To answer a sibling. Yes, this was at AIT. One of the moments I remember most vividly was the first project review we were doing. The task was to fold hard construction paper into an object. I was starting work on a human face and had completed just the eye.
After taking a few seconds to roll it over in his hands, he handed it back to me and said, "what is it?" I said, "It's a human eye." He responded, "It is not shaped like an eye, it is not colored like an eye, it does not look like an eye." I was very disappointed.
Looking back on it years later, that conversation taught me a valuable lesson. Metaphors are built up of tiny little pieces that all come together to form a complete picture. If one of those pieces is off or missing, it's like missing letters from a wrd (word). At a certain point the wd (word) just breaks down until it's not even recognizable as a w (word) anymore...
The same goes for design. The eye I had made definitely resembled an eye. It had an iris and it was as round as I could make it. But the illusion of the eye was lost on the viewer and at best it looked like eye-shaped paper. That was the point he was making and my future work suffered until I realized that it wasn't the outcome I should be focusing on. Instead, I should reflect on the individual pieces that make up an experience in order for it to match the user's expectations.