OUGD601 - Evaluation

This module has been the most challenging thus far on the course. Proportionate to the difficulty, I also feel I have learnt the most about the psychological and socio-political elements of design in these few months than I ever have before. The depth that I have been able to research into dwarfs any research I did in previous years. I feel that I was intimidated by the vocabulary in sociology texts but after delving into this content, I understand clearly the reasoning behind philosophers, sociologists and designers such as Focault, van Djick and Tanner. In fact, the author of one of the books I cited in my essay was impressed with my writing which has given me a confidence boost in the academic portion of the course. 

I began my project trying to write about things that already interested me, which led me to trends in musical niches, such as vaporwave. The idea that an Internet community of individuals that have never even met eachother can produce an entire genre is still fascinating to me. This led me to research further into the Internet and how communities are created online, which linked to trends. I brought this back into the design world and how designers have ease of access to the industry more than ever before, and I wondered what the implications of this would be. Would the industry be consumed by the concept of supply and demand, or would the industry follow the concept of survival of the fittest? When researching this content, I found very little to go on and thought it would be interesting to write about a subject that has very scarcely been touched on before. The fact that the technology I wrote about was so new made it quite difficult to find relevant information to cite, but this increased my ability to find relevant content exponentially.

I was able to gather primary research that I was actually able to rely on instead of the usual questionnaires and informal conversations in the college. As well as adding professionalism to my essay, it provided me with a basis to research. Instead of simply researching with personal perspectives on the subject, I was able to procure multiple perspectives, and found avenues of research I wouldn't have would it have not been for my primary research.

In terms of what I have done well, I believe I was able to identify problems within my topic of research and back my points up with relevant sources, even when the amount of information I was able to find was scarce. I created a practical project that synthesised extremely well with my dissertation, a process that was highlighted as crucial by tutors for this module.

In terms of improvement, I would have liked to be able to create a series of posters as well as my online suite of elements and physically place them in and around London, as this would have reached an even larger amount of designers. I would've tactically placed them in areas where there are congregations of design studios, in order to appropriately target my advertising. However, both budget and time constraints limit this, due to having to actually travel to London, print multiple large posters and transport them.

In conclusion, this was an extremely rewarding module which has taught me a multitude of things, including the ability to write with concise means, how to find relevant information about a topic that isn't directly related or isn't "easy" to search for and the ability to think with a whole project in mind in order to create something that is linked, instead of thinking about each part of a project separately, e.g the marketing campaign of a product and the presentation boards you would use to pitch to a client should be linked, as this correctly puts forward a solid concept instead of a mashup.