reading

This article narrates about an interesting experiment where the participants were asked to choose one desire and transfer it to a body. After, they had to choose the materials and start thinking with their hands 'without knowing what to do in advance'! They had had to 'create' their desires : like family, idealism, independence, power, romance and so on.

My opinion:
Very interesting experiment. It is relevant for us because we are the future designers and often we will have to depict things which dont have a physical body. Sometimes results are unexpected, but it is very important to start doing things even 'without knowing what to do in advance'.

Paper 2: Annotated Portfolios

The article is about a team which was ‘involved in a project designed for the older people living in a care home’. They’ve created a Photostroller which shows slideshow of photographs scraped from the Web. The team describes their creation as a long journey.

My opinion:
It was really difficult for me to read and understand this article. Too many technical and unknown words, therefore this article was boring to me. Anyway, the article is useful as there are many examples of how to describe the things you do.

Paper 3: Taking Our Sweet Time to Search

This article is about slowness in research. New technologies allow us to find the information we need in a few seconds. But is it useful for us? Maybe sometimes it’s better to slow down? You can find answers for these questions in this article.

My opinion:
I like this article. The language is very easy, so it wasn’t difficult to read. Also, the article has made me think about slowness in researches. When we are trying to find information quickly we can lose a lot of it.But if we spend more time searching we can open and explore many new things. It gives better understanding of what we are looking for. This point is very relevant to us, as a lot of us are in the very beginning of becoming the designers.

Paper 4 : Overcoming Procrastination with ReMind

The article begins with the words: “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today!”. This article narrates an experiment, where participant which always postponed things must use ReMind. ReMind is a creation in which the main goal is to help to overcome putting off.

My opinion:
It was quite interesting to watch how a very simple idea like ReMind has changed participant’s life. But to be honest, I’ve expected that this article would also give us some advices on how to overcome postponing things not only by using ReMind. So, this article was very interesting, but not relevant to us.

Paper 5 : New Media, New Craft ?

This article is about physical (visible) and cerebral (invisible) crafting. We can find a lot of interesting thoughts which help to understand what crafting is and how to craft.

My opinion:
Honestly, it was difficult to understand because too many abstract information. But this article allows you to think about other aspects of design. Also, there are many information about programming and creating digital stuffs.

Paper 6 : Distinguishing Concepts Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture

This article is about interactive design. A lot of interesting thoughts about art and design, for example ‘Interactive design has come about as a result of the intermingling of disciplines. As a consequence, the language it uses has become blurred – borrowed or stolen with little restraint from elsewhere.’

My opinion:
It’s a bit abstract, but it did not interfere with understanding of the main idea of the text.

Paper 7 : Theories and Practice of Design for Information Systems: Eight Design Perspectives in Ten Short Weeks

This article is about a ten-week course ‘Theories and Practice of Design for Information Systems’ based on the idea of design perspectives. Each week students are taking part in different design activities and working in groups. ‘Consider, for example, graduate students with homes in geography, information science, or other field. Some will seek to pull design processes into their areas of research or scholarship that are not normally considered design fields (e.g., research on classification in library and information science).’

My opinion:
The article was too long for me and therefore sometimes I was loosing the main idea of the text. But I like the plot of the text I think that it is very effective.