My studio and seminar share the same topic which is that social media have changed how we identify ourselves and the way we socialize. My studio work has a focus on communication and the relationship between people part, while my seminar research has a broader range of focus such as the surveillance system, facial recognition, the physical body, and the digital data. My seminar paper is more like an explanation of why I designed the interactive activities (the chatting with cards and the eye contact) in my studio final work.
I think the most challenging part of the semester in seminar was to contextualize all the research I did into my thesis, and I learned a lot from researching and thinking. I also learned a lot about the responsibility and the role of being a designer from readings like “Who Gets to Say What to Whom?” and “Can Design Be Socially Responsible?”. Moreover, I think my writing skills have improved and I’m more familiar with writing a research paper in terms of format and language.
I will take what I’ve learned in seminar about how to write a research paper and the research method I developed in studio for the rest of my time in Parsons. To be more specific, I am going to keep writing arguments and supporting details in the way The Crafts of Research suggested, and for studio work, I will keep trying to start a project by finding signifiers in both content and context.