à Paris

Glimpse of Paris from la Marais

It's been a while, but I have no apologies to make. The past few months have been filled with exploration, adventures, and lots of introspection. This fall marks a new chapter for me as i'm exploring a business idea that i've had in mind for several years as a culmination of my design school experience. I feel incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to explore this idea and to take time to step into my passions, rather than simply press on in my career without first deciding what it is I want post-design school. When I developed my project plan for the somewhat-short SCAD quarter, I built in a "breather week," and front-loaded the project to allow some time for external immersion. So, this week I am out and about in Paris.

It's my first trip to this beautiful city, albeit not my first to France. I'm here, loosely, for a conference about service design but ultimately i'm here for some refreshment. This afternoon, after a morning of great talks from many of the leaders in service and experience design, I broke away from the conference to take an afternoon to myself. On the recommendation of one of my housemates, I made a trip to La Marais, Paris' shopping district, where I enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea at Mariage Frères. My selection for tea was nothing i'd ever tried before, the Club Louvre: Smoked chicken, fromage frais with cilantro, Tarry Souchong tea-flavoured coarse-grained mustard, rocket and grilled pine nut side salad. I accompanied it with an iced apricot tea for an out-of-the-box experience at a very classic establishment. As I was shopping around the surrounding neighborhood, I was struck by the number of spaces that inspired service ideas for me.

I'm here for a conference that's all about service design but the irony is that the inspiration that a service designer really needs isn't the kind of thing you can typically get inside four walls full of designers and business people. To truly design compelling service experiences, we must experience them ourselves and redact ideas and lessons from those experiences into new and different experiences that transform the lives of others. Thus, my experience outside today's conference has done more to inform and inspire me than the conference itself. Funny, no?

One of my favorite quotes from today's talks came from a woman named Shelley Evenson who described how we can never design service experiences, we can only design the tools for those experiences to take place. Evenson argued instead that the user designs the experience, thus it's critical to empower users in ways that enable them to mold and shape their experiences to their preferences. I point this out to remind myself that being creative is not about sitting in a box all day and churning out ideas, content, or creations. Being creative is about new and different combinations. As one of the participants in a workshop that I recently ran with a friend said, "creativity is about taking familiar things and combining them in new ways." I loved that, because I think it illustrates well the task of the creator: to make new meaning from the familiar. What is familiar to me is not familiar to the average Parisian and vice versa, so as a result I have much to learn from the Parisian. In trying to make sense of this new place, I naturally bring order to my experiences by mashing them up with things at home that i'm already familiar with. I notice things that are done differently and think what if: what if we tweak this and this and this and apply it to this other context back at home? I could go on, but perhaps now is a good time to stop and share some photos. I have already posted quite a few on instagram, so i'll refrain from posting more and give some from an intriguing store that I visited this afternoon called Petit Pan, which is a purveyor of all kinds of colorful notions. Really, the store was quite an experience! See above and below to catch a glimpse.

Petit Pan, a maker's delight