One year anniversary of petitinvention!
I started this blog on November 9th, 2007, so it’s just one year old. I really thank you all for your comments, pingbacks, interviews, features in magazines, etc. etc. I never thought it’d have this many readers and fans.
It was such a wonderful first year, but I just had by far the most exciting experience last week, which I’ll be able to let you know next year.
As I mention in the about page, I’m having my rough scribbles in my Moleskine rendered with 3D apps to show here. I think I’ve introduced roughly 30-50% of all the ideas in the book. Of 10 ideas I think of, about 3 are usable for this blog, 3 are too trivial and 4 too crazy to show. I hope there will be a chance to show the rest some time.
I’ve never had a chance to say this, but every time I make a new post, I feel ashamed when thinking about the great product designers out there. I respect them very much because they have far better concepts than I do and try really hard to commodify their ideas solving lots of real-world problems with developers and others from various fields. On the other hand, what I do is just dreaming of something and showing them in a blog. So I often think that they’ll just laugh my idea off as a joke or something.
Feeling ashamed, I always think of a question that I often hear ever since I graduated from university:
“How do you stop the water running from the holes on a bowl?”
That is a question as a metaphor of problem solving in many situations. When I was in a service industry, my boss back then reminded me of the question many times, but my answer was always the same. I almost never told the boss about my answer because I didn’t think it was a realistic one, but now I know it doesn’t have to be realistic.
What is your answer? There must be no right answer, but here’s mine.
“Put a magnet that attracts water above it.”
It can not only prevent the water from running away, but also move the water away from the holes (upwards). That might not be a perfect solution for a problem, but that’s the way I think about stuff. Happy-go-lucky, right? But that magnet is what I really want. Creating a magnet is so much fun for me and I believe it’s that kind of magnet that moves the world forward. I can live on that magnet.
Sorry about my poor English, but I hope it makes sense to you.
Well anyway, I appreciate your interest. I hope I’m getting better in many ways.
