Closing Remarks

Hello Design 200,

I hope that your Memorial Day Weekend is / has been wonderful. I wanted to take the opportunity to do two things: 1) Remind you of what is still due and an update or two, and 2) Give some closing thoughts. I preemptively apologize if this gets a little long.

Part 01: Reminders and Updates

We have no class scheduled on Wednesday. This was done to give you a work day to get all caught up and have time to post everything that you have due.

Things that are DUE by 5 PM on Wednesday, 01 Jun: 

Journal 09: Personal Coleman Process Documentation

Journal 10: Reflection & Review of Design 200 as a whole

Reading Reflection 04: Haskett Ch. 9-10

Course Reflection 05: Covering Classes 17&18 (the final presentations)

Aside from the assignments listed above, I have completed all of the grading and posted these grades to Carmen. Please check it out. You will notice that I have also turned on a feature in Carmen that auto-tabulates your grades counting anything not turned in as a zero. I have done this to help you figure out what you may still want to complete. Carmen should be displaying what your final grade would be if you turned in nothing more. You are all adults and can do what you like with this information.

If you find that you have a zero for something other than what is listed above, then I did not see it for some reason. Please send me a direct link to clarify any of these that you feel may be a mistake. If you choose to do this, please DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. Send an email to tippery.2@osu.edu with the subject "MISSING D200 ASSIGNMENT."

Final update, Please remember to fill out the SEI on SIS. You should have been receiving emails with directions to do this. It is very important that you do this because this is your opportunity to tell the department how much/little you loved this course and/or my instruction. With that, JOURNAL 10 is your opportunity to do the same directly to me and is the place to be more critical or specific to particular assignments. 

Part 02: Closing Remarks

I want to express to you all how much I have enjoyed the opportunity to be your instructor for Design 200 this quarter. I truly believe that we have had a great quarter together and thank you all for this. I have found this quarter to be a wonderful growth opportunity and hope that you all feel the same.

Obviously, I hope that in the past nine weeks you have all learned a bit more about Design, what designers do, and some of the larger topics that we consider during this process. These are some of the things that I set out to do this quarter according to the syllabus and stated course goals. I also set out to achieve more than just this, which I only stated to myself and had in the back of my head all quarter, and I will get into some of this below.

I hope that those of you that were all ready considering Design as a major or minor feel more certain and prepared for this endeavor. I hope that you realize that the point of my course was not so much about giving you tools to work with as much as it was about giving you a "library of information" to apply your tools to. I look forward to seeing the ways that you will contribute to Design and expand both as people and as Designers. I look forward to the contributions you will make to improving people's lives in big and small ways. I also hope that you all have decided that Interior Space Design is where you want to be when you do push forward with your design goals. ;-)

I hope that those of you who came into the course not quite sure of how this course might effect you have also realized the above. More than that though, I hope that you are now considering the roles that design may play in your life and the possible roles you could play in Design. While I would love to hear that you all are now planing a career in Design, I also know this will not be the case.

Those of you that will continue on your academic path without design a formal part of your curriculum, I hope that your experiences here will allow you to be the much needed bridges that design and the rest of the disciplines so desperately need. We in Design NEED people in every discipline who not only know what it is that designers do, but have also taken small steps to learn some of the language of design and how we may be able to work together to solve huge problems that our futures currently and will continue to face. Please know that I have high expectations for you to be these people.

For all of you, regardless of your design related decisions, I set out this quarter to deliver a couple of what educator Randy Pausch called "an under-hand pass." An under-hand pass is a lesson that a student learns without realizing that they did so. They are often larger life lessons… things that can be applied to life in general… things that an instructor feels are important outside of the course or discipline. I will try my best to outline these below.

Under-hand Pass 01: Time & Project Management

This quarter I intentionally gave you many assignments at the same time, with overlapping due dates. Most of these assignments on their own may have felt small, but added together they were a lot of work and a lot to keep track off. While I tried to give you tools to help keep track of these, life in general will not. No matter where your futures take you, I feel confident saying that life never really gets less complicated, it only gets easier to manage. There are no sure fire techniques to learn how to manage the complexity of your life and its many obligations, but you have to find ways to do it. I hope that this quarter has help you start down the path to learning how you will mange the complexity that you will face. It is an on going process, and the better you get at managing your time, tasks, obligations, and commitments, the more enjoyable you will find everyday. 

Under-hand Pass 02: Working in Groups

This quarter I intentionally asked you all to work in groups to varying degrees. I know that when I was an undergrad student, I generally viewed group work as an annoying constraint with the sole purpose of holding me back. As I have continued both academically and professionally I have learned that this view was only true because it was my perspective. I have learned that if I dropped this perspective in favor of one more open to the possibilities of working with others, that working in groups can net results that far exceed what I could have done on my own. It took me a while to get there, but I now know that if a team can be open, honest, and receptive to each other, it can be a really great way to work. After that…. learning to be the one that helps teams realize this or facilitates this perspective will get you very far. There are VERY FEW careers out there were working with others will not be a part of your day-to-day life. Learning to work WITH others rather than AGAINST them will be is skill you need, and I hope that these seeds have been planted this quarter.

Under-hand Pass 03: You Get Out What You Put In

Leaning is hard. I imaging that none of you remember this, but having witnessed it more recently as a parent, I know that you all worked very hard learning to walk and talk. You toiled endlessly. You fell. You made utterances that no one else understood. You got very frustrated, and then even more so upon realizing that no one but yourself knew how frustrated your were. You uttered more and fell more and you learned. Now you are all capable walkers and good communicators in your native languages, but it was hard. The only way that you succeeded was by putting in an amazing amount of effort. 

Throughout the quarter I have heard complaints or expressions of confusion surrounding the writing component of this course. Statements such as "It is not fair that I get the same grade as my peer who wrote 500 less words than me" or "So-and-so said they got the same grade as me, but I read their response and it was obvious that they did not read the chapter" were common. I understand that this might be frustrating. I do. Let me explain what I think of grades today. They have little meaning. They do not work to encourage learning, they only work to punish learning. 

Part of the extreme effort I asked for this quarter was to read things that we would not really talk about and to reflect on lectures that were pretty light on thought provoking content. I give every one the same grade in these types of activities because I feel that it is more productive to encourage you to keep trying, rather than punishing you for falling. Those of you who read every word, ruminated on lecture content, and spent time crafting thoughtful responses will learn to walk and talk like designers quicker than those that did not, but MY goal is to get all of you to keep trying. No matter what you are trying to learn… no matter what grade you receive from an instructor… learning does not happen with out effort from the student. An "A" does not mean that you have learned something. It only means that you have demonstrated some level of activity that is related to an instructors expectations. Every instructor has their own definition of expectations and how the grades line up with them, and they have very little correlation to your learning as a student. You all have to know and understand this concept. What you learn will be directly proportional to the effort you put toward it.

Under-hand Pass 04: Perspective Matters

Those of you who follow me on twitter may have seen me tweet the following statement a few weeks ago:

"Design is not about saying 'I can't.' It is about saying 'How can I?'"

I firmly believe this, and I think that it applies to life in general… not just design. I think that it applies to all disciplines. If I could be granted one wish for all of you as you move forward in life, it would be to remove the word "can't" from your understanding and vocabulary. It would be to have you all see this word… CAN'T… and have the statement containing it make absolutely no sense to you. 

Here is my call to action… I hope some of you have made it this far….

When someone in life comes to you and states "It can't be done" the first two questions you should responded with are 1) "Why can't it be done?" and 2)"What would have to be different to make it possible?" The answers will not always be easy, but they will be starting points for action. They will be they areas where you can innovate your respective fields. They will be the insights, questions, and notions that will provide you opportunities to grow and contribute. They may even be notions that will define your futures.

I wish all of you the best of luck in your future endeavors. 

Be open and honest to others, work hard, and in the words of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones… question the answers!

Thank you all for a wonderful quarter.

Gabe Tippery

Journal 10 (J10): Final Thoughts on the Course

Please write a response to the following question:

What did you think of the Design 200 course this quarter?

You may feel free to format this in any way that you like (sentences, bullet points, whatever). Feel free to comment on things you liked or hated or anything in between. I guarantee that your responses will have no impact on your final grade. They will only be used to make the course better. You can post these to your blogs, or email them directly to me.

Thank you.

Journal 09 (J09): Coleman Project - Personal Documentation

The goal on this Journal Activity is to be supportive of your A05 activities. For J09, create a post on your blog that does all of the following:

• Links to the blogs of all of your teammates on A05.
• Reflects on the project as a whole. Wrap it up. What did your team work on? What decisions were made? How did the team work, both organizationally and personally? Etc...
• Reflects on your personal contributions to the project. What roles did you fulfill? What did you bringt to the table/conversation? What do you feel you did well? What more could you have done to facilitate the project? General feelings on the project? Etc...
• Post images of sketches you did, work you contributed, and anything else that will help you and your teammates remember in the future what your contribution was to the project.

The goal is to document the process behind your A05 project. By looking at all of the posts from each team member, a viewer should get a complete picture of the work and process that went into your final results on A05.

Journal 08 (J08): Media Reviews

Step 1: Pick a topic from the following list.

• Design & Accessibility
• Design & Color
• Design & The Environment
• Design like you give a damn / Design for the other 90%
• Legal Issues in Design

Step 2: Find a minimum of 5 sources that relate to the topic you pick.

• These sources can be just about anything; YouTube videos, blogs, news articles, books, websites, magazines, etc...
• The two qualifiers are this:
• It must be something that you can expose your blog reader to. So if it is a news article... link to it. If it is a YouTube Video... embed it in your blog post. If it is a book... link to it on a bookstore, library, or e-text website.
• It must be something that you feel extends your knowledge of the subject beyond what we covered in class. This means that if you pick color... you can not link to an site that just explains the color wheel, but you could link to one that explore the relationship between complimentary color harmonies and reading retention. (I just made that link up, I do not know if there is a relationship or not.)

Step 3: Compose a blog post that does all of the following.

1. Summarizes the topic you selected. This will probably be about a paragraph explaining why you feel the topic is important to design and summarizes the highlights from the corresponding class lecture that got you excited about the topic.
2. Has a brief summary of EACH (all 5+) of the sources you collected. This should be sort of like a "book review" of the source. It should SUMMARIZE and SELL the source to your reader.
3. Contains a way for the reader to get the source you are reviewing. Link to it or a place selling/loaning it, or Embed it.
4. Presents all of this in an organized way. This means you may have to think about headings, bold type, depth of the source info, etc... Think of this like you are putting together a page to teach someone about the topic you selected.

Step 4: Post your blog! That is it.

Agenda for today:

• General announcements.
• Sign the attendance sheet, if you do not, I do not know you are here.
• Get into your groups and get working on A05

After 15-20 minutes, I will start coming around to all the groups to talk to each team about where they are in the process. This discussion will start with your team telling me the answers to the following questions. Your team should be prepared to answer these quickly and concisely. Think "elevator speech."

• Who is coleman as your team sees them?
• Who is the user your team is targeting?
• Why does Coleman care about this user? How do you connect the user to Coleman?
• What user need(s) are you addressing or what user problem(s) are you aiming to solve?
• Why would Coleman be interested in addressing this need?

The questions can be answered in any order you like, but they all must be answered today. Only after answering these questions will I then listen to ideas of product, packaging, kiosk, or team issues, etc...

Coleman Example Presentation

View more presentations from Gabe Tippery.

This example is a sort of "middle of the road" example. It is good, but there are things that could still be better about it. All names have been removed for privacy.

For example:

• the kiosk could have a bit more storage for product. Or they could have better explained where the additional product might be in relation to this kiosk.
• the team could have SHOWN the user rather than just explained in text.

Things they did really well though:

• Nice, organized story to their presentation.
• Consideration for the packaging to have a continued use.
• Overall visual unity to the entire proposal.
• Good balance of showing their process versus their end results. They did not show every step of their process, but they explained where important ideas came from.
• Really nice visuals and a realistic product, that also fit into a nice niche.

I hope that this example helps give you all a better idea of where this is heading.

Things you may want to be talking about...

• What is Coleman good at? What themes of need do their products address?
• Adventure, Safety, Shelter, Fun, Organized, Frivolous? maybe... maybe not. 
• What do people expect from or value about Coleman?
• What other user groups have these same expectations or values?
• Who are Coleman's current users? 
• What do they need in the home?
• Who are tangential user groups?
• Does the idea you have already exist? 
• If yes, and Coleman is not who makes it, why would Coleman want to compete in this space? Is the space already highly competitive? 

Do not get too stuck on "we should design X" yet. Rather, it should be "we should solve X need/problem" or "Coleman is good at X, where in the home is this trait useful?"

Example tasks / questions to consider that you might want to be handing out / thinking about to prepare for next class:

• Should we be looking up any info about our users? What do they look like? Who is in their home? How much do they make annually$? Etc...
• Should we be benchmarking our product? Who else makes things like what we are thinking of? - Should we be setting goals to have X ideas on various themes? Etc...
• How are we communicating before the next class?