Throughout the semester, I believe that I have developed upon creative confidence the most. Before this class, I was the type of person that would only voice ideas that I thought were good ideas, or that I knew would work. Nowadays, however, I find myself noting the craziest ideas. For example, I was listening to music while trying to nap one day, and then had an idea for an app. This app would let you add clothes that you have into the “closet” in the app. Then, this would show you different combinations of your outfits in your body by 3D scanning your body beforehand. This would help a lot of people in picking outfits without wasting so much time on trying on clothes. If I had this idea before taking this class, I would most likely ignore it and say that this isn’t possible. However, this class has taught me to have confidence in my ideas and to move forward with them regardless of how crazy the idea might be. In fact, this ties perfectly into embracing ambiguity, which is another habit that has played a big role in my life. I’ve always had trouble with not knowing the outcome of an action. However, through this class, I’ve learned that it’s okay to not know what the end result will be. If it’s a good result, then great, but even if it’s a bad one, you fail forward, you learn something from taking that action. This has helped me be more open to ideas, rather than being afraid of the outcome. With these habits, I’ve learned that I’m more closed minded than I had thought. I always thought of myself as pretty open to ideas, but I’m quick to judge. Although not verbally, I tend to have a specific mind set every time something is introduced to me. While practicing these habits, however, I find myself being more open to ideas and accept the ambiguity brought by it.
Child’s eye or hyper observation is a habit that comes naturally to me. As long as I can remember, I’ve always been the one that’s very conscious about my environment. I’ve probably noticed this about myself because my brother is the opposite. I often notice the smallest things, try to fix a small inconsistency, etc. When our class was doing our walk to experience child’s eye, it felt very familiar. This is because I used to take walks, sometimes with music, just to think and notice things in nature. While I hadn’t done that in a while, it reminded me of how relaxed I felt when taking these walks. Surprisingly, this is the same habit that I want to work on. Although I observe a lot of things with a child’s eye, I want to work on intentionally doing so. After the class walk, I told myself to continue these walks, however, I haven’t been able to. Therefore, I really hope to intentionally practice child’s eye, not just by walking outside, but also on an everyday schedule. Growing with this habit will help me notice the details in ideas and try to unpack these details. It will help me with asking questions about the smallest things. With a concentration in Design Thinking, it will help me empathize a lot with clients and other people. It will help me define the problem by unpacking the problem and asking detailed questions about the problem. Nobody is born with these abilities. I believe that building an innovative character is an ongoing process. It’s a constant loop of testing whether a specific habit helps you look at the world with a more positive, driven attitude. Building an innovative character is also not the same with every person; everyone has a different way of capturing specific habits or conveying ideas. Although these are the main habits we talked about in class, that doesn’t mean that these are the only ones. A lot of habits that will help me become an innovative character, I will learn as I make mistakes (failing forward) and by experiencing the world myself. Overall, these habits are essential in looking at a problem with different perspectives and taking into account all of these perspectives to create a diverse solution.
