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I sat down with Sylvan McGowan, a learner in the Master Digital Ideation of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts to explore the following image:
What if we stopped thinking that choosing a master project is like getting married for eternity? How does that change our approach?
Thanks so much Sylvan for taking the time to share after a full day of coaching one of the learnings of the days with the design community at large.
Video transcript
This transcript was fully generated using Descript. The transcript wasn’t corrected. Which means it can be pretty creative, funny or wrong at moments.
Daniele: Hey, Sylvan, it’s such a pleasure to see you again, as we had a little coaching session today, part of the Master Design of the HSLU.
Today we explored together one question, which is:
How do you manage, at the start of a Master Design, to choose a topic for your two year long journey, and maybe even lifelong journey?
How do you choose a topic without feeling overwhelmed? Do you have any tips to share to your peers?
Sylvan: Yeah, something that really helped from the coaching was, the idea that there is no good or bad topic, but rather the scope, and that, I’m not going to be, and I don’t have to find, my true love, the one, my one topic that I’m going to be married to for the rest of my life.
But rather, commit to a topic. Commit to something that’s interesting for a certain amount of time to deep dive into. But not think of it as something that’s going to control or define the rest of my life And feel the pressure that comes with framing it that way. Framing it as something that I’m playing with now, that I’m deep diving into now, that’s something that I am really interested in and putting a lot of effort into, but that I’m not necessarily beholden to for all of eternity.
Daniele: I love this image that you’re sharing because there is a quality in what you’re saying, which is, commit for a certain time, but commit deeply, it’s not if we would say it a bit in a strange way, it’s not this one night stand where you then move to another one, but it’s really Do a deep dive.
You really go in depth with it. And so I’m curious: how does it change the way that you’re gonna select a topic in the future?
Sylvan: Less of that pressure to choose the one true topic I think will help me be able to play a little bit more and get into something, try some things out, make something, explore it without feeling this Such intensity or such pressure with it and being able to really explore and have fun with it.
Daniele: How do you bring the fun back in that process and the playfulness?
Sylvan: Yeah, I think something that we discussed in the coaching was, coming back to prototyping and making something and Thinking with your hands. Not thinking with your brain. Trying it and seeing how it feels.
Is it boring when I put it together and start playing with it? Or does it spark all of these ideas and give me all of this inspiration, and I think that is a good way to approach it. To find something that’s fun, not think about what is fun.
Daniele: Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing those. I’m always impressed by people like you who are very brave to also share a bit of the coaching session back with the community.
So I’m super grateful that you’re doing that today and that you’re doing that for the community today. Yeah,
Sylvan: and thank you for all the input. It was very helpful.
