Self-Assessment

Throughout this collaborative studio and seminar course, I learnt that liberal arts and design are really inseparable, they complement and supplement each other. Designing and writing are all art, but in different form. From the bridge one project, the memoir, book cover design and the “I remember” essay really made me reflect back to some of the memories that I might have forgotten. Writing the essay forced me to think and dig in more to my childhood and past memories, this supported my studio project about past memory. Without writing the “I remember” essay, it would not be so easy for me to think of past events for my studio project instantly. I have learned how to develop ideas quickly for my studio classes. At our first studio class, I got really stressed and was shocked that we had to develop our idea for the project within an hour, I used to develop my ideas really slowly. Now, I am trained to think fast and is really confident on my ideas developing process. From the group projects, I learned how to collaborate and communicate clearly with teammates. We worked on developing ideas for project that we are doing together, we talked and interviewed one on one, to simulate a relationship between a client and a designer, to design something for someone else. To me, the most challenging project was the Multiple Perspective project, I had to face the fear of talking to strangers and interviewing them on the streets. My weakness is definitely talking to people and being too shy, this project helped improve on this area. In addition, I think being in a group that had to do a project together, really helped me on my communicating skills too, as I like to work by myself most of the time. I came up with the idea of inviting the people we interviewed to a brunch party, and design the cutleries, plates and table settings for each and every individual. The professor and my teammate all really liked this idea. I also designed all the table settings for the brunch party. For other projects, I designed many other two-dimensional pieces. At first, I was not sure about which major I should study, but after this studio work where we can experiment on all kinds of materials and topic. After this studio class, I made my decision to study communication design, as I have been designing many two-dimensional works, and I really enjoyed the process of producing them. Writing the short story with my teammates is the most difficult project for my Seminar class. Firstly, I had never done a short story before, so I have no experience on this project; Secondly, collaborating with others to write a story is difficult because everyone has its own style, and the plot of the story has to be really clear and precise and well communicated within the team. The skills that I have learned from my Studio and seminar class, for example: teamwork, digital software working, writing essays and short story will really be useful for any of my future classes to complete my assignments and projects more smoothly. I would want to explore more on how to write a complete research paper, as we did not get the chance to do it this semester.

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