House on a hill
Designing and building one's own house can be a spiritual journey. Ethan and I embrace every experience and opportunity during this journey for awareness:
who we are,
what we should appreciate,
how to live a more meaningful life.
This is the waterfall design process. But any agile would work?
Project Overview
This is an ongoing project.
Project name:
Lucy & Ethan's Customized House
Estimated Duration:
Nov 2017 ~ May 2018
Team and responsibility:
Project manager: Ethan
Design Lead: Lucy
Builder: Shusterhomes
What is COOL about this project:
The clients of this project that Ethan and I
work for are ourselves.
Project Goals
-
Design and build a house that is aligned with our faith, lifestyles and taste. (It is a product design)
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Enjoy the whole process and create the pleasant experience for everyone involves in this journey as well. (So, it is an experience design too)
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Explore a more innovative and productive work mechanism between the designer and the engineer. I'm the prodcut designer in my daily job, and Ethan is the project engineer in his daily job. ( Well, it is also an exploratory design)
Stage 1
research
stage 2
ideation
stage 3
design
stage 4
Furniture
&
lighting
stage 5
move in
Research
1
Brainstorming:
What are our needs?
I want to build a house that helps us achieve the balance between simplicity and humanity in our life.
This house needs to be an engineering art. I mean, beautiful and functional.
Let me find out what it looks like in my mind. LOVE Pinterest!
This is what I mean by Scandinavian kitchen.
I like that! Neat and stylish.
Isn't cool if we have a wood craft station in the basement?
2
Consult builder:
It is time to talk about feasibility
-
What are the constraints that we currently have?
-
What is the optimal collaboration model of this couple team?
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Differentiating what we want and what we really need is not as easy as we thought.
-
Articulating the needs is a learnable skill.
What we learned
Findings
We need a house that helps to calibrate our way of living to find a balance between simplicity and humanity, where we focus on what’s important to find real happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.
