Six Questions from Kicker: Mouna Andraos

For the fifth installment in our Six Questions series, Kicker
interviews Mouna Andraos.

Working under the label Electronic Crafts, Mouna deconstructs everyday electronic experiences to discover how to reconstruct more personal –or poetic– alternatives. Through open-source sharing of her research, she works to demystify and disseminate technical knowledge, empowering people to customize and create technologies to fit their real, personal needs. Her work has been showcased accross North America and Europe including as part of the 2008 YAP installation at PS1/MoMA in New York. She is an alumni of Eyebeam’s OpenLab R&D fellowship in New York City, and currently lives and works in Montreal.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

To me, a product has connotations of newness and marketing, of something that was created to answer a specific need or want, which has a specific monetary value and a set of functions. I don’t cherish products per say. I do like them though; I like my laptop (well sometimes I don’t like it but that’s another story), I might like a good kitchen blender or a bicycle helmet that feels right. But what I cherish are objects, things that have acquired meaning through time and shared experiences. It’s funny to think that everything might have been a product once, designed and marketed, packaged and sold. My grandmother’s perfume bottle, old pieces of jewelery I got from my mother, objects that were gifted to me in a specific context. I cherish objects that I’ve brought back from travels that remind me of other times and places. I cherish my books because they are filled with potential and hold the promise of infinite amounts of knowledge.

I think what we cherish in objects are not their features or how they might look, but how they make us feel and most importantly, the narratives we write for each of them. In a sense we chose objects to become the containers for the stories that we want to keep alive and remember. Through this process they gain value and become a part of us. I’ve also learned over time not to put too much emotional attachment to any specific object: everything gets lost or broken (or at least I break and loose almost anything). So I think we also learn to transplant these narratives from objects to objects — or to abandon them when they’ve been dragged around for too long.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

Everything! Everything that I like, that sparks my interest, my curiosity, everything that I have no idea how to make but that looks fascinating. Beautiful modernist chairs, crazy electronic products, incredibly delicate porcelain, designer lights, smart pieces of clothing, fashionable accessories, health saving devices. Every time I discover a new object that brings a twist to some product we thought was complete, or one that brings innovation to places I didn’t even consider, I’m amazed. And I’m a bit jealous. It’s this slightly bitter jealously mixed with the inspiring adrenaline it brings that gets me going, keeping the challenges high and the desire to make things stronger.

3. What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

Design is about solving problems as well as about innovation and creativity; that’s what excites me.

I never properly studied design. At first I wanted to be a filmmaker. I chose film making early on because I could not make up my mind as to what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to choose. I figured film would be a nice option because from project to project I would have to delve into new worlds and learn about new things: a film about agriculture, followed by a one about law, or about a specific tradition in a specific language. But I quickly realized approaching film this way wouldn’t take me very far: the industry was an established one and it was not often about this kind of freedom. So I slowly drifted into design, first on screen then off screen. Design has been exiting to me because it’s been the vehicle through which I have explored more of these different worlds. It’s offered me a balance between creativity and knowledge, between the right side and the left side of my brain and between artistic expression and the rest of the world. And it’s a place where innovation and new ideas rule above all: and that is more than enough to keep doing it.

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

I’m not sure when I started thinking of myself as a designer but I know I only started calling myself one recently. I remember a few years ago, when I started doing more research-based work, a friend told me that if I chose this route, I would have to accept once and for all that people at parties would most probably not understand what I did in life, which is often the case. Now I answer “designer” as hopefully a way to end the conversation, but I often get back a “design what?” It might sound unreasonable but the answer is “pretty much anything,” which doesn’t help the conversation much.

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

Learn how you learn.

While studying film and communications, I stuck around school for an extra year to hang around a room with large monitors and computers and learn about screen-based interactivity. My professor Nancy White tought us one lesson I’ve kept with me: if you decide to work in the field of new and emerging technologies, you’ll forever be required to constantly learn new tools and new techniques, and you’ll need to do it fast and efficiently, and hopefully enjoy it as well.

We each learn differently: Do you learn through copying, through books, alone, with people, do you jump right in and try to figure it out or do you need a proper introduction? .

I’m still learning about how I learn, but as she predicted, I’m definitely still learning.

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

1) Learn how to draw.
2) Always have faith in the creative process.
3) Don’t be lazy.
4) An idea not executed is worth nothing.
5) Don’t be obsessed with protecting your ideas: you’ll gain more from sharing them.

This was written by Jennifer. Posted on Monday, June 8, 2009, at 10:42 am. Filed under Six Questions. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.