Something an Art Professor Told Me That I’ll Never Forget

I was inspired by a recent TikTok trend on former art students sharing stories of their positive or negative interactions with their teachers. I immediately remembered a moment I had during my time as a grad student at Parsons School of Design.

In my first semester in the program, I was sitting in my studio professor’s office the day before our final presentations where she explained to me that my prototype was unusable. After many tissues and a bottle of water to soothe me from hysterically crying, she proceeded to tell me this:

“Don’t create dancing bears! So many students just create dancing bears without any purpose or passion behind their work.”

As a UX Designer and Entrepreneur now, I now think about this statement as I place attention on who I am designing for and the value within my work. It was the start of my philosophy of “just because the technology is available, doesn’t mean it has to be built.”

From my retweet of dougcollinsux

Link to the TikTok I posted thank you freelancehana for the inspiration.