Working fast to overcome stuckness

From that Thursday night in Harlem we learned that Exodus and a great part of organizations working around youth were not aware of each other’s work. One of the questions we asked to the youth, in an individual exercise, was who was their role model, someone that inspires them. Some people said their case managers from Exodus; others mention people from other organizations. In the Interview with Thomas I also asked how they relate to other institutions working around youth in Harlem, but he seemed to be more concerned about doing a good job were he was. It was difficult to get many conclusions since we didn’t go deeper into the whole probation system, but we could feel there was a disconnection between the organizations that were working around reintroducing former incarcerated youth back to the society. Apparently kids on probation were attending more than one organization. But were those places working together in the benefit of that person?

Although we came back from Exodus with that insight, I realized there's something funny about the design projects I was part of as a student. After researching their target, a great gray and dense cloud settles above the forum of designers trying to think what to do next. Sometimes, a member of the group has a strategic problem solving methodology and can guide the group towards the next step of the project. However, it seems it takes several meetings with infinite discussions, uncountable arguments, everlasting doubts and eternal uncertainties until the group decides to move on and create an experiment to test their ideas.

I can say I see this process as being funny now, only because I am not currently in this phase of any project. I also say this now because I can clearly see a pattern of anguish and blurriness that we expect to come about if we take too long to transform ideas into experiences. The guiding principle is that if we think too much for too long we can keep building doubts on top of uncertainties and this will paralyze the designer. To avoid this from happening the group has to create an interaction with their target audience and then work on adjusting the edges until they decide it's time to stop.