Decisions to Harvard Graduate School of Design | Wyatt Roy

In Episode 4, we meet Wyatt Roy, a Master’s Candidate in Design Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Wyatt studied Psychology at Stanford University, and has a background working with emerging technologies as a Narrative Technologist. In this conversation, Wyatt shares ideas, lessons, and frameworks, he's picked up through design.

Beyond Harvard is a platform that highlights the stories of the Harvard University community, uncovering who they are at Harvard and beyond. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I define design as a practice that creates an artifact in service of a user. It made me love the journey, love the adventure, love the disruption. I've always had this accent that was never quite right there, and it certainly was never quite right here. And it's just never been quite right anywhere. Almost immediately, actually, that became part of my identity. This sense of difference and otherness was something I became quite proud of.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Welcome to the Beyond Harvard Podcast. I'm your host, Rashana Virasinga, and on this week's episode, we meet Wyatt Roy, a master's candidate studying design here at Harvard University. Take a listen as we have a conversation on Wyatt's journey as a student, designer, and narrative technologist. Enjoy. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Good, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Good, good. I'm so excited to jump into this episode. Wyatt, you are a fascinating human, and I feel like we have so much, so much to dive into. Just by to set the stage of it. Um Wyatt, you're an American, you were raised in Australia, you came back here to study psychology at Stanford. And now you're here at Harvard studying design. I want to start a little bit in terms of your your origin story and your childhood, kind of growing up in Australia. Take us a little bit to what that was like for you as an American being raised in Australia.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I guess the first place I'd like to start is with a story that my mum wrote when my sister and I, when my whole family moved across to Australia. So I was five and my sister was three.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And mom was really worried that that transition would be difficult for us. Um so she wrote us a children's book called So Many Beds. And the the book started with our actual beds in Arlington, Virginia, but then it went to the bed of an airplane and the bed of a friend's house and the bed of a play and all of the beds until we would end up in our eventual home in Canberra, Australia. Um and actually I wrote about that when I was applying to this design program at Harvard because I realized that if I trace back my own love of stories and the power of stories to change people's frames of mind, I think it comes from my mom and and from that. Because the power of that story was that it it made me love the journey, love the adventure, love the disruption, uh, and see it all as an adventure. Um and my favorite bed was the airplane, you know? So So how good is that?

SPEAKER_02 3:06

I feel like that makes only one of us here why it's no one ever lost.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Literally no one. Also when you're much smaller.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

True. An airplane seat.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

It's fun, it's an adventure. You're so right. They give you little toys when you're a window seat too.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

It's perfect. Okay. Okay, I got it. Okay, so that was your first, seems like that was your first introduction to uh to storytelling, but it's that story has carried out.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So it's right. So so then so then we're in we were in Australia, and um, you know, I was almost six when we moved, so I've always had this accent that was never quite right there, and it certainly was never quite right here, and it's just never been quite right anywhere. Um and I think, you know, for a while almost immediately, actually, that became part of my identity. This this sense of difference and other-ness was something I became quite proud of. Um and mum and dad had named me Wyatt, which now is a more common name, but like back then no one knew what that name meant, um, or had heard of it before, certainly not in Australia. And these funny little formative experiences started to glom together, and I was like, oh, okay, I sound different, my name's different, maybe I am different, and maybe that's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Um I love that. I I want to get into that a little bit more. I think sometimes we see our differentiators as our setbacks, right? I think if you look different sometimes, you can almost it you can it feels like a setback, but it seems like you were able to take that differentiator and turn it into your superpower.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

That's very kind of you. I'm not sure if it's a superpower or a detriment, but it's certainly like my perspective.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Certainly want to get into your design projects and then who you are as a designer, but before that, tell me a little bit about your experience kind of choosing to come back to the States and and study psychology at Stanford. Why psychology? No. And how does that how does that show up in in who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So I have two American parents and I'm a dual citizen. The the Australian university system is incredible because everyone has access to it. Yeah. It's very affordable, um, it's a clear path to get in. So it's grueling, um, but it's incredibly equitable. But I but people end up living at home primarily. Um and the culture is really different. And I do American parents, I knew what an American university system would be like. And so um I wanted to come over here for college. Um and the other reason why I was really excited about that is because in Australia you have to choose what you're going to study um in addition, like when you apply for university. Uh, whereas in the States, at a at a um kind of more liberal arts kind of college, you you you can spend a year or two figuring it out. So in undergrad, I was taking language classes, and I was taking art classes, and I was taking computer science classes, and I was taking psychology classes, and I was like, ooh, what is kind of the fundamental field that uh is answering some of my deepest questions here? And at the time it was psychology, it was social psychology. I was trying to figure out what makes me tick, what makes others tick, and what makes us all tick together.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

How did you land on that question?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I don't know. I'm just trying to like frame it up now. I probably used different words back then, but I was trying to like look under the hood and figure out like what's going on, what's going on in the sometimes unintuitive ways that we show up when we're together, that we show up um when we're alone, that we ignore parts of ourselves that we care deeply about. Why are we like this? Uh and psychology in many ways gave me uh a window into that.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Interesting. And then I mean, talk to me a little bit about how psychology shows up in the work you do as a designer. Are there overlaps there? And how are you maybe utilizing that background?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, that's funny. One of the one of the exercises I led with my class this past semester, a whole class in the Master's Design program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the GSD. Um they're pro-seminar. So all of these students uh care about mediums, the the the mediums that um we create, that we design in. That's what ties us ties together this domain that I'm in and that I started uh helping teach a class in. And this this this exercise was just having us define design. And you know, in a class of sixteen people we had sixteen vastly different definitions. Um then I had to define uh what is a medium of sixteen completely different definitions. Um was the most uh was the most uh short and poetic, which was that design, her definition of design was via. No, no, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. Her definition of design was navigating. And then her definition of mediums was via. And then her definition of designing mediums was navigating via. And I was like, okay. So uh your question was more about like the psychology of design, but I kind of have to step back and say, look, I'm not even sure that I can land on a universally agreeable definition of what design is.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

I was gonna say, how do you define design?

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah, I define design as um a practice that creates an artifact in service of a user.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Practice that creates an artifact in service of a user.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

And I can I can I I uh I'm making a thing for someone.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

And that thing is for them. And I can contrast this with art, which I see as a practice that serves an artist. So it's the artifact that's created is kind of the byproduct of a process that the artist just simply wants to engage in and needs to engage in. And if that artifact, if the artwork um does serve some function with a user, with an audience member, great. If it doesn't, I my definition of art is that it's it's unnecessary that it does. Um I think of design as deeply focusing on the impact on a user and art as not. And then I think that there's often this like dichotomy between art and design. Yeah. And then uh how does psychology relate to it? You can apply a so uh a psychological lens on on anything. Yeah. Um of the my favorite things that I have designed that I've come to realize that I care most deeply about designing, um, do map back to these fundamental questions I was asking in undergrad around like what makes us what tick, what makes you tick, and like how do we find Venn diagram overlap between those. Um so I made uh with a handful of friends uh during the pandemic, I made this website, I want to say sorry.com. Um because one a different friend had pointed out, you know, apologizing is a really helpful skill. And I was like, what do you mean it's a skill? Everyone knows how to say I'm sorry. And she was like, Yeah, that's actually like part of a good apology, but not all of it. So she shared some research with me. Shout out to Brene Brown, um and all right, Lerner, and um we created what we realized as we were doing this research is oh my goodness, how do we codify and understand and learn all of the practices that are required to write a good apology or to deliver a good apology? There's kind of a lot here, there's a lot of different steps, there's a lot of pitfalls that you can fall into. Um at that time, my primary media of expression was stories, was filmmaking. Um, and I thought we could make a short film about apologizing. But then one of my friends was like, no, I think we need to make an app. We need to make an interactive web app that will teach this for us. Um and out of the, I mean, the most ridiculous thing is that it was so such a challenging collaboration at times. Um I was living with one of with the lead engineer on the project, and then also that my co-designer was across the country, and so there was like a housemate relationship, but there was also a friend relationship, but also an in-person, and there was a not in-person thing. There was a lot of going on.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

And as we were designing IWanasorry.com, we had to continuously use IWantaSaySorry.com to apologize to us for the ways in which we overstepped each other's boundaries and like mismanaged expectations.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Building it kind of for yourselves. Absolutely. You were the first, you were kind of the primary user.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Um I think that was since since then I kind of have realized that okay, these tools that help us connect with each other, but require us to connect really honestly with ourselves first. Yeah. In order to connect with each other, how do we design those tools and then how do we use them in teaching environments? Um that's kind of turning into the thrust of my questions now.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

That is fascinating. I wanna, I mean, I'd love to dive a little bit further into your design projects. Um, just to rattle off a few that I found on on your website. You created documentaries in Nepal. You developed a music app that translates emotions into songs so people can hear how they're feeling. You scanned your granddad into virtual reality to create a hologram that now you can step into now that he's now that he's fast. We talked about the Apology Training Tool. Then you did research on the GREA. I mean, there's it's so interesting the different types of projects, and then I think the different types of problems you're trying to solve and tackle. And so talk to me a little bit about kind of just based on some of these projects. Where do you find, how do you one, kind of find the project that you want to work on? How do you decide? And then two, where do you find purpose as a designer in these projects?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

It's really tantalizing to try to wrap all of them together as this one kind of noun label identity of like I am a one of them that I've tried to emphasize, a narrative technologist.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Yeah. And we're gonna have to get into that and what that even means.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Why use taric, you know, use tech to tell stories and invent new ways to do it. Or, you know, a human-human interaction designer is another one that I've been like trying to emphasize. It just kind of pokes it pokes a little fun at human uh human-computer interaction.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I think what I'm starting to move away from is those identities and just follow the thing that feels most alive. And I think there's this weird little tiny voice somewhere behind all of our sternums. It's like, yeah. Or it's really easy to ignore that voice, especially when like someone's gonna pay you money to do the thing you're like, or no one's gonna pay you anything, or even notice when you do the thing that you're like, yeah, that's tough. Um so listening to that voice, um, honoring it, and then also trying to balance its needs with the the constraints and the affordances of the world around you. That's actually what led me to my most recent tool that I've designed, which is the Arena of Wants.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Arena of Once.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Um, in this class that we were in together.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Uh it's another web app that's totally not AI driven. It's only saved in your browser on your phone, and it's just a tool to help you figure out what do you want to do now, and what do you want to do soon? And what happens when you want two things? Like maybe you want to take a nap right now because you're tired, but you also want to stay engaged in class because well, why? Because you care about the grades, because you care about the you know expectations of others, because you also want to learn. What do you do when these two conflicting things or five conflicting things all come together? How can we strip back the external expectations of others? How can we shine more of a light onto this or amplify this tiny little voice behind your sternum and what that chorus part of you actually wants? Yeah. And how can we help you renegotiate and re-prioritize so that you can behave in a way that's most aligned and authentic to you? I think if we all did this a little more, then we would resent each other a little less. Um, and I think in a lot of ways the world would be a sweeter place. It's not so much about always doing exactly what you want, but it is about asking this question: is there better alignment between the things that I want and what the world will celebrate? How can we how can we find that alignment in more creative ways? And I think a lot of design is actually doing that. It's like, how can we find creative ways to uncover and create alignment where we didn't realize there was, or how can we remove that friction?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

I love that because I think when I first learned about your project in class, I loved how simple the question that you're asking is. Like, what what do you want? But then it's the complexity of us having to navigate our wants in in this world where I think there's there's so much depth there. And I I loved how you frame it of how do we find alignment? Because I think so many times we just think that you know it's very hard to draw parallels between what you want and what the world will celebrate, to your point. And I think what you're building and in terms of your app, it's at least surfacing this discussion in many ways of like how do we find those pathways. And so curious to know kind of as you've gone through the journey of of building it and and thinking about this subject more in depth, what have have you found in terms of finding an alignment there?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Well, it's the main thing I've found is that it's really hard. And everyone needs totally different things. And those are two separate problems. One is it's hard for kind of everyone to uncover what they what they want and to figure out how to navigate navigate those priorities. But two, we a completely different process will work for one person and will work for another. Like maybe someone needs a conversation to like verbalize with a close friend who they have a lot of rapport with and a lot of trust. Now, at the end of this conversation, I can get to what I want. But someone else might incorporate totally shut down with a close friend in a conversation like that. Because just putting it into words doesn't work for them. And they need to simply, who knows what they need? They need to go do a run in silence, listening to music, and then the thing that they want most will appear to them. And my my core challenge as a as a teacher and as a as a designer is what I'm realizing, my my new question, I'm always trying to look for like these new questions. My new question is like, how do you create one process, one one pedagogy, one tool that will meet a diverse array of learners where they're at when they're all in different places? And I don't I don't have answers. Like I spent the the entire past kind of four months designing the arena of once it's published, it's available, it's free to use. I am not sure that it works for many people who use it or works as well as it could, because we all need slightly different things. Um and so a piece of research that I'm working on uh formalizing right now and hoping to get IRB approval on and actually run uh in the new year is testing three conditions is testing like the arena of once, the web tool on its own. How effective is that at teaching people to figure out what they want if they just use the web tool on their own in private? The arena of once as a in-person workshop where the whole thing is actually conversational, it's it's it's in a group dynamic, it's facilitated. There's not even any private moments, it's just like entirely uh interpersonal. And then a third condition of the combination together. So what happens is you show up for a workshop and parts of it, each step is maybe done in private, and then you're coming together to share bits that you want to share with someone, you're getting their thoughts, their feedback, their support, and then you're going back and doing the next bit in private. And you're coming together and it's like flowing back and forth. And my hypothesis is that some combination of the private and the public, of the digital and the analog in concert will help teach um these processes and these practices that help us connect with each other and ourselves more deeply and more efficiently for a more diverse group of learners. But I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah, I mean what I I find fascinating, Wyatt, is I think this has been kind of an underlying threat. As you talked about, you know, what first drew you to psychology at Stanford was finding out what makes people tick. And then I think when I hearing you speak again about the remote once and now the research that you want to do, I think I see the right. There. And so it seems like this idea, this concept, this research hasn't really left you. And it's sort of followed you as you've gone through all of these projects. And both in the spaces of psychology, technology, design. I think there seems to be this undercurrent of finding more about humans and our wants. And so I'm curious to know kind of the research that comes out of it. But it's very interesting that there's been this sort of very steady threat of the thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

It's funny to like backwards rationalize and see, like, okay, you know, I've think of I've like grown and changed and learned so much, and you're like, well, I'm the same exact person. And I think that's true. Like I think the core motivations and who's No, it's not a bad thing, but it's like it's so funny that those core motivations can remain consistent across like decades.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

And you're like, what? It's powerful. I think that's how you know you're you're really onto something.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Or stuck in a rut. Who knows? Who knows?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Um but I mean, we've talked a little bit about your design projects. And um I'm curious to know as a designer, how has it inf informed sort of your perspective on life? It has because when it I imagine that so much of kind of how you you think and maybe operate as a designer kind of gives you some frameworks and so curious to truly, truly um learning the tools that allow me to create the ideas in my head has been one of the more uh enriching experiences of my recent life.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I I always wanted to be building stuff. I always tinkered, you know, Mum and Dad gave us an infinite budget for art and crafts cupboard. Oh, that's but we you know we weren't allowed to even own a single video game. Like it was a really cool, like where like they put their money where their values were. Yeah. Um but our awesome crafts cupboard didn't allow me to like do electronics, and it didn't allow me to like that there was stuff that was missing, and and I had these ideas that I couldn't even begin to like scratch at. And um I think there's some amazing students that I've met here who self-taught themselves everything as kids and like built crazy electronic things as kids, and I just didn't have that in me. It wasn't so much of an access, access to like the material raw materials problem. It was just like I had always felt a ton of um threat and psychological unsafety whenever like a piece of code didn't work or there was a bug or an error, or like, you know, my my my microchip wasn't plugging into the the microcontroller properly. And I some people, you know, I think fixed mindset has a lot to say about this. I my mindset may have been a little more fixed than I I wish it had been as as a kid, but for whatever reason, I've really, really benefited from being in this learning environment, this holding container of of Harvard, um, where teachers and TAs um and peers are all kind of exerting this helpful pressure and support as I'm trying to learn things that are very difficult. So, my favorite example of this is I'd had this idea as a 10-year-old to make um a pigeon belt. Yeah. Uh I guess it's a technical way of calling this is like a haptic device that tells you when you're pointing north. So like you don't have to look at a phone, and like as you're navigating the jungle or a new city, you just have an intuitive sense of direction, the same as a homing pigeon. You know, like a homing pigeon always knows what it can feel the Earth's magnetic field. Now you can too. Um and you know, as you're navigating like Florence for the first time, wouldn't it be cool if you just, you know, with these winding streets, not a single one is 90 degrees to another one, if you just always kind of knew what direction you were facing? That was the idea as a 10-year-old. Only last year, actually in the spring this year, earlier this year, did I learn the techniques to design and manufacture and test here? This pigeon belt. And that feeling of, and look, the pigeon belt's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous device. Like this creative. No, no one no one no one truly needs a pigeon belt, as I now know, because I have a pigeon belt. I have the world's only pigeon belt. Um But what is so beautiful is is the the agency that comes with um kind of the hard skills of of design, where you don't just have this idea and think, like, oh, that'd be cool, but you think, okay, that would be cool, and I know how I would break down that problem into a million tiny problems and how I would attack each one, and then like if the first one fails, then I need to reframe that problem. Like if my code doesn't even start, then I need to figure out how this code base works. Like now I have a new goal. And that whole iterative process, um, and and crucially not feeling a sense of fear or psychological threat whenever something is wrong, but seeing that is inherent to the process, and then having the support of others uh to navigate it, that is just like my my kind of biggest takeaway from the design degree. And it is that that sense of agency is so sacred. I mean, I you talk about threads that have followed me throughout my life and my work. Um, valuing agency, the agency of myself and the agency of others is actually occurring to me, might be the closest thing I can come to to my own sense of morality. Is a moral act is an act that increases agency of oneself or others. And when we think of like bullying or coercion, those decrease the agency of others. And when we think of teaching, those increase the agency of others. And then there are some acts that kind of are zero sum, where like if I buy an apple and there's only one apple left, then I have the agency to eat it, and you don't have the agency to eat it anymore because there was only one apple. And that's kind of a zero sum. It's not an immoral act, but it's not like juicily agentic. Um and I think the this this drive towards increasing agency within the system. Is is I'm like looking back over everything I do, and I'm like, oh, that's a that's a fun little through lane. And I think design, to wrap it back, I think that design is often um uh one facet of it is trying to figure out how do we create tools or create processes or create products that can increase the agency of a user in some way. And one of my coolest classes that I took last last year was a computational design, uh, where the professor, uh Jose, said that he doesn't just want to teach us how to use Grasshopper and Rhino, he wants us, he wants to teach us how to program our own versions of it to better suit us. Because a lot of design tools, yeah, they give you a little bit of agency, but you're also stuck inside their way of doing things. But if you can become a computational designer where you're writing your own tools to serve your ideas more effectively, then you're not you it's like you're you're not just bowling um Tedman bowling down the lanes and bumping off the bumpers, you're kind of choosing what path you want to go down.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

I love that framing of design as as agency, and then as you mentioned, that showed up in your approach to life in general, right? It's not strictly to design. As I'm hearing you talk through this, and as we think about design and iterating and pivoting and having to deal with sort of the nonlinear aspect of design. I'm curious to know why it, especially when we think about in the context of agency, how do you navigate instances in which you feel like, you know, you fail to enable your agency and or maybe just failed in in design? Talk us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

I just taught uh a a seminar at um a university across the river called Failure by Design, where I was invited by a friend who's who's a professor there to come in and talk to her freshman design students about anything I wanted.

unknown 30:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

And I thought, God, what is the most what is like the single highest impact thing I wish someone had told me as like a kid. And I was like, yo, failure is not just an inherent part of the process, but like an important part of the design process. Um failure shows us an opportunity for learning. It spurs us to reach out and connect with others, it forces us to completely change our framing and to take a perspective shift. Failure is one of the most sacred parts of the design process, I think. Um here I am. I like coming into this university for it, like a Harvard graduate school of design student, being like, here are three concrete ways in my design degree, you know, life that I have failed. Oh, how good.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Oh man. I I feel like that must have been so refreshing for the students to give that perspective. Because I think oftentimes we frame failure as fatal. To your point, it's not. And it's just so important. It's actually a crucial step to the journey. I think if we could maybe reframe our perspective on it, it'd be so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

And this is this is not like new, like everyone's like fail first, fail forward, like Silicon Valley. But yeah, I I do think. And I was I'd won this research grant to figure out narrative spatial affordances, or which is a fancy way of saying, like 3D stories. Stories that you're inside of. How do we do them? So it's like virtual reality. Virtual reality. Okay, okay. Experiential theater is an analog way of doing stories that you're inside of. But yes, I was focused on virtual reality, and I was trying to figure out like can we use VR to make a story that impacts you even more than the flat 2D cinematic version of the same story, you know, where you truly take the perspective of someone because you're sharing space with them. You're in the same environment, you you you feel the physicality of their body near you. Um all of my experiments kind of were like, no, no, it's a failure. Um for for for really good reasons. Like the affordances that storytelling requires are linearity and being highly directed, um, so that in this chaotic, noisy world, we draw one path through it. Like character A did action B, which led to C. You know? We're not talking about their neighbor across the street. We're not talking about their cat. Like that's the noisy big world. We're drawing one path through it with a linear story. And you take VR and it's adding all the noise back in. It's like involving the cat and the neighbor across the street. And we don't know where you're looking or what you're picking up or where you're navigating.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

VR is amazing for simulation because of that. It's amazing for games, but it's not great for stories. And so everything I said at this presentation was like, yeah, all my research has led to uh I'm not doing VR anymore. I actually think VR is not the right way to do what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Which again is to figure out how to connect people more deeply with themselves and each other.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Wow. That is awesome. That's so powerful. And maybe before we we start wrapping up, why I'd love to I'd love if you could share a little bit more about your experience at the GSD, and maybe for folks who might be interested in pursuing a program there, what what would you tell them based on your on your time here so far?

SPEAKER_00 34:27

There are so many different cultures within the GSD. Um and I can only speak to one.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Most of the cultures within the GSD are around landscape, uh architecture, and urban planning. As the kind of the three of those form the majority of the GSD. I am in this little program. It's not super small, but it's definitely off to the side called the Masters of Design. Um Masters of Design Studies, technically. And uh I love it. It is a crazy program. It's basically a Willy Wonka chocolate factory golden ticket to take any class that you want at MIT in Harvard for two years. Um more than the Masters of Design, I see it as a design your own masters. And uh it is truly the only program that I was able to find that would allow me to explore these questions around spatial narrative affordances because I needed to do computational design and I needed to do digital fabrication and needed to do storytelling and filmmaking and all of that. All of it, all of it. And and no program would allow me to wrap those together and didn't do my own research around it except this one. So it's amazing. Um the flip side is that every other student in this program is also doing that. So there's very little that brings you all together, and you're all a bunch of lone wolves, kind of like in the wilderness, yeah, kind of like sniffing out the information and the bits and the perspectives and the professor relationships that you need in order to answer your core questions. So the kinds of people that really, really struggle with this program are the ones that don't know what direction they're going, with like certainty. Um and the and and also the the ones who aren't able to self-organize to create senses of community. Or the ones who who really flourish in this program have a sense of this is my North Star. I don't really know how I'm gonna get there. And if I choose a new North Star, sweet, you know, which is kind of similar to me, where I'm like, I need to figure out spatial narrative affordances, VR stories. And then I'm like, hang on, that's not answering my core question. What was my actual core question? How do we go there now? So I think that's that's one perspective on this Masters of Design Studies program within the GSD is you have to know exactly what you want to be learning. Um, because you're not gonna have any mentorship and you're not gonna have any guidance. You're kind of being dropped in the middle of the wilderness with 14,000 combined classes that you can take. And like four semesters in which to do them. Uh the second thing I'd say is uh a friend recently pointed out this funny dichotomy because a lot of my classes that I've taken this semester are actually at the education school. I took zero classes at the GSD this semester, um, and I took three at the ed school. And um, I resonated very deeply with the way ed school classes are taught. They are exper the the the pedagogy is uh precise, it is clean, it is collaborative, it is constructionist, you personalize it, you make things, um, it is well facilitated. Um my experience with the GSD classes is it is much more uh uh rigid, and the professors seem to have an expertise in design more than in teaching. Um which is fascinating because I think a lot of the students from the ed school come from kind of rigid environments where they would actually do really well with the GSD style of teaching. And a lot of the students at the GSD are looking for the kind of the looseness and the facilitation that's flop. So I think swap would be would would truly serve, would truly serve a lot of us. Um which I think again I think is an amazing affordance of my program, is that it allows for that. And I think some of the education school Marsh's programs also allow for taking classes outside, but I think it's tricky in like a single-year program to find to find space for that.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah, no, that's I appreciate that take and and your honest take on it. Um and I am noticing themes of intentionality, right? Like coming into grad school with intention, but then also learning how to maybe pivot or find a class or a professor that's conducive to what you're actually looking for. Um we're we're at the the home stretch here, final segment. We're gonna do a little rapid fire to close this out. Go ahead. Are you ready? Okay. Harvard or Stanford? Sorry, had to do this. Had to do this to you.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Currently at Harvard.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

It currently worries me though, because it feels like we'll leave it at that. Um Harvard hot take.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yeah, actually.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Um I figured I figured you were at it.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

At the beginning of at the beginning of the semester, um my partner and I were talking about how all the students in our classes were like, you're not saying things that are actually that smart. Like, are you even doing the work? It doesn't seem like you're putting in any effort. And the Harvard heart take is that people are insane and they did crazy things to get in here, and they are so smart, but they perform nonchalance. They perform kind of uh low performance, they perform low aspiration in order to not, I don't know, seem a certain way here. Stanford had his own version of this kind of like the Stanford Duck syndrome where you're like just floating, chill. I think Stanford Duck syndrome is actually a stupid term because ducks will just float if they stop paddling. Yeah, yeah. Um so I think there's a funny thing in both of these these high-performing institutions where people are like trying to be chill, trying to be chill, but they're actually not that chill. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And my favorite people here are those who show up not chill. And they're like, I care deeply about this and let's figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

I love that. Um okay, my final question for you, Ryot, is I thought this conversation. I think we've touched on you've shared so many different parts of your life, and we've been able to touch on different topics. What is one takeaway you would want the the audience to delete with?

SPEAKER_00 41:22

I think I had this myth in my own life that for for a long time um that I could do things on my own, um, that I was special enough to figure them out on my own, that my ideas were somehow better than others. I as I was talking about like no one solved VR, but I can solve VR. It's like I had this um arrogance around uh thinking that I could do things better and alone. Um, I actually tried to convince one of my close friends not to come to this program. Um she came a year before me, before I started. Um she got into it and I tried to convince her not to come. Uh, because I said, you can teach yourself all that you would learn in that program on YouTube. I've been doing that. And and much to my eternal gratitude, she ignored my advice, came to the program, and then um she was actually one of my students when I was helping teach a class at MIT in virtual reality, and she said, Wyatt, I know you don't think ground school is that cool, but I think you would really enjoy and benefit from this program. And fortunately at that point, I was like back wrapped into kind of a the university environment. I thought, you know what? Yeah, yeah, I think this would really help. I've been like slogging solo, trying to teach myself how to code, trying to make VR experiences alone for years now. Yeah, I think I think I'm ready to throw in the like lone wolf towel and ask for help. Um, and I don't know if there's one thing to take away. I think it would be like, yeah, uh ask for help. It's so it's I there are people who will be so thrilled um to help, where you're helping them by asking for help. It is not an imposition. Going back to this like arena of once, we're trying to figure out where the things that I want, you know, intersect with the things the world will celebrate. And I think a lot of times that we don't ask for help, the world will actually celebrate us for asking for help and we'll benefit from being able to provide it.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

I love that. Thank you so much, Vias. Thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

So fun, so fun. Thank you.