Translator: Daniel Balton Reviewer: Ivana Korom
Five years ago, I saw this thing called Ferro fluid
and I was instantly amazed.
Like there's this liquid that you can move with a magnet.
And I knew I wanted to make something with it
but I had no idea what.
So I just first ordered a sample.
And I started pressing little magnets against the wall
just to see what will happen
and it happened so that Ferro fluid really easily follows those magnets
if they're the same size.
And it seemed to me that you can actually draw with Ferro fluid
so I was thinking maybe you can make a screen if you can draw.
So I started thinking what can I make.
And after a few days, I realized that maybe the best thing
to make is a digital clock because there's this notion
and flow of time and there's this liquid behavior of numbers.
So it seemed really easy I just mocked it up in Illustrator
because I'm a UX designer, I have nothing to do
with industrial design.
And I took electromagnets and I thought by turning them on and off
you can simply modify the Ferro fluid
how it looks and you can make numbers.
And it seemed really easy.
It seemed so easy that I even wanted to try it actually
and prototype it because I became curious.
I wanted to see how it looks.
And after a few weeks - first I thought it was going to be
a weekend project but actually it wasn't.
It took me a couple of weeks and I got something
that was actually a proof of concept
but it wasn't really enough for me.
It wasn't enough for a couple of reasons.
First reason it was wasting so much power.
It was insane.
It was like a heating unit.
And secondly, as I was working on the insides of this project,
I started thinking about the outsides and I made
like many different mockups how it could look like.
And I started being like really curious
about how it should be nice and how it should be a work of art
and not just a proof of concept.
So I went back to the drawing board and I started thinking
about how can you make this more elegantly.
And paradoxically, more elegant way to make it was
to make it more complex by making a mechanism.
And at that point, I just gave up.
I was like how can I make a mechanism and that's not my job.
I'm not an engineer.
I'm not even an industrial designer.
So I packed everything in the box and I put it in a closet.
And it wasn't really the end of the world,
because I was approached by a startup from Paris,
a really young startup that had one amazing idea
so I joined them.
And I spent the next three years working with them.
And we did some really really nice things.
We traveled a lot.
We worked with Google and Google X
on Google Glass app.
We worked with some famous museums in Bay area.
And it was during those trips that I realized
that I don't want any more to travel to USA
that I actually want to move here and live here.
So naturally moving to a different continent means
that you will lose your professional network.
And the best thing you should do as a designer is just
like create your portfolio
because that's the only weapon you have.
And portfolios are really hard for many reasons.
And if you ask a designer like,
"What's your favorite work in your portfolio?"
He'll probably tell you that it's the one that he's working on right now
and it's not in his portfolio.
On the other side, portfolios are presentations of ourselves
and even worse they are presentations
of the work we did before
that we're not so crazy about anymore.
So I had this problem.
I had this loop because I wanted to go
and I needed my portfolio and I didn't want do my portfolio.
So naturally I decided to procrastinate.
And I remember that there is this project I have at home.
So I took the box and I brought it to my office.
And I didn't have any plans; I just wanted to play with it
just to see what will happen, this part with that and so on.
This is my office like a week after that.
And it actually started really naive.
I just first finished my job
and then I spent an hour or two a day.
Then I started spending weekends.
And then I started spending like weeks on this.
And then I stopped sleeping.
So basically I had a problem because I had a full time job
and now I had another full time job, which was this project
that I was going crazy about.
So I had to make a decision.
And it was actually an easy decision
because at this time my symptoms were these.
I went to bed thinking about this project.
I woke up thinking about this project.
And it was basically the only thing I was talking about to anyone.
So it's safe to say that I was in love with this project
and the decision was quite easy.
I decided to focus on this project full time.
But that had consequences
because I didn't have a job anymore and prototyping this
as you'll see in the next slides is time consuming.
It requires your full attention
and it requires actually a lot of money.
So I needed to solve that because going and doing
like freelance for full time, once again,
I couldn't have time to do this.
So I made a deal with my girlfriend.
We will not spend any money
on anything that's not completely essential
for the project, for the rent, and that's all.
So it sounds like a really big sacrifice, like no dining out,
no going out, no buying stuff, nothing.
But actually was probably the best year of my life
because I got to do so many things.
I got to learn so many new things.
I got to play.
I got to read about chemistry and I got to play
with Ferro fluid until I found the right shape,
how I wanted to look.
And there are some messy moments there definitely.
Then there are some more messy moments.
You need to repeat and repeat and repeat.
Then I got to learn a lot about stepper motors.
I had no idea what stepper motors [were] when I started,
I just knew that I needed something
to move normal magnets.
And I started learning about that.
I started learning about different processes,
different machining processes, laser, water jets,
CNC lathe machines, so on.
Then I started building a mechanism.
And I started with Lego obviously
because that's the fastest way to build something,
and to iterate because that's what you need
if you're building something
that you have no idea what you're building actually.
And then I realized that I need parts.
And in order to make parts, you need to design them.
And that meant I needed to learn some CAD program.
So I sat down and I started learning CAD program.
And in matter of weeks, I actually had a full blown model
with over eight hundred pieces inside.
Every screw was in place.
And months have passed and the mechanism was actually growing
from smaller to bigger and to even larger.
And finally the clock was ready.
And this is what it looks like.
And in the meantime, I had a problem
because I had a deadline.
It won the Red Dot Award for design concept.
And I needed to catch that deadline.
So the last few weeks were insane.
And once I published the project,
like in the first twenty-four hours,
crazy things started happening.
It was first in Product Hunt and it was first in Hacker News.
It was published by so many different media channels.
Just like to mention: Co.DESIGN, Hypebeast,
even on the Discovery Channel.
It was shared by some of my personal idols.
I was contacted by many people.
I started receiving e-mails like crazy.
And among those e-mails I received some really interesting
job offers also.
So then I remembered my portfolio and my plan.
And it was funny how my gut feeling actually led me
to something that I wanted.
And I also received so many e-mails from different people,
"Hey, if you're ever in New York like please give me a call
when you come and we can grab a coffee."
"If you're ever in San Francisco" and this and that
so I actually started building my professional network even
before I left.
And then it hit me actually.
I realized that my first design job was a result
of my personal project.
When I was a little kid, I was just like messing around in Photoshop
and these guys from Paris,
they mentioned they saw my previous design project.
And they just called me and they said, like
"Hey, we like how you think, so can you make apps?"
And I said, "Yeah, basically that's what I do, I make apps.
This is just like my hobby.
And they said, "Cool" and it's this clock now that brought me
to California to one amazing design studio where I'm learning
from the best designers in the industry.
And it's all something I couldn't anticipate.
So I started thinking like,
"What's so powerful about personal projects?"
And I realized that personal project lets you
express yourself.
It lets show hundred percent of yourself and that's your ID card
because it shows how you think.
There are no compromises.
There are no clients.
There are no deadlines.
It's only you and the compromises you make with yourself.
And it's safe to say that I will have more personal projects
in the future definitely.
And I started thinking what was different
between the first approach
and the second approach when I built this.
The first time I failed.
Second time I didn't.
And I came across three points that I want to share with you
that will probably help you if you decide to embark
on a journey like I did.
And these are points that don't relate only to design,
they relate to anything.
The first one is if you have projects lying around or ideas
in your notebook, stop filtering out the ones
that you think you lack skills for.
Actually pick them because if it's a personal project,
that's the best way to learn.
And by learning new skills, you will actually get more ideas.
It happened to me.
Learning skills for this project finished some other projects
that I couldn't finish before.
The second thing is if it seems easy, and if you decide to do this,
it seems easy only because you lack experience.
That's actually why I said bad news.
But the good news is that it's not impossible also.
And the first time I tried, I thought it's going to be easy
and I went from easy to impossible
in like a matter of weeks.
And that's only because I had limited experience.
So just acknowledge the fact
that it's hard and it takes time.
And most important, try to approach your project
with a playful mindset, start playing with it
and that mindset will completely eliminate the fear of failure.
It will completely eliminate all the risks and everything.
And chances are if you start playing with it and if you play
with it enough, chances are you'll fall in love.
And if you fall in love, nothing can stop you.
So that's how you drive your reality.
Thank you.
(Applause)