Essay

Infinite Loop of Questions

When designing, how do you know if your design has reached its potential? Could there perhaps be another better idea or iteration of your design that would take it to that next level? Or has your design reached its highest poetic qualities that yield amazing functional, aesthetic, and meaningful results?

The latter are all very interesting questions – particularly since your final design result is really a manifestation of the creative journey that you travelled since becoming aware of the particular design challenge for which you were solving. In other words, how do you know if your design solution is really the best solution for a given design challenge? After all, what if you took a wrong turn during the design process? Were all of your design decisions along the way the correct decisions? And if not, how costly will the mistakes be for the resulting design and its users?

Top 3 Ways Your Design Can Reach Its Creative Potential

The above line of thinking is enough to make one lose confidence in their design result, and even in their creative process. The key to achieving your best design solution is to make the best design decisions possible at each step in your design process journey. The following are three critical ways for you to unlock your design’s truest and best potential so it has maximum positive benefit for those by whom it will be experienced.

• Find the Convergence Point: When designing, look for a solution that solves for the root of many challenges (and not just one). Often, designs that reach their highest creative potential do so because they elegantly solve for different problems with one design solution. Find ways to unlock the solution that will solve for many challenges at once.

• Aim for Truly Poetic Experience: To achieve a design that reaches its highest potential, it must stand as an authentically functional, beautiful, and meaningful experience. Strive to ensure that your project uses aspects such as narrative in its design to create a journey that truly uplifts occupant life for the better. Find ways to improve your design process, so you can think creatively and innovatively to design truly poetic experiences.

• Tune for Future Change: To create a design that meets present-day needs is critical. Yet, to create a truly “next level” design that achieves its most creative potential, it is important to design for the future of change. Without doing this, your design will be deemed unneeded very quickly as it will not stand the test of time. Conversely, if you design with an aim toward adaptability, you will reach better solutions for both the present-day and for the longer-term. Immerse yourself in gaining a better understanding of emerging technologies, design processes, and trends that will impact your design decision-making and your design results. To learn more in-depth about this architectural design methodology so you can apply teachings directly to your work, read my book entitled, Adaptive Sensory Environments.

Aligning with Creative Potential

In the end, if you work to hone your design process while always aiming to achieve the latter three goals, you will design both more creatively and more innovatively so your projects can help people in the best ways possible. After all, it is through the design process that progress is made by which to unlock new potentials – for both the project result and for those who will experience the design.

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