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~ using my evil powers for good

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Baby Steps

19 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by claire in Agile, Approaches, Design, Experiences, Experiments, Personas

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Leo: Bob, there is a ground-breaking new book, that has just come out. Now, not everything in this book, of course, applies to you, but I’m sure that you can see when you see the title, exactly how it could help.
Bob: Baby Steps?
Leo: It means setting small reasonable goals for yourself one day at a time. One tiny step at a time.

– What About Bob?

My friend is having her first babies. She shared her wonderful plans for the nursery with us and I saw an opportunity to create something special and new for the occasion.

I’ve blogged before about my crafting habits but not about my design process. Given the reference point of the nursery that inspired my mom-to-be friend, I immediately reached out to a more experienced collaborator, a friend who frequently scrapbooks with me.

We riffed on ideas until we landed on one that intrigued us, and we started to develop it more through discussion. However, given our short timeline, since we intended to have the gift ready for the baby shower, I started to create initial prototypes of the components we planned to combine for our project. Using scrap paper, I cut out the shape that had inspired us the most as a reference point. I made several variations that preserved the color palette we wanted to use, so that even those early attempts would provide better information about the final product.

I sent pictures of these prototypes to my friend so that we could evaluate them together before I moved on to the next small piece of work. She had great ideas for coordinating next steps, so I continued to design and construct independent components, evaluating each as I went.

Once I had gathered several together, I called my husband over to provide a second opinion since he is very familiar with the intended recipients of the gift. He liked what he saw and offered suggestions for additional enhancements that I loved – but I hesitated. While I was in love with my design, would our friends like it?

Having invested this much time and effort into the design, initial construction, and overall style, I was loathe to give up any part of my vision. Then, I reminded myself that while I was spending joyful hours creating this work of art, our friends would spend years in the nursery with their children. No matter what I thought of my design, I had to be ready to kill my darlings. I picked up the phone and made the call.

Our friends agreed to take a look at the in-progress photos, to confer privately, and then to get back in touch with us. To my delight, they loved what they saw! Their vision for the nursery matched our vision for the gift. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Armed with this early feedback, I felt more confident about moving on to additional design and implementation. However, an unexpected illness kept my friend from being able to collaborate, and our work fell behind schedule. Not wanting to show up empty-handed to the party, despite knowing how welcome and appreciated I would be, I put together a smaller sample of our project as well as the latest work-in-progress photos of the whole.

At the party, I revealed one of the most recent developments to the excited couple. Other guests brought lovely gifts, from necessary supplies to handmade blankets. We enjoyed the serendipity of another decor gift perfectly coordinating with our project! The nursery is coming together, one baby step at a time.

While we weren’t able to deliver everything we hoped at the time we intended, we delivered something valuable as early as possible with the knowledge that the mom’s “delivery date” milestone is a bit farther down the road – the only delivery in our project that won’t be early and often.

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