Know Your Process (3/30/11)

When working on any project, there needs to be a process. Everyone’s process is different. We all have our own way of how we work to achieve our goals. What we should do is be aware of our process. Once we are aware of it, we should also be aware of our problems with our process. When we know our problems, we can work to fix them by adding little changes here and there to develop a better process. Going back to working on a project, how do you begin to work on it? First, is to come up with an idea. This first step is where I have the most difficulty with. I always hate the starting point because I always seem to get stuck. It takes me a while to come up with an initial idea and to brainstorm it. But once I finalize my idea and start working on it, I am able to work more efficiently in executing my project. But I have never been aware of my process. I just go with the flow of my work, never stopping to analyze it or ask myself, “how did I come to complete by project this way?” Professor Moss brought up a good point in class. We should be rational when working on our projects. He knows the problem for most of us is our starting point and the consequence is that we “have less time to develop our project and don’t really finish in the time frame it needs to be done.” So when we are aware of our problem, we can be rational and know that our project isn’t going to be perfect so when we go to turn it in, we know that we did our best on it. So how do you know what process works best? We haven’t quite gotten to that point in class yet but the answer to that will be reached by the end of this quarter as it will pertain to our final project, coming up with our own personal creative process.

A fun activity we did in glass was Professor Moss went around to each student in class and had us finish the sentence that began with “What if…?” Some of the questions that stuck out were, “what if we could time travel?” I thought this was funny because Professor Moss said we can time travel. This technically can happen when we travel from one time zone to another. Another question was, “what if the internet didn’t exist?” I personally cannot imagine this. I may not be on the internet all the time but it is such a helpful and useful tool to have and it can be fun and entertaining all at once. One of the other questions that I remembered was, “what if we could fly?” This question was one of the most interesting questions because in our history, people too came up with this same question and they challenged it. Because they challenged it, they came up with ideas on how humans could fly. With many trials and errors, this idea produced the creation of the airplane. This brings me back to how important ideas and concepts really are. So by challenging certain questions that begin with “what if?” we can see what possibilities can develop from them. As Professor Moss said in class, “think big.”

Art 220 Concept Development (3/28/11)

 What is a concept? Today in my Art 220 Concept Development class, my professor Jimmy Moss had everyone who has a data cell phone look up the word concept. Going into this class, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I didn’t know what the class would be about because all I knew was that this was a required course to take for my major. In class, several topics were thrown around: ideation, critical thinking and experiential learning.

The point of having us look up the word concept was to have us really understand its meaning. A concept is a general idea. An idea can stem from something small and grow into something exponentially big. My professor made me really think about how a concept and critical thinking go hand in hand. They work together to help create a product. It can also help spark another new idea which may be even more brilliant than the first idea. An example used in class today was the cell phone. Where did it originate from? Its creation had to start somewhere. It started with an idea to be able to communicate across long distances.  In order to achieve this, the telegraph was created. After the telegraph came the telephone. Then after the telephone came the cordless phone. All of this eventually leads to the creation of the mobile cellular phone. Once an idea is thought of, it takes the critical thinking to plan out and test the product. A lot of energy, time and labor are put into creating a product. There needs to be sketches and experiments and a lot of trial and error before an idea becomes a successful reality.

Hearing about concepts and critical thinking brings me to understand what experiential learning is. Experiential learning is a term I have never heard of before. But I have come to realize that what comes out of concepts and critical thinking is that after all the trial and error, skill and understanding is gained from it. It is the type of way you learn.  The only way to learn certain things is by having hands on experience and knowledge. There are certain things that we can’t learn unless we experience it for ourselves. My professor Jimmy Moss used learning to ride a bicycle as an example for experiential learning. A manual on how to ride a bicycle can be given to a student. It could contain all the instructions and diagrams on how to ride a bicycle. By reading the manual, would that student be able to ride a bike right away? No, the end result is that student won’t learn how to ride a bicycle by only reading a manual. That student will need hands on experience to learn how to ride a bicycle. It will take many tries to get it right and the first few tries will end up in failure. But after much practice that student will eventually learn to ride a bike. In this class I believe we will have a lot of experiential learning. It will help us to achieve our goals in design education. 

After leaving my first day of class, I now have a better grasp of what this class is about. It is a class to help me and my fellow classmates advance in design education. In this field, writing may not be a strong point but I learned that it is a necessary skill to have in the design world.