There are multiple cognitive upgrades that this course has made possible. Its done wonders for my spatial-reasoning capacity. The many, many times that I’ve had to rotate, scale, and pan an object have served as my “10,000” hours of practice. I’ve now internalized these methods, including more complex protocols like ring-making (read: ring in 11 clicks). As you familiarize yourself with Sketchup, you notice the care that went into making it as intuitive as possible. There is an inherent obviousness in how to go about “making” objects, certain mental sequences that run themselves before you even try to emulate them via an imperfect mouse-keyboard interface. I can’t wait until motion capturing software permits us to instantiate are thoughts onto the screen at a rate even closer to real-time.Its also improved my creativity. I’ve noticed that my best work came about when I wasn’t trying to beat a deadline or and instead forgot about grades all together. There is a conceptual flow in 3d design, from capturing/scannign, to designing on sketchup, to scaffolding, to quantifying a real word analogue, to finally printing, that changes how you look at design problems all together.

I’ve recognized that these patterns and conceptual frameworks spill over into the entrepreneurial domain, including the business models that Anderson and our Professors speaks of as well. They too have a type of cost efficient internal scaffolding, an open and layered organizational structure, that gets the product on the market as soon as possible. And of course, the market is the only way to test a products utility. Crowdfunding trumps VC funding every time. And cultivating our empathetic awareness is what will get us closest to products that actually satisfy needs, and for which there is demand.

The hardest part of this course has been dealing with the cognitive dissonance of actually enjoying the material but still having to think about grading, which recent experiences have convinced me is something beyond which education should and will evolve  in the coming years. I just try to not thinking about it (read:mindfulness).

My strength is that I can think exponentially, and I can envision how these principles may apply to a bio-printing boom 15-20 years from now. I also have a background in biology, which helps.