Blind Spot Detection - A Critical Reflection

As I sit here now, reflecting on the design journey of my final year product, its hard to imagine that the process would start fairly typically with access to studios, state of the art equipment, friends, mentors, (the pub…!) but finish in the most bizarre circumstances - living in “lockdown”, quarantined in my student flat with my girlfriend while the world outside battles an invisible viral enemy. Apart from the fact that I knew I wanted to challenge myself by using new skills, such as coding and computing, I started this design journey with literally no clue what to do. It wasn’t until my tutor asked me to think what my current hobbies were, and I answered I loved motorbike riding, that I had the tiniest beginnings of an idea. Honing in on an idea took me months of research as I struggled to clarify my thinking. Eventually, when I finally settled on an idea and tweaked it more, we were several months into the process. On reflection, I wish I had felt able to pin down my idea much sooner as I feel I possibly lost several valuable weeks of product development time. However, finally, in February, I was ready, with the help of my tutors, to learn new skills of coding and computing, and start developing my product. Bad timing. By now Covid19 was rife throughout the UK, and the Government was taking drastic action. Life changed quickly – in the blink of an eye, the Art College closed meaning I no longer had access to the equipment and, more importantly, limited access to the expertise that I was going to need to make my product work. I had to think quickly about how to move things forward. I no longer had access to the make-space, so I set up an improvised version in the bedroom of my student flat. This involved some creative thinking, a complete rearrangement of furniture and a quick dash to some shops to buy materials before they closed for the Lockdown, but in the end, I had a tiny, but fairly workable space. The Lockdown presented me with two significant challenges. The first related to my own personal knowledge base. I had set myself the challenge of learning new skills as I developed my product, but I had imagined having easy and frequent access to the college tutors, technicians and peers. Instead, I had to self-teach – frantically Googling and using online forums. I had to send away for equipment, wait anxiously for its arrival (often several days late) and when it didn’t work, desperately trying to figure out why. On reflection, I definitely could have made life easier for myself had I not taken the original decision to learn something new as part of the project! As I look back, I can see that my second challenge related to dealing with the stress caused by teaching myself these new skills at such a vitally important time in my degree. With no face-to-face contact with other students or tutors for support and conflicting advice from my internet trawls and forum discussions, I could feel my stress levels shooting up. In normal circumstances, I would enjoy downtime at the pub, take a drive in the car, or visit friends, but as none of these were allowed as part of the Government’s Stay At Home campaign during quarantine, I would try to make the most of a walk daily round Dundee, phone family, zoom call friends and watch movies on my laptop in an attempt to relax. However, in reality, living and working in the same small space with no real chance to escape, meant I never really switched off, and I would frequently find myself still thinking about the product development through the night. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I can see now that I spent too long thinking about my product before I started making it and I definitely think I made things harder for myself by wanting to learn new skills at such a crucial point in my university career. I can also see that the unique circumstances lead to huge stress that would never normally have been there. All that said, I am proud that I managed to learn coding, persevered and ultimately managed to produce a product that I truly believe will be an asset to learner bikers.