INB182 Lecture 10: Reflection of entire unit
The final lecture was presented entirely online as Michael Docherty was sick the week that it was meant to be on. Listening through the lecture audio multiple times, it has become evident that perhaps my experience in INB182 was somewhat ignorant of several aspects of the design process, despite there being no one set design process. The lecture focused on summarizing all the points made throughout the nine weeks beforehand.
In particular, I feel as if the divergent stage of design was only implemented in my team's design projects because it had to be. If the team could have stuck to one idea, instead of being required to have three before narrowing down to one, they would have chosen to do so. This is most evident in the second design project, as there was little conversation as to what idea we should choose, because we all had the idea of the Messiah fully-fleshed out in our minds, or didn't wish to think further on the issue. For the first design project, we explored each idea more, but we only really had two ideas, with the third being a completely non-viable option that had little thought put into it. We also would likely not have reached that three idea mark if I hadn't individually created an artifact to put forth to the team, some of which did not bother with the idea and instead were happy to go along with an idea that had not been thought about in any depth, which was especially demonstrated in our presentation.
Reflecting upon INB182, I enjoyed some aspects of the unit. I found the content easy to understand and somewhat engaging, as I learned about design thinking, new and interesting designs, and I found my own tutors to be very knowledgeable and helpful when it came to building on designs. However, I ultimately did not enjoy the unit due to the people I was surrounded with and the reliance that I had to have on those people. I am fine working in groups, but when an entire group of people decide not to respond to emails, spend whole studio sessions talking about unrelated subjects and are happy to cruise through thirteen weeks while other people pick up the slack for them, I will build an extreme disliking to that group, as well as the unit that I have to work with them in.
My suggestion for INB182 is to drop the two project system and create one, ten week long design project. As I am assuming that group work is necessary (due to it's necessity in the real world), this one project format would allow for longer time to be spent conceptualizing an idea, ideating and then converging on the final product.
