In today’s first Design for Behavior and Experience class of the semester, the professor said after I spoke, “The other time to introduce yourself last semester, you had just arrived like less than a week to the US probably, I got to know you for the first time. So I can see the difference now. You’ve integrated well, and I like it.”
Whenever I see people start to be different as time and space shift, I marvel and remind myself to always offer tolerance, understanding, and encouragement.
The theme of this class is based on “hopepunk”. I felt a sense of inevitability about being here. It’s like the idealism/subjectivism philosophy statement: the environment you are in is actually an external reflection of your inner world.
Over the years, I have thought a lot about design topics and even hope to go back to school one day to study related concepts in depth. The “hopepunk” happens to be a mindset that I have begun to hold in the last year.
In the past year, I’ve had a major shift in perspective. After having a few conversations that took me out of my comfort zone, I have grown to believe in the human potential. Through communication, I can restore hope to someone who is lost or depressed, restore faith in different things to someone who is stubbornly holding a political viewpoint or bias, and restore understanding and a willingness to support and collaborate with someone who is “bossy”. This process is easier said than done, and involves crossing the thresholds of courage, neutrality, initiative, acceptance, reason and love, and overcoming the fear of failure at each stage until transformation is seen.
Such interpersonal experiences have convinced me that people have the potential to achieve anything, solve any problem, and bring value to anyone. Sometimes people aren’t always what they seem, and if we have an open heart, a willingness to connect and communicate with others and to live with all the seeming negativity instead of rejecting and running away from it, even the coldest hearts will melt.
I enjoy the process of bringing hope and strength to people. Not just designers, everyone can relate the “hopepunk” to what they do, and influence people’s perception and behavior.