So this isn't directly related to my project but both of these experiences really contributed to the way I view my project and its significance.
This week a group of UW students went to Hornall Anderson to talk about experience/interactive design. One of the really interesting elements was hearing them explain that when they say experience or interactive design, it's not just websites it's anything that is interacted with. I don't see myself as having very good web skills but I do think that I could excel in some element of developing an experience. What really made me think specifically about my project was the first work example that they showed. I forget the exact details but it was for T-Mobile and an event that helped to assert T-Mobile's relationship with the NBA. The work itself was extremely impressive, of course. However, part way through the presentation I started to wonder how much money went into that experience and for what purpose, and I became increasingly less comfortable. It was really interesting for me to have a more active opportunity to understand what I would have, or could have, done if I had been a part of that team. The work they do at HADW is almost always clean, efficient, beautiful...all of the things that we are taught to do well in our formal education. It was far easier to look at the project and accept it as good based on it's immediately observable qualities, as we are, as designers, people attracted and responsive to good aesthetics. It reinforced the content of my project and helped me to see some greater relevance to it. I think that the majority of us chose this profession because we are people naturally drawn to the aesthetic and functional qualities of our surroundings. Because this is something to which we are naturally attuned, these are the qualities that must be built upon and refined in school and with practice, but other qualities must be more purposefully taught. Perhaps understanding how ethics relates to this job, or how your successful work contributes to a company or the economy, is something that we need to address explicitly.
Again, the relevance, and I think the content, of my project was emphasized at the Cornish BFA show. It is definitely clear that they spend much more of their time in studio, especially compared to DS. For the visual communications major, the projects and installations were, for the most part, very impressive. There were many projects with really interesting content as well - a visual system for individual rehabilitation focused on war veterans, an investigation of design using hand craft without the computer, and the identity for what seemed to basically be a sustainability guide and resource hub. I suppose it's possible I set my expectations at an unreasonably high level, and I acknowledge that the intention of their senior project might be quite different than ours, but overall I felt that their senior projects were not extremely ambitious. This is not to say that they didn't take a great amount of hard work and time, but many of the projects seemed to be a very professional display of any other portfolio piece. I'm trying not to talk negatively, just make a comparison, because the quality of the work was exceptional but seemed somewhat limited in scope.
The basic benefit of this week was that I see my project as something extremely relevant and interesting, and while I feel nervous that I have taken on a bigger project than I have time to finish, I'm glad I'm doing it.
That is all.
5.09.2009
5.02.2009
postpostpost
In the process of developing a framework for a scenario/ethical platform. I'm not sure if I want to call it an ethical platform because I believe that's what the other architecture school called theirs. Perhaps I'll come up with a more interesting name for it. I think another problem with that name is that it gives a sense of your ethical platform being one particular place from which you operate, and I view it as more of a framework or a puzzle with missing pieces where you input the particulars of your project to see if they fit. I suppose it's a similar end result but I would like the name of this framework to hint to something more operational and less static.
What I did to work on this is outline the things I feel that I would consider when deciding on a job.
Who is the client? Meaning: what are their end goals and objectives as a company, what companies are they affiliated with, what is the image that they try and represent, how much of their income do they donate, what kinds of causes are they affiliated with/support, how is their revenue spent, do they focus more on profit or project
What is the content? Meaning: what would my particular objective be, what are the messages that will be conveyed, who is the audience and what does the client want the audience to do as a result (i.e. buy something, change their opinion about something etc.), what will be the balance between the particular content and personal beliefs
How will it be produced? Meaning: what are the resources needed (materials, production, printing location, quantity, location of materials, how will waste be managed, how is it best recycled, will it have to travel long distances), what is the medium and what will that mean (television, radio, print, billboards, web etc)
What is the future of the project? Meaning: does it have an end date, will there be checkpoints to assess the success of the project, if it is unsuccessful how will revisions be handled, if it does have a lifetime and there will be waste left over how will it be dealt with, is there a way to reuse most of the materials, should you include as part of your contract that any revisions to this project must go through you
How will I, personally take responsibility for the outcome of the project? Meaning: running update of projects, have as part of contract a definite association of my name with appearances of the project
Some of these seem more specific to my personal expectations when accepting a job. The key classes of things to consider are basically the bold above:
1. Who is the client?
2. What is the content?
3. How can production of the project be most sustainable?
4. What will be the most efficient termination of the project, if necessary?
5. How will I take responsibility for the outcome of this project?
What I am having the hardest time with is establishing the questions to develop an answer to "what will be the balance between the particular content and personal beliefs?" and how to take responsibility.
What I did to work on this is outline the things I feel that I would consider when deciding on a job.
Who is the client? Meaning: what are their end goals and objectives as a company, what companies are they affiliated with, what is the image that they try and represent, how much of their income do they donate, what kinds of causes are they affiliated with/support, how is their revenue spent, do they focus more on profit or project
What is the content? Meaning: what would my particular objective be, what are the messages that will be conveyed, who is the audience and what does the client want the audience to do as a result (i.e. buy something, change their opinion about something etc.), what will be the balance between the particular content and personal beliefs
How will it be produced? Meaning: what are the resources needed (materials, production, printing location, quantity, location of materials, how will waste be managed, how is it best recycled, will it have to travel long distances), what is the medium and what will that mean (television, radio, print, billboards, web etc)
What is the future of the project? Meaning: does it have an end date, will there be checkpoints to assess the success of the project, if it is unsuccessful how will revisions be handled, if it does have a lifetime and there will be waste left over how will it be dealt with, is there a way to reuse most of the materials, should you include as part of your contract that any revisions to this project must go through you
How will I, personally take responsibility for the outcome of the project? Meaning: running update of projects, have as part of contract a definite association of my name with appearances of the project
Some of these seem more specific to my personal expectations when accepting a job. The key classes of things to consider are basically the bold above:
1. Who is the client?
2. What is the content?
3. How can production of the project be most sustainable?
4. What will be the most efficient termination of the project, if necessary?
5. How will I take responsibility for the outcome of this project?
What I am having the hardest time with is establishing the questions to develop an answer to "what will be the balance between the particular content and personal beliefs?" and how to take responsibility.
5.01.2009
4.21.2009
video blog vlog smog jog
This is Nick Loper, the owner, moderator, and creator of www.shoesrus.net. He is expanding his business to include an external handbags site as well. In this interview he is talking about the challenges he is facing in developing this new handbags site.
4.17.2009
Spring Week 3....post crit/presentation
This presentation format was nice because it left everyone a lot more time for getting feedback, which is what I need most right now in order to really refine where I'm going. I was feeling really hesitant about the idea for the pocket guide, but the positive feedback was really crucial.
An idea that came up for the pocket guide after class was to combine the idea of the ethical platform that the Illinois curriculum used. Derrick also had a good comment of trying to use both sides of the pocketmod page, since one page is left blank, I assume for binding purposes, it could be un-bound and have content on the binding side as well. In this case I think I could incorporate both of the possible ideas I have been throwing around for the pocket guide. The main side would have the steps to develop and continually check your ethical platform, basically the 'how to' for ensuring that you maintain your ethical stance and work values. The other side could have example photos and hopefully short descriptions of different kinds of projects that involved some kind of ethical discussion.
I'm in the process of looking up good book layouts and grid formats for the presentation of my paper. From the stuff I've looked at I think that maintaining a feeling of playfulness or interest in viewing the book will have to do with keeping the sections in narrow columns and pretty specific, short, well titled sections. From the stuff I've read, having in-descriptive titles or sections that are too lengthy is a really quick deterrent from reading if I'm short on time. I want this to be something that is easy to engage and interact with. I've been really interested in the appearance of color layering (like in screen printing) and an interaction of graphics and graphic typography.
My paper is coming really slowly. It currently sounds a lot like my presentations but just on paper, and I feel that I have a lot of information and analysis that I don't include in presentations so I'm trying to continually edit to get it to include as much information as possible in as few words as possible.
An idea that came up for the pocket guide after class was to combine the idea of the ethical platform that the Illinois curriculum used. Derrick also had a good comment of trying to use both sides of the pocketmod page, since one page is left blank, I assume for binding purposes, it could be un-bound and have content on the binding side as well. In this case I think I could incorporate both of the possible ideas I have been throwing around for the pocket guide. The main side would have the steps to develop and continually check your ethical platform, basically the 'how to' for ensuring that you maintain your ethical stance and work values. The other side could have example photos and hopefully short descriptions of different kinds of projects that involved some kind of ethical discussion.
I'm in the process of looking up good book layouts and grid formats for the presentation of my paper. From the stuff I've looked at I think that maintaining a feeling of playfulness or interest in viewing the book will have to do with keeping the sections in narrow columns and pretty specific, short, well titled sections. From the stuff I've read, having in-descriptive titles or sections that are too lengthy is a really quick deterrent from reading if I'm short on time. I want this to be something that is easy to engage and interact with. I've been really interested in the appearance of color layering (like in screen printing) and an interaction of graphics and graphic typography.
My paper is coming really slowly. It currently sounds a lot like my presentations but just on paper, and I feel that I have a lot of information and analysis that I don't include in presentations so I'm trying to continually edit to get it to include as much information as possible in as few words as possible.
4.03.2009
Spring Week 1
This week I have been considering what a paper for my project would look like. I took the bullets from my last presentation because that had a topic flow that I liked. So far the outline is very generally this:
Section 1 (shortest section): Design situation, design ethics as it stands
Section 2 (also fairly short): Design ethics education as it stands
Section 3 (second longest): What design ethics needs, address problems in AIGA standards, First Things First, and sections that should be added to supplement
Section 4 (longest): The argument of our ethical obligation - still having a seriously hard time thinking up good examples and counter examples so any input on those is much appreciated (if you remember the acid throwing example I gave, things of that nature will be most helpful, so something that is provocative and not over addressed [ie. murder, naziism], and also ones of a lesser scale that are not focused on sustainability). This section will essentially be the reason why we need to consider, practice, and actively improve on all the things previously mentioned in the paper.
I'm going to write it out at whatever length it happens to be and then try and condense it down. All the literature I have on this topic is too long for me to stay interested in so I want to make sure I get a lot of different edits so it's interesting, maybe slightly humorous writing. The main problem I feel that I will run into is making sure the argument and the concepts are really accessible. I like the example that Kristine's company has of the ways that they're sustainable and different things that you can do. I think providing a lot of examples of situations and ways to handle them is key.
My to-do list for this week is:
Choose 10 professional designers to contact for input on examples and contact them to arrange a meeting
Make one very rough draft of my paper, that will probably read like expanded bullet points
Organize my sources
Organize the relevant quotes from my sources with the sources list
Contact karen/do research to attempt to publish my paper
Return my library books
Sorry this is pretty much just the minimum amount of words :(
Section 1 (shortest section): Design situation, design ethics as it stands
Section 2 (also fairly short): Design ethics education as it stands
Section 3 (second longest): What design ethics needs, address problems in AIGA standards, First Things First, and sections that should be added to supplement
Section 4 (longest): The argument of our ethical obligation - still having a seriously hard time thinking up good examples and counter examples so any input on those is much appreciated (if you remember the acid throwing example I gave, things of that nature will be most helpful, so something that is provocative and not over addressed [ie. murder, naziism], and also ones of a lesser scale that are not focused on sustainability). This section will essentially be the reason why we need to consider, practice, and actively improve on all the things previously mentioned in the paper.
I'm going to write it out at whatever length it happens to be and then try and condense it down. All the literature I have on this topic is too long for me to stay interested in so I want to make sure I get a lot of different edits so it's interesting, maybe slightly humorous writing. The main problem I feel that I will run into is making sure the argument and the concepts are really accessible. I like the example that Kristine's company has of the ways that they're sustainable and different things that you can do. I think providing a lot of examples of situations and ways to handle them is key.
My to-do list for this week is:
Choose 10 professional designers to contact for input on examples and contact them to arrange a meeting
Make one very rough draft of my paper, that will probably read like expanded bullet points
Organize my sources
Organize the relevant quotes from my sources with the sources list
Contact karen/do research to attempt to publish my paper
Return my library books
Sorry this is pretty much just the minimum amount of words :(
4.01.2009
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