You have just ended year 3 of your secondary school life. It is time to prepare for your O levels and start ‘cracking’ on your design journal. The sec 3 journal was quite a “killer” as it was a fairly new design experience for most of you; a year’s project with Underwater World Sentosa as our design ‘client’. It is over but nevertheless, we need to internalize the learning points as much as we can.
You may not be able to recap all that have been taught but I am sure the skill of designing is
subconsciously manifesting in you. Remember The Karate Kid? (Told ya’ll this story so many times already and I’m going to tell it again) When Miyagi San asked Daniel San to paint the fences or sand the floor or wax the car, he was subconsciously learning a skill, some excellent karate moves… unknowingly! Now, you have been “waxing”, “painting” and sanding (for real in the workshop!) all year last year. You have been designing/learning well last year; your design journal, products and presentation boards is a testimony of that!Time to wake up that ‘holiday-mood’ idea of yours! Let’s start being more aware of your thinking process and start applying the design tools that we have learnt for your O level D&T coursework.
Assignment #1
Create a GAMEPLAN before you even get the THEME for your O levels next year!
Plan a simple project management schedule from the point of getting the THEME until your DESIGN BRIEF.
Plan it in ‘weeks’ and be realistic.
Post it in your new ‘design’ blog site.
Here are some ‘design tool’ keywords to kick off the planning;
- Research as and when
- Compare, contrast, classify and categorize
- Needs analysis PIES, mood board, user analysis, persona board, product analysis, photo analysis.
Assignment #2
Post a picture on your blog. (any decent picture from any camera! That could potentially provoke the mind, please do not post your "cute" aka ugly but adorable MUGSHOTS for discussion! Kidding....I didn’t mean ugly.......not adorabe either… haha!)
As a design community (I will link all of you to this blog so that all of you can visit each other’s site, email me your blogsite pls @ designjournal@hotmail.com), we will comment on all the pictures from our blogs and discuss on real NEEDs from the picture; remember, the NEED can be OBVIOUS or NOT OBVIOUS, so, make your comments rationally!
I know you might be thinking, “Why are we doing this when the THEME is not out yet?” Well, if you do this and the THEME is out, you will have a better perspective of the NEEDs. In any case…. JUST DO IT! ;)
I will kick off assignment #2 with one of my own pictures.
I have made comments; please click the comment link!
and please do a simple photo analysis on my picture too if you SEE a potential NEED by making comments on this posting.
