Design 21: Social Design Network

Hi Marc, it's Oz. I understand your doubts and can easily relate to them. I also have some difficulties (along the past 3.5 years of school...) to walk and follow specific guide lines, that some times maybe even seem that we force them on people outside the designers community - people we define as users, while they don't define themselves like that at all.... well, my experience taught me to first LISTEN, absorb all the information i can get from any direction. then FILTER and take the good things you like from every place you are, situation you're in or people you get to meet. And then finally ADOPT and IMPLEMENT only what you like and think that would take you forward to be in that half-full glass. what you don't like, leave to those other places,people you encountered, and they have enriched you, which obviously you have enriched them with some wisdom too along the way. that is how i basically look at school. finally, the only one who determines what kind of designer you'll be and who your users are - is you. at the end you are becoming kind of a user of all the situations you are in, and you get to choose the problems to deal with. design is not about forcing a solution to a problem you have to dig out of the ground. like chess it is about taking care of present situations while trying to create a future scenario. but like in chess, we are not alone, so the challenges keep surfacing. these challenges, those needs are for me the half-full you are talking about. anyway, cheers man, and congratulations for graduating...