#lecture78

[sugarcoatedcannonballs-blog]

Methodology should not be a fixed track to a fixed destination, but a conversation about everything that could be made to happen. The language of the conversation must bridge the logical gao between past and future, but in doing so it should not limit the variety of possible futures that are discussed now should it force the choice of a future that is unfree.

John Christopher Jones

[sugarcoatedcannonballs-blog]

Lecture 8

This lecture focuses on themes similar to that of lecture 7, but in a more general way, allowing it to be relevant to all forms of design.  Focusing on design methods, this lecture revisits some concepts discussed in earlier lectures.  The common process of design shown in this lecture is as follows:

Start: client briefing

Research: learning about the design challenge

Ideation: coming up with ideas

Development: refining and testing the ideas, tech demos

Documentation: describing the design solution

Testing: approval or prototyping, play-testing

Making: construction, installation, coding or production

Evaluation: review of finished design

This process show the process of designing something, whether it be a program, sculpture or book, the main steps still apply, unlike the previous lecture where they were specific to the designer’s project.  It also shows that there is a lot of work and thinking that goes in before any development actually starts.  This is to avoid wasting resources on projects which may need to be completely changed over due to poor planning. 

There are a number of quotes included in this blog which all repeat a similar message: that design methods are flexible and there is no one way to practice design.  This is why I find the steps in this lecture much more useful than those in the last, because they still allow for a wide variation on the way you approach the design while those in lecture 7 were specific and did not allow for much variation. 

This lecture also revisited iteration, divergence and convergence, and the double diamond design process.  It also introduced a new process called the IT waterfall method, which is explained in its own post.

[sugarcoatedcannonballs-blog]

Lecture 7

I found this lecture the most boring of them all as it contained quite a large amount of technical process which happen in design, rather than the actual design itself.  Whilst this is important I felt that the content discussed was either to specific to the project it was being described in or it had already been covered in other lectures.  This is actually the lecture I took the most notes in, and I think that’s just none of what he was saying was really that thought provoking, so instead of writing down my thoughts I wrote down exactly what he said instead. 

An example of how the information discussed was too specific follows:

Common Processes:

Client/Team briefings

Creating the Team

Content assimilation and production

Interface design and graphics creation

Coding and Implementation

Documentation

Alpha release

Beta release

Final release

This slide aims to show the common process in design, but actually shows the precise process this designer uses when designing his software.  Whilst this is more specific to computer games, there would still be differences between this process and that of creating computer games.  Overall this lecture was very narrow, but the way it described some of the processes eg creating the team (as seen below), would be useful in most forms of design.

Creating the Team: The creation of the team is dependent on a number of factors.  These are:

Skill sets required for the project

Level of complexity of tasks

Deadlines and milestones

Cost and project budget

[sugarcoatedcannonballs-blog]

Some consider it noble to have a method; others consider it noble not to have a method. Not to have a method is bad; to stop entirely at method is worse still. One should at first observe rules severely, then change them in an intelligent way. The aim of processing method is to seem finally as if one had no method.

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting