Brief 8, complete your first draft of the thesis

For the 14th, Fumi, Tatsuo, David, Gionata and WInnie (just chapter 2 for you Winnie) need to complete their first draft for me, based on the detailed notes I gave you at the finals. Deadline for submission is 9 April. Basically all of you do not have a complete first draft yet, or it is still too unstructured to see the argument you want to make. On the 14th I really want to see the story you want to tell. Now it is not there yet clear enough.

The others are further progressed and I suggest you spend more time on you design than on your thesis in this period up to the 14th of April. Do work however on the things I asked you to improve and complete (such as images, captions, references, bilbiography, ...). Think as well about how you would like to respond to my remarks on how you built your story and tell me in the meeting on the 14th how you are going to respond to this. If you have time you also already rewrite, but focus on images, references etc first and spend the majority of your time on designing. Your new version is also to be submitted on the 9th of April.

Submit your thesis as PDF via email to me and post it as PDF online in your blog too.

Finally, all of you should think about the design of your thesis. Some already did, but I want all of you to show me how you imagine you will present your thesis in the end. Design two pages of your thesis as you would like to have it in the end. Also bring two books or magazines you like for how they are designed. We will discuss the examples you bring together.

Brief 6, visual timeline

Hi everyone,

for this term we want you to make a visual timeline of the context of your project.
It should be ready at the end of the term, but at midterm you could already show a first iteration of it.

Here is what we are looking for:

Each of your projects exists in a certain context. This context can exist of objects and environments, activities and services. It includes practices of people. It has a history that dates back at least decades, probably even centuries. The context will exist in one or more cultures, geographical regions or with certain peoples.

We want you to visualise this context of your project on something like timeline that shows all of the above aspects of context as far as you consider them relevant and/or inspiring for your project. Take a designers perspective to this too: The references that other designers might find relevant to your project should be there.

You probably all already have collected many images of these relevant references. You probably need more still too. But this is not just about collecting images. As we discussed in the design research workshop it is also about creating insights and understanding. Do this in a visual way. Images can be organised in many ways. Be creative and use the activity of organising your images to achieve the understanding and insights you are looking for.

On Fri 13 Feb when I see you all I would like to see a first iterarion of your visual timeline.
The final result could be a great appendix to your thesis too, and help you to make your thesis more visual.

If it helps, feel free to bring some inspiring examples of similar visual timelines when we meet on 13 Feb.