Original post: https://x.com/nishuang/status/1787939646129008771
I'll share a learning method of mine too. You can call it the "throw the kid in the water, and as long as they don't drown at the start, later they'll not only teach themselves to swim on autopilot but also ask you whether swimming even needs to be learned... practical learning method"
What I did while learning design is the same as everyone else: imitate, practice, research, learn principles, learn methods and tricks... and so on. Three things are different:
- I really dislike school-style exercises (like memorizing vocabulary — fictional fake work). I always practice on real projects: mine, the company's, the client's
Those real cases keep me focused on design, and keep me from the self-moved, self-deceiving true narcissism and fake confidence a lot of designers fall into
- Take the design task first, then learn the thinking and methods
It looks high-pressure; the difficulty is actually controllable, and it slowly builds real confidence. Speaking in a meeting full of confidence, then muttering "right!" to yourself after a few sentences — that's still cheap imitation, not real confidence
- Design first, then learn, then research, then imitate. Build experience in real work, then go back and study calmly, go deep on purpose. After that you can imitate people who are better than you at the level of strategy, experience, methodology — not just the surface
The order of traditional education is good at turning you into a production artist, a code monkey, that kind of skilled worker. For creative work like design, the efficiency of education doesn't match the efficiency of learning
Sound weird?
A lot of people actually grow this way
The good thing about throwing the kid in the water is that it's entirely based on strong positive reinforcement. For a personality like mine — more curiosity than patience, using intelligence to simulate grit — this method looks hard and is actually self-driven
To this day I still learn design every day, and throw myself in the water every day.