Reflections: of Self

I have been designing things for a while. Well, I didn’t call it design, I called it programming, and I’ve been doing that for about 8 years.

My interests in creating things with computers started when I started at Madrona, the public school system wasn’t handling my learning disabilities well, so my parents sent me to the private system. There the principal started teaching me how to code.

From there it became an obsession, which only started to really broaden once I moved here (Although I do have a vivid memory of doing a summer camp and designing a “new Atlantis” style civilization, then prototyping a dome out of this putty stuff and Lego). Then broaden it did, TTRPGs, Board Games, Card Games, Lamps, Buildings, and everything in between. I took the Design and Visual Communication optional course at my high school and fell in love with creating.

My main focus will always be programming, it was my first love and it will continue to be my favourite thing. I also, as you probably can tell from my about page or inspirations blog post, currently do things with creating and modifying TTRPGs (I own a lot of them entirely so I could read the rules and see what fun and interesting designs they have). Although that, video games, and board games, could likely be boiled down to game design.

I love to make solutions, whether it be for the fact I don’t have a webcam, that it’s hard to get new ideas from a vacuum, solutions to a brief made in class, or anything else that comes up.

So instead I used my old phone…

…a piece of punch board from a board game I hadn’t gotten around to recycling (Recycling the used punch board that is, not the game)…

…and a whole lot of tape, to make a “webcam”. I made it too weak at first, so I had to add more tape, and also I forgot to allow access for me to mess around with the phone in case it turned off broadcasting, so I made it able to fold up.

A discord bot I made that comes up with random ideas!

A wallet prototype

A cafe designed to be placed in western springs park.

My logo, based on my full name (Melody Johann Elwood).

AIME, a game prototype that I programmed in Python in which you play an AI giving commands to a few surviving human populations and trying to keep them alive in a world ravaged by storms, flooding, and disease.

As for the future, I’m not so sure. It’s possible that at the end of my degree (6 years) there’s jobs that no-one has even thought of yet, just look at the number of jobs that have started existing in that past few years Not to mention how many design jobs exist nowadays)!
It’s also possible that humanity has wiped itself out at that point.
Who knows?

I just know that I love designing things, making things, and programming. So it will likely be something along those lines, maybe a game developer, maybe a software developer, maybe I’ll find something else in the next 6 years that I really feel strongly about. At the moment I am leaving my mind open to see what comes next.

References:

1. Design Jobs in All New Zealand. (n.d.). SEEK. Retrieved 7 April 2020, from https://www.seek.co.nz/design-jobs
2. Mecklin, J. (2020, January 23). Current Time. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
3. Murthy, S. (2014, January 6). Top 10 Job Titles That Didn’t Exist 5 Years Ago [INFOGRAPHIC]. http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2014/01/top-10-job-titles-that-didnt-exist-5-years-ago-infographic
4. USA Design Jobs, Employment. (n.d.). Retrieved 7 April 2020, from https://www.indeed.com/q-USA-Design-jobs.html