Journal Entry 4

       I really enjoyed the group desk crit. It was helpful getting feedback form multiple people at once. I also liked seeing what other people in the class had come up with so far for their projects this semester. We really have some creative people in our cohort. Some of the suggestions given to me were to either create an icon; an eagle perhaps, for students to click on to enter each module or simply add text boxes. Dr. Kopcha suggested actually cutting and pasting these things onto my original drawing to see how much real estate these items take up. In feedback that he gave me this week he also suggested getting my drawing into PowerPoint to create another prototype. I have met my goal for the last journal of creating my drawing and getting it into Photoshop, so I think creating the prototype is going to be my next goal. I am really enjoying getting to work on this project. It is always easier to get things done when you enjoy what you are doing.

        Last week in class we talked more about giving desk crits and the purpose they serve for us as designers. This made me think back to Gibbons article “Contexts of Instructional Design”. His article discussed finding a purpose for creating projects and thinking about the foundations of which the project is created for. Gibbons (2011) states, “The importance of design contexts begins with the assumption that what designers think they are designing guides their choice of the design architecture and of the building blocks they use in their designs” (p. 11). Not only am I thinking of the building blocks for my project, but others are helping me get to a final product that is beneficial to the user through the desk crits and design conversations that I have in class. As I continue to receive feedback and develop my project I need to remember that “A designer’s job does not involve choosing one design problem to the exclusion of the others as much as it involves climbing upward using the continuum of problems to reach the level of problem that leads to the most powerful and innovative design solutions for a given context and purpose” (Gibbons, 2011, p. 10). My design context can involve more than one trajectory and I can move up the ladder through time, however it may not always be necessary. One thing throughout the process is to remember that things can change and change is not always a bad thing.

                       

References

Gibbons, A. S. (2011). Contexts of instructional design. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 1(1).