Designer

From recent classes, I got a conclusion: Before you become a good designer, you must become a good philosopher first, at least a good thinker.

I know that it is unnecessarily true.

future

Today I went to another career fair for summer internship.

And yes, I think it is time now for me to think about my future. I want to go back to China sometimes, and want to get a job here sometimes. It seems that get a Ph.D degree is a good choice for me no matter to go back to China or stay in the US for a while.

The IT industry needs engineers and programmers more than pure designers for now.

There is no boundaries for designers or others, but different ways to get in the door.

NORMAN's words

The conceptual model
Real affordances
Perceived affordances
Constraints
Conventions

Feedback

Norman, D. A. (1999). Affordance, Conventions, and Design.
Interactions 6, 3 (May. 1999), 38-43.

sure

There is no second chance for certain things. So be careful, well prepared, always.

usability

Design a software without a user interface is like designing a magnificent house without any door.

__Rajendra Kumar

It is interesting and true. A user interface is a door for users to go into the inner world of a software or a website. Easy to use = easy to open and lock.

Everything depends on your goals

Write down the word "Design" on a whiteboard. You can write hundreds of other words related with it.

Pragmatic, romantic, scientific...
Functionality, Aesthetic...
Analysis, Synthesis, evaluation...
Science or art...
Limitations, Compromise
Human-centered, user-centered
easy to use, easy to learn, efficiency, effective..

The list of words which tinghtly related with HCI Design goes on.

Design is the eager desire to make an improvement.
Design is the challenging and struggling of designer's ability, foresight and inside world.

There are philosophies, principles, methods, rules. You can believe or not, follow or not.

There is no standard, no proper balance to weight your design. A design can be evaluated as a prototype. A design can be judged by users through the using process. Unfortunately, sometimes a design idea could only be seen as feasible one after a long time. Besides those which were believed decades after they were created, how many design ideas were abandoned without any evidence?

Everything in existence is reasonable. All depends on our goals and how do we look at it.
If your design is benefit for only one person, your design is good, even though maybe you thought it's not good enough, but who knows?

Just like life. What is your life goals? Maybe you can find that your life goals are keeping change. Life is neither science nor art. There are ethics, society, family and individual. You are here today and another country tomorrow maybe. Life goals maybe are changing with the locations and time. But whereever you are, you should know what you can do, what you should do, and what you want to do. Everything depends on your life goals. Life goals could be changed, but we shouldn't lost in them. There are different ways you can follow, and you never know which one is better.

Do whatever you believe in.