My Favorite Thinks

I've been working with an advisor at the university to develop my own bachelors degree program (the idea of spending three more years on an undergrad education finally got to me). That's not particularly germaine, but leads me to this point:

I've recently spent quite a lot of time thinking about what I like to do. And I've realized I really like to think about things. Over the next few weeks or months, I'll probably end up listing a handful of those things here or elsewhere. But at present, here are my thoughts on the things I best like to think.

I enjoy thinking about associations: what goes together and why. This is pretty much an innate and involuntary process for me; words remind me of movie quotes and colors remind me of a specific crayon in my 64-box of Crayola (or, a specific Pantone chip, or a specific item in the produce section at the grocery store). I especially like identifying and classifying things that are difficult to articulate, like senses and experiences. I'll smell something vaguely sweet and decide it reminds me of those red-hot cinnamon candies and movie theater popcorn.

It happened to me today listening to Röyksopp's "Higher Place". The song (which I highly recommend if you're into chill, rhythmically ambient soundscapes) has these sounds that remind me of water. It's a very specific, and very immediate, association. Water, clear and simple. But then I got to thinking about why it reminded me of water; trying to break down the experience to emotional and mental cues. As it happens, the sounds are similar to what you hear a lot in movies when the scene is set in or around a submarine. My mom loves movies about sharks and other sea creatures, so I saw a lot of submarine movies as a kid, and this sound is a pretty common "bubbly distortion" scene-setter throughout the genre. I found it thoroughly satisfying to be able to break the experience down into its elements and reverse engineer my own associations, and try to then figure out how I could use that knowledge to influence how someone else might think of water, submarines, sharks, and Röyksopp.

Up until now, it has just been a thing I do, and not even consciously half the time. But I'm beginning to realize how important phenomena like these can be when you are designing products and anticipating or constructing a user's experience with the product. Incidentally, product design is the broad area I'm considering for my individualized degree, and since I have to give my degree a title, a broad area isn't going to cut it.

Being able to narrow down the elements of product design that really draw me in is quite nice. I can now add "user experience" to other concentrations such as "prototyping and product implementation," "graphic design, linguistics, and information design," and "mechanical analysis and materials selection."

The proposal for this degree is forthcoming, and will likely touch on a few more of my favorite thinks. Maybe I'll post it here once it gets approved by my faculty advisors. As for now, I have less enjoyable things to think about, namely calculus.