What Randy Pausch’s last lecture teaches us about designing with urgency and purpose.
Randy Pausch had every right to do whatever he wanted. After all, he was a highly reputable professor at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
Virtual reality was his area of expertise, and at the time it was a groundbreaking technology. He first started out in 1997 after clinching a role with the coveted Walt Disney Imagineering team.
He could have dived deep into the technological advances he had made in VR, having many papers under his name. He could have gloated about his career achievements. After all, he co-founded the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU and led the team that created ALICE, a revolutionary free software that taught kids programming.
Instead, on the day of his “last lecture” — a tradition for CMU professors leaving or retiring — Randy spoke about his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and lessons learned along the way.
There were stories filled with humor: vomit comets, drawings on walls, a student who became a living Jedi, and more. Eventually, he did talk about designing VR, how he taught it to students, and how to overcome setbacks.