Parting Thoughts
Lessons Learnt and Reflections after a Year-Long Thesis by Sammy Chuang
Going into my thesis year, I was petrified of two things:
Delivering the damn project. Historically, I felt like a lot of projects I'd been on had failed because of my inability to deliver. I felt I'd done more harm than help.
Leading the team. My ultimate goal was for everyone to come out having a project they would be proud to put on their portfolio, and to have fun along the way.
These fears stemmed from lack of confidence, and historical struggles on past projects I'd been on (prior to my own thesis, I'd contributed to Metamorphosis: Thyota's Journey, Starweave, Pig & Chikin and Oopz Oofs).
Those fears turned into two major learning experiences for me:
Learning to work with those who don't have the same work style as myself and, in essence, "let 'em cook".
Learning to trust my intuition.
"Let 'em Cook" -- Learning to Work with Various Communication Styles
I owe a lot to my fearless design lead, Bernice Wang. We had quite a few disagreements and difficulties working together in preproduction, but I've also come to believe that our most difficult collaborations are our greatest learning experiences.
Bernice and I come from drastically different backgrounds, and that impacted our ability to get on the same page. For a little context: they come from a dance and performance art background, whilst I come from a technical design and engineering background. Our biggest source of miscommunication came from this, we'd often be discussing one of their ideas, or they've give me a piece of documentation, that was beautifully written, emotional and expressive. However, as an engineer, I had a hard time visualizing it and understanding what I was being asked to implement. We faced these challenges head on, and Bernice and I put a lot of care and time into resolving our challenges. We picked up a number of communication methods including mirroring, paper prototyping and slide decks. Despite all of the difficulties we faced, Bernice has become one of my most trusted collaborators and I greatly respect their dedication to design and self improvement.
Additionally, we learned that our various backgrounds served different parts of the design and development process. Bernice was able to use their strengths to set emotional tone and experience across both the entire project or a single area, whilst my skills came more at a translation level. Taking ideas and poetry and turning it into something tangible.
Learning to Trust my Intuition
I had a lot of doubt about my ability to lead a team. Due to that, I tried to take as objective as possible an approach to every single decision I made. This meant using playtest data to decide the direction of the project. I started leaning too much on statistics and playtesting to drive decision making. There were times I actively went against my intuition if it wasn't supported by the data, and the project suffered for it. It really came to a breaking point that it felt like the project was being torn into several different directions (See "Wind or 'The Wind'?" for more details, as this was the breaking point). I have to really thank one of my industry advisors for both helping me understand why the project felt like it was getting split, and helping me navigate get the project back on track and cohesive again.
I learned to use my subjective intuition as the objective metric of which a project's current ability to achieve its goals was measured against.
That's a lot of fancy words, but basically: I learned how to use my intuition to shape the creative goals with which the project should follow, whilst using data to show whether or not those goals were being met. I stopped using playtest data as the way to determine the creative goals of the project (if you're doing that, it probably means you have a weak concept, and you as the director don't know what you're trying to communicate). This tumultuous time helped me to become more confident in making decisions, and I think that showed for the project going forward.
I learned that it's okay to make decisions based on your intuition. After all, the director knows the project the best, and your team will understand throwing away work as long as you, as the director, are honoring the goals you'd previously set out to achieve. Because, after all, if the director can't speak for the voice of the project, then who can? This isn't a free pass to change your mind on a whim, but just know that it is okay to express when you think the project has gotten off course to get it back on track.