the right choice in the future
- Life is a journey, keep curiosity, keep exploring and trying just like design
Some parts can be designed and parts that cannot be designed in life. We cannot fully control everything in life, but designing our own life allows us to face these unknowns with a better attitude and status.