While studying for my design degree, back when Mark Zuckerberg was still chasing girls around the playground, I recall being introduced to the term ‘critique’.
The design ‘C’ word that would instil instant dread into every design undergraduate.
At the end of each project, the class and lecturers would gather for an afternoon and ‘critique’ your project. The good, the bad and the design-ugly.
In an open group session, your lecturers, classmates and dependent on your ego, ex-friends, would single handedly play design judge and jury over your hard-earned, late night, sellotape-encased masterpiece that you were convinced was going to transform the aesthetic landscape for at least the next decade.
Didn’t always prove to be so. Within the space of 600 Seconds, the product you thought was destined to be the biggest thing since the Charles Eames Chair, is no longer. Thankfully, I was occasionally at the end of a few positive critiques too.
At the time, you would forgive me for assuming this exercise was to help me become a better designer. And yes it was, to an extent.
However many years later, now that Mark Zuckerbergs' busy chasing start-ups, rather than the female of the species, I realise that these sessions where less about shaping my technical and theoretical knowledge, and more about shaping my attitude.