Discover Top Posts Tagged with #mrmurphy

Designing Micro Interactions

The notes at the bottom are relating to what character/locations to include in-game with Sága, as well as potential ‘goal’ concepts. Would you you make your way to different runestones, gaining knowledge along the way? Would you master each of the four elements and through each, a different facet of UX? How do I categorise subjects/learning milestones in a gamified way?

#lecture notes #mrmurphy #ixd303

Creative Career Paths

I’ve always wanted to do something creative. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I was younger, all I knew was that I loved painting and sketching and writing stories. My mother was always incredibly supportive of this and loved seeing me work toward something I loved. Other family members were less supportive. I originally wanted to do Art, Drama and English Literature for my A Levels but after some persuasion ended up doing History, Politics and English Lit. While I don’t regret the choice I made at all, I wish it had been entirely my choice and not steered by “you won’t be able to get a job with arty a levels.”

The next blow came when I was applying to uni and didn’t make a single application to Queen’s. Fun fact for anyone who doesn’t know; Queen’s don’t have an art department. They don’t offer design courses. This news came as a shock to certain family members that I wanted to go to a “lesser” university and wasn’t applying to do law or history or politics or english.

Anyone who knows me will understand that I’m the last person who could have done an academic, theory based degree.

For a while I wanted to be an animator, but the first year of what was, quite frankly, an abominable excuse of a HND did me the favour of putting me off animation completely. I ended up applying for a Foundation Degree in Interactive Design at Northern Regional College and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I’d never used a piece of Adobe software before then and I wouldn’t be where I am without it. I wouldn’t be doing a degree that, while incredibly challenging, is something I relish and pushes me to be the best designer I can be.

Funny how things work out.

#ixd303 #mrmurphy

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid.

Albert Einstein

#ixd303 #mrmurphy #education

The problem with education

Let’s consider a familiar story; little girl starts her school journey and loves learning. She loves to read and talk and think and absorb information any way she can. She adores school because she gets to learn and there’s nothing she’d rather do. Learning is easy for her and she blasts her way through primary school with flying colours and continues on an upward trajectory through her first three years of secondary school.

Then things get difficult. Everything gets very stringent. There are boxes that need ticked and other boxes she’s forced into. A world of learning that was once full of colour and knowledge and possibility is now a list of bullet points that must be memorised. There’s no challenge, no what if’s, only answers to questions and specific words that must be used to get marks. It’s incredibly boring and she’d much rather read about Greek mythology than learn pythagorean theorem.

Secondary education doesn’t suit everyone. It puts me in mind of this little cartoon strip.

This is how exams work. You have classes full of people who have a plethora of different skills and talents. People with amazing memories, people with really good analysis skills, people who know how to take control of a room. You take all these people and give them content and a learning structure that only suits a few of them and expect them all to excel. When some of them, inevitably fail or even don’t do as well, they aren’t as smart as the people who do well.

If student struggle with art and design or other creative disciplines, the support from teachers is that “not everyone is good at art,” it’s accepted. Even though drawing is just replication and thousands of hours of practice. Students are allowed to be bad at it.

But students aren’t allowed to be bad at maths, or english, or science. They’re not allowed to struggle memorising the same paragraphs of information only to regurgitate them in a giant room full of silence and pressure. You have students who could take something apart and put it back together with a blindfold on, but can’t sit exams. And they’re seen as failures.

Education is broken.

#ixd303 #mrmurphy #thinkpiece