What motivates you? What distracts you? What keeps you engaged?

My main motivation for any type of project is honing in the craft. The detail and the completion that emerges from the accumulation of detail is the biggest motivating factor for me in terms of driving a project forward. The questions I ask myself at different levels of the process is essential in keeping me motivated.

MY THOUGHT PROCESS (Bottom-up):

1. Select Work (“Goodbye”) — What is the message of the work? What kind of things do I associate the work with?
2. Explore Interactions (Lighting candle) — How will people know to light the candle? How can the environment afford that interaction?
3. Space (Spirits) — What kind of space does this exhibition belong in? Where does the space take the user to? Where does this interaction take place?
4. Experience (Self-Reflection) — What kind of questions do the users ask? What is the end result for the users?

Detail is also what distracts me because I lose track of the larger concept and structure that should be driving the detail. Once invested in the work, it becomes difficult to forgo the work that you have already completed. In order to not get caught in the loop, I always looked back to how the concept can feed the detail. If it doesn’t I look into other ways I can work out the concept.

Maintaining the balance between lower-level and higher-level work keeps me engaged along the process. The concept is driven by the detail, but the detail also drives the concept.

Using multiple tools was also a time-saving strategy. For instance, I would work on the floorplan when thinking about large concepts. I would visualize the plans in Sketchup and as physical models to see more in detail of how the space feels like. Interchanging thinking processes and the tools used accordingly helped me to work effectively.