This semester flew by, just like all of the semesters. I came into this class thinking that it would be more about creating drawings or more specific aspects of “design” related fields. However, we were focused on a more interdisciplinary route of design, which is just as good. This way more people could apply what we have learned to their respected career path, and not just design students. I actually came into the class as a marketing major but then switched to product design, which I am extremely excited for. I feel that this course will prepare me for the beginnings of my course work in that field because I can see how effective it was during this class with the projects that we did. I thought the the projects went over smoothly, gaining a better understanding after each on that we did. The final project was a good way to collaborate with our teams one last time before wrapping the semester up. I feel that our group did really well. We were not always sure of our path but we trusted the process and everything fell into place. I have also already typed up the final essay questions for the class, so I can virtually say that I am done. I am now just waiting to submit the paper and am reflecting on what I have learned it the class. 

This week was pretty jam packed. I feel that our group felt really rushed at the beginning of the week. We were just coming off of the site visit feeling great but we did not do anything after that until the Monday of this week. We started to make our presentation on that Monday and continued to work on it throughout Tuesday, spending 2 hours out of class on it. We also presented on Wednesday so I had to dedicate time to that for practice. I also had another final presentation on Wednesday so I was just always crunched for time during those few days. However, I do feel like our group do a good job at creating the presentation and presenting it. The group that we were presenting seemed to like the ideas that we brought up. I also liked their presentation around animals/zoos. I would love to be able to interact with holographic animals and even gamify it. However, I do not think that could/should fully replace zoos and like the idea of having only a few or one huge central zoo. I like how they showed the phases of the process to help fix the problems with zoos. They willingly acknowledged that it would be something that takes a long time to do and their events correspond accurately to what would most likely happen.

At first, we had no idea what we wanted to do for our site visit. We felt as if there were not many places that relate on the side of our problem out in public. We initially thought of going to the UMPD to discuss our problem. However, a few problems arouse with this idea. One, they did not answer our messages and were no help at all. Two, they do not enforce the side that we are working for, which is not the type of site visit we wanted our first to be. We wanted one that would help us in the right direction and guide us towards a more clear goal of our solution. We finally got in contact with someone who would benefit us for our project and that was Minnesota Recovery Connection. At our site visit with them, we got to talk to a handful of different people with different stories and aspects that relate to our problem. I think that the visit is going to help us make a more clear picture of what we are trying to fix. The visit really opened my eyes to what was going on with people who have experienced our subject at hand. The Minnesota Recovery Connection was nothing but help for us and I am glad that we were able to meet with them.

We have made decent progress on our project 3. At first, we were a little unsure about where we should go with our prompt. After contemplating for a while, we decided that we would narrow it down and to focus on a sub-category of our prompt. From here, we thought of a few ways on how to go to the next steps and what to base our project around. We knew that we wanted to create social change/perspective of our topic and had a few ways to go about that. We looked at inspiration for our media that would help drive change by recalling things we have discussed in class or have seen in other areas. However, we are currently having problems with figuring out a place to meet for class on Monday or Wednesday. We have emailed one place that would be beneficial to see if we could meet up but there has been no response. We have a handful of other options we could pursue but we are not fully sure if it is what Emily is looking for in this event. As crunch time comes, we will figure it out. Hopefully.

This week we had a guest speaker on the behalf of glitch.mn. I found him inspiring because he was working on a startup, and one specifically that was for the greater good of people. I think that proactive/environmentally conscious businesses are going to become much more common and part of the norm. I some day inspire to create a startup and having it benefit people has been always in the back of my mind in regards to my goals. This is actually a topic that we looked at in my political ideologies class. What’s the responsibility of corporations? Can they truly be responsible and consider all the stakeholders? Or can they only truly care for the shareholders? It is definitely an interesting topic that all has credible arguments but I will not go into that. I also like that how glitch wanted to help people by getting into creating video games when theres not usually any help and to protect the Earth by making people more aware of global warming. I find it crazy that in is case most people do not think global warming is real or caused by people. Maybe my experience is different because I am on a college campus, but I feel as if most people know that that is the case. I hope that people actually get more informed on the subject because before we know it it’s going to be too late to fix our problems (seems like there’s a lot of room for design to help on a lot of levels).

I found it interesting to see how each group approached their topic. It seems like every group had a different way to do so. I especially was happy to see that the last group to present decided to completely change their topic because of the research that they found. I feel like a lot of people fall in love with their idea too much and are afraid to “pivot” their idea to fit a need more but they end up spending much more time on a useless problem. This is a big factor in startups, specifically lean startups. It is important to go and see if the consumer would actually use your product. It is easy to just assume your right but it takes real courage to change your path in order to better meet the consumer. I also thought it was cool to see all the prototypes in class. It actually shows that people started doing something, instead of just thinking of ideas and never moving forward. I think it goes to show that actually doing something that you think the world needs.

I thought this weeks guest speaker touched on a really interesting subject that I really never heard of before. Biomimicry seems like a new way to help solve problems. In today’s world, it is really common for corporations to start becoming more focused on environmentally consciousness. I feel as if biomimicry is one way to start this process. When you look at a problem and try to solve it by using examples from nature, your solution is automatically somewhat environmentally conscious due to the fact of the source of the answer. It is also a good way to spur new design ideas for whatever the problem may be. I have a feeling that biomimicry will become a new trend among many diverse fields. I also feel that if you try to use biomimicry as a way to help brainstorm ideas for solving a problem, it will create many unique answers that you did not come up with originally when using the traditional way of thinking. However, my question is what can biomimicry truly cover? Can it be used for every type of field? Or is it just select areas that it works well with?

Prototyping is a key role in the design process. During our 5 minute writing exercise, I described it as a polished rough draft of whatever is being designed. It’s a compilation of ideas and features that’s often used to find out way to better the design. It’s a good way to finally see what your project entails and ways to better it. This obviously is not a perfect definition of what a prototype is, but it is the core of it, in my opinion. The prototyping step is something that should NOT be skipped. It may seem like it is just a waste of time but the positives easily outweigh the negatives. The time and money spent making a prototype will easily be made back after the final product is ready. You will be able to find the major flaws in the product and make it more appealing to the public or whoever the project is meant for. I was absent on Wednesday with the flu, but I know our group on Monday worked on prototyping our project. We first started with features we wanted it to have and to make sure we’re all on the same page with that. Secondly, we drew out some ideas for what it could look like. I know that after that we wanted to go physically design our prototype with the plasma cutter and some steel but saved it for another day. I believe our group is on the right track.