Diving into Donald Norman’s ideas and Margaret Hamilton’s moon code journey got me thinking in ways I didn’t expect. Norman’s talk about how good design blends aesthetics with function kind of hovered in the background for me, until Hamilton’s story of crunching code for the Apollo mission brought it all home. It wasn’t about the looks; it was about making things work when it really mattered. Hamilton’s tale felt like finding clarity in a complex puzzle, showing that true genius in design can sometimes be all about the nitty-gritty of making things foolproof.
This mash-up of thoughts was more than just an academic exercise; it felt personal. It made me question my own take on what design really means and its impact. Going through their stories, I started seeing design not just as something that pleases the eye but as something deeply intertwined with solving real-world puzzles.
I realized my own moments of ‘aha’ often came when I was least expecting them, not while chasing some ideal of creativity but simply trying to work through a problem. Like Hamilton, the beauty of what I was doing often lay in the solution’s elegance and simplicity, not in how it looked. What I grasp now is that creativity isn’t just about coming up with something flashy; sometimes, it’s about the grind, the clever fixes, and making things work when the pressure’s on. It’s a reminder that there’s creativity in the chaos of problem-solving, a side of design I’ve come to appreciate in its own unique way.