Design Dissertation Preparation 2012
Design Dissertation – Presentation – Friday 28 September 2012
On the first of your Design Dissertation course in September you will have to give a Pecha Kucha* style presentation of the research you have completed over the summer.
In this presentation you will tell us:
1. The title of your dissertation and the lead question, if different.
Any other questions you think will be pertinent to your project.
2. Why you have chosen this subject for your research? What motivated you to choose it? What is it in it for your? How will it affect your thinking about your design studio practice?
3. The “Broader survey” which indicates what has already been said about this topic. This will be the general outline of where your topic has already been discussed. This will lead on to your more specific ‘literature/practice review.’
4. What research you have done over the summer. What books you have read, what websites you have visited, and what you thought of these sources. These will form a part of the literature/practice review we will aske you to write and contribute to the ‘annotated bibliography’ you will have to present at the end of your dissertation.
5. Lastly you will have to shows us a plan of action for the term’s work, showing us how your research will be carried out and who you are thinking of contacting to help you with your research.
The presentation should be fully illustrated.
* = 20 “images/texts for maximum of 20 seconds each = 6mins 40secs max
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Design Dissertation Preparation 2012
This course will prepare you for the Design Dissertation course that will start at the beginning of the autumn term 2012. This course aims to give you the opportunity to make a detailed personal investigation and evaluation based on comprehensive research and systematic methodologies. This involves collecting evidence, creating arguments, critical analysis and forming judgments in a manner which communicates your ideas creatively and effectively.///
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University of Greenwich – Design Futures – Design Dissertation Proposal The Dissertation Preparation Course course leads you to writing a dissertation proposal and you will need to answer all these questions as fully as possible. 1. You started by identifying your general area of interest by using word lists, mind mapping or by any way you thought you could best generate new ideas. From this you should have generated a number of pertinent questions or statements your dissertation might address. In the box below set out your proposed title for your research and some of the questions your think you might have to ask. Think about which one of these questions could be your Lead Question and identify this. Then write a short piece of no more than 300 words about why you have chosen this topic and the connection you see to your design practice or thinking. Q 1a.Title/Lead Question/other questions: Q 1b. Why have you chosen this topic? 300 words maximum. 2. The next stage is to gather information about your subject to stimulate further ideas and thoughts. This should be carried out in the library and online and will form the basis of your literature/subject review. In the box below, in the correct bibliographical for give a list of sources that you have already looked at that might be useful for your research and then list sources of information that you think you will need to look at to deepen your thinking about your chosen subject. Q 2a.Books/Websites/magazines/people already looked at: Q 2b. Books/Websites/magazines/people you wish to look at: 3. This will be the start of your bibliography and list of sources of information. You will have to keep a systematic record of these sources as you will be reading many books and visiting hundreds of websites in your search for the key information that will help you write a useful and thoughtful dissertation. You will be introduced to various ways of keeping systematic records of these sources include online systems like Evernote, Zotero and Dropbox. This is the start of the broader survey of you subject and you will have to write about this at the beginning of your dissertation. This is also called the literature/practice review. This will help you Identify the focus of your dissertation and the main area of research. Q 3. Tell us how you intend to keep systematic records of your research and why you have chosen this method and why you think it will help you with your research? 4. Then you will need to think about how you will find out the information you need to write the dissertation? This is called your methodology which will help you plan and develop your dissertation. Q 4. Think about how you will find out the information that will help your research become useful for you to find out as much as you can about your chosen topic. Where do you thin you might find out this information and whodo you think you might need to contact? 5. Finally write up as much as you think you know about the subject as you can and also think about what you think the answers to some of your questions are now. This will be very useful to look back on when you have completed your research and are writing up your conclusions. It will show how much you have come to understand about this subject through your research. Q 5.What do you know about the subject already? Maximum 500 words. Design Dissertation Proposal Form
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Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.
(Gilles Deleuze in Difference and Repetition 1968)
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IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT ME ON:
0208 331 9110 & at im08@gre.ac.uk
Dr Mark Ingham | March 2011
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Stylish Academic Writing PDF
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D.A.A.N.C.E.R.S
All your writing should include these elements, (this pattern is often how each paragraph might be structured).
Describe what it is you are going to write about. Describe what happened? What is the subject of your article?
Analyse what the subject of article is about. Who has also written about the subject? involve other peoples ideas on the subject.
Argue your case. What information and analysis have you used to create a strong argument that backs up your research findings?
Narrative: Tell a story; make it exciting, have a beginning middle and end, but not necessarily in that order.
Contextualise the subject matter of your article. Where does it fit in to other historical/political/social contexts? What other ideas are associated with the subject you are writing about?
Evaluate what you have written about in your article. What have you learnt from writing this article? What are the main issues it has raised for you?
Reference everything that is not your own thinking. These are the words and ideas of ALL the people you will meet in your research quest.
Style is important. Write in a way/style that you would want to read and that illuminates your ideas/research to their best.
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Writing an Introduction and Conclusion
The introduction and the conclusion will give the reader a point of entry to and a point of exit from your writing.
Introduction: The introduction should be designed to attract the reader’s attention and give them an idea of the article’s focus.
Begin with an attention grabber – The attention grabber you use is up to you, but here are some ideas: Startling information – This information must be true and verifiable, and it doesn’t need to be totally new to your readers. It could simply be a pertinent fact that explicitly illustrates the point you wish to make. If you use a piece of startling information, follow it with a sentence or two of elaboration.
Anecdote – An anecdote is a story that illustrates a point. Be sure your anecdote is short, to the point, and relevant to your topic. This can be a very effective opener for your article, but use it carefully. Dialogue – An appropriate dialogue does not have to identify the speakers, but the reader must understand the point you are trying to convey. Use only two or three exchanges between speakers to make your point. Follow dialogue with a sentence or two of elaboration.
Summary Information – A few sentences explaining your topic in general terms can lead the reader gently to your thesis. Each sentence should become gradually more specific, until you reach your thesis. If the attention grabber was only a sentence or two, add one or two more sentences that will lead the reader from your opening to your thesis statement.
Conclusion: The conclusion brings closure to the reader, summing up your points or providing a final perspective on your topic. All the conclusion needs is three or four strong sentences, which do not need to follow any set formula. Simply review the main points (being careful not to restate them exactly) or briefly describe your feelings about the topic. Even an anecdote can end your article in a useful way.
Mark Ingham | January 2012
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Panic to Production
Panic to Production By Pat Francis from ‘Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a line for a write.” (2009)
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///On Reading
Screen. Image. Text. by ORIT GAT
Tauba Auerbach, RGB Colorspace Atlas. (2011)
I once heard Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College, compare books to stairs. “They’ve invented the elevator,” he said, “but sometimes you still walk up.” There are countless discussions on the future of the book—they are picked up in magazine feature articles, in trade conferences, and in academic roundtables—and in all of these, the future of the printed word seems certain: in a generation or two, print will become obsolete. In this age of changing habits, if print is the stairs and screens the elevator, then what could the escalator be?
Exercise:
Please upload a 140 character and 300 word max, Screen. Image. Text. by ORIT GAT
It will be a ‘review’ of the article and will include:
This precis will describe the essential arguments that the author is tryingto express in this text.
You need to have one direct quote more than 3 lines long and one that is less than 3 lines long. Both with are referenced using the Harvard Referencing System
It will include paraphrasing of what is being said which again will be referenced using the Harvard Referencing System. You may include one of the illustrations used if you think it will add to the readers understanding of the piece.
You will include a correctly formatted bibliographical reference to this article at the end of your precis.
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Networking
RSA Animate – The Power of Networks
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Published on May 21, 2012 by theRSAorg
In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world. Taken from a lecture given by Manuel Lima as part of the RSA’s free public events programme. Listen to the full talk:http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/the-power-of-networks…
Category: Film & Animation
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Dissertation Preparation Marking Exercise
Assessment Criteria for the Design Dissertation The quality of the writing, including the referencing all your sources. How easy is it to read? Did the writing flow and make you want to continue reading?(bibliography that is connected to the references in the text)20%. The quality and imagination of the design, including the ease of ‘navigation’. How well can you find each section and how well are each connected to each other? (Contents page, good introduction and clear conclusion)20% The way the design relates to the written content so that they enhance each other. Does the design of the dissertation help you understand the contents more?(Your dissertation might have a consistent theme throughout or may have its own style depending on what is being written about.)20% The professionalism of the psychical or digital ‘construction’ of the submission. (It should look professionally made whether it is printed and/or hand made or be a well crafted digital website or well shot and edited video.20% The way you have constructed your blog and the way you have made it easily navigable to make the contents easily be read by the viewer. (To be able to find the relevant information on your blog you have to make it clear to the person reading inhere it is to be found)20% Use this form to mark one of the dissertations below…
1112 Design Dissertation NEW Assessment Sheet
Benjamin Parker Final Submission
Deeganrao Crustna Final Dissertation
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///On WritingThings to try by Helen Sword from her book Stylish Academic Writing (2012: 96-97)
The Story Net
Make a list of all the potential characters in your research story, including nonhuman characters such as theories and ideas.
For each character, jot down:
A physical description (in the case of an intangible concept, try and imaging how you would represent it as a cartoon character);
A personal profile (strengths, flaws, motivations);
An obstacle faced by the character;
A transformation that the character will undergo.
Then…
Briefly describe the various settings in which your research story takes place, and experiment with ways of invoking those physical details in your writing. For example you could:
Include an evocative place name in your title;
Use your opening paragraph to set the scene;
Provide a description of the setting in an illustrative anecdote or case study.
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Some Thoughts On Writing.
Lucy Neave writng in TEXT (Journal of Writing and Writing Courses) argues in her essay Teaching writing process Peter Carey is the most discursive about how he revises. For him, the idea of revision is integral to his writing, as is evident from his manuscript. In an interview with Radhika Jones, he discusses his process:
…in the first draft, I’m inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what’s going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things. Within those successive drafts, my characters keep on doing the same things over and over… But the reasons they do them gradually become more complex and layered and deeply rooted in the characters…
Often I will reach a stage, say, a third of the way into the book, where I realize there’s something very wrong. Everything starts to feel shallow and false and unsatisfactory. At that stage I’ll go back to the beginning. I might have written only fifty pages, but it’s like a cantilever and the whole thing is getting very shaky because I haven’t thought things through properly. So I’ll start again and I’ll write all the way through and then just keep going until it starts to get shaky again, and then I’ll go back because I’ll know that there’s … something deeply necessary waiting to be discovered or made. (Carey 2006)More can be found at: Lucy Neave Teaching writing process
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Katy Macleod: What is writing?(Unpublished paper delivered at Tate Britain, ‘Writing in the Context of Art’ seminar led by Kate Love, 2003) What is writing is a question which will always be posed in the context of art. It was posed in a useful way by Jean Paul Sartre in an essay of the same title in 1947 in which outlines a critical distinction between prose and poetry as forms of writing and affords to each a very different function: for prose the function is to make clear the purpose of writing while for poetry the function is to offer the experience of what has been perceived, its thingness. In order to illustrate what he means, Sartre provides the visual exemplar of the slash of yellow, the ‘rift’ in the sky above Golgotha in Tintoretto’s painting of 1565 in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, which does not according to Sartre signify anguish, it is anguish; it is the thing itself. What drives this writing, (my writing), is a yearning for the thing itself, for that which may not easily be spoken.Words, images, touch are all cruel. I am not writing what I thought I was thinking. The marvellous paint-brush of the rushes only succeeds imperfectly in tracing an outline on the sheet of water. (This is from Andre Breton’s writing on painting, ‘Surrealism and Painting’).More can be found at: Katy Macleod||| Writing for Design – Christopher Doyle
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Christopher Doyle of Interbrand talks about Writing for Design. What works, what doesn’t, and how to get a Yellow Pencil. Filmed at D&AD Judging 2012
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///To Watch…
GOOD COPY BAD COPY
– a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture|||
Good Copy Bad Copy, A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture, is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet,peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke.It features interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers, artists and filesharing service providers.
A central point of the documentary is the thesis that “creativity itself is on the line” and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict, between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create.
Content
Artists interviewed include Girl Talk and DJ Danger Mouse, popular musicians of the mashup scene who cut and remix sounds from other songs into their own. The interviews with these artists reveal an emerging understanding of digital works and the obstacle to their authoring copyright presents.
The interviews featured in Good Copy Bad Copy acknowledge a recent shift towards user-generated content, mashup music and video culture. The documentary opens with explaining the current legal situation concerning sampling, licensingand copyright.
Good Copy Bad Copy documents the conflict between current copyright law and recent technological advances that enable the sampling of music, as well as the distribution of copyrighted material via peer-to-peer file sharing searchengines such as The Pirate Bay. MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) CEO Dan Glickman is interviewed in connection with a raid by the Swedish police against The Pirate Bay in May 2006. Glickman concedes that piracy will never be stopped, but states that they will try to make it as difficult and tedious as possible. Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij from The Pirate Bay are also interviewed, with Neij stating that The Pirate Bay is illegal according to US law, but not Swedish law.
The interviews document attitudes towards art, culture and copyright in a number of countries, including the United States, Sweden, Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil.
The situation in Nigeria and Brazil is documented in terms of innovative business models that have developed in response to new technological possibilities and changing markets.
In Nigeria the documentary interviews individuals working within the Nigerian film industry, or Nollywood. Charles Igwe, a film producer in Lagos, is interviewed at length about his views on the Nigerian film industry, the nature of Nigerian films, and copyright in the context of digital video technology. Mayo Ayilaran, from theCopyright Society of Nigeria, explains the Nigerian government’s approach to copyright enforcement.
In Brazil the Tecno brega industry and its unique approach to copyright and sampling is documented, featuring interviews with amongst others Ronaldo Lemos, Professor of Law FGV Brazil. Lemos explains that CDs or recorded music is treated merely as an advertisement for parties and concerts that generate revenue.
Good Copy Bad Copy also includes interview segments with copyright activist and academic Lawrence Lessig.[1][2
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///Timetables
Design Dissertation Preparation 2012
Timetable: 2nd year Graphics & 3D
Week 1
Thursday 17 May 10 – 5
Friday 18 May 10 – 4
Week 2
Wednesday 23 May 10 – 1
Thursday 24 May 10 – 5
Friday 25 May 10 – 4
IT Lab B with Mark Ingham
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///Idea Generation
From: http://frazershaw.wordpress.com/tag/mind-map/
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Mind Maps®
A Powerful Approach to Note-Taking
(Also known as Mind Mapping, Concept Mapping, Spray Diagrams, and Spider Diagrams)http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm
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Apps to Use as Student ePortfolios
I have yet to find the perfect Digital Portfolio app that I think I would use exclusively in a Visual Arts class. Some apps can be used as graphic portfolios or as beautiful sketchbooks, others are great at sharing. Not all of the apps available are great at all of these things. I have spent a heap of time trying to find one and would be more than happy for someone to send me the name of one they are using successfully. Having said that the following are apps that I would consider using;
Evernote: FREE
Evernote is an easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity. Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders–and makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, at work, or on the go.http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8
Paper: FREE
Paper is an easy and beautiful way to create on iPad. Capture your ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and share them across the web. Paper was designed from the ground up for touch and creating on the go. No fussy buttons, settings or other distractions. Paper works the way you think, like a familiar notebook or journal. Have all of your ideas with you in one place.http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8
Three Ring: FREE
Three Ring is a fast, flexible, and simple way to organize and present your students’ real world work, from handwritten assignments to classroom presentations. Unleash the power and the flexibility of digital tools, without sacrificing the important work your students do in non-digital formats. Rescue student work from the bottom of backpacks, trashcans, and filing cabinets and have it at your fingertips.http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/three-ring/id504311049?mt=8
Coolibah: FREE
Coolibah is a digital scrapbooking app that could just as easily be used to present student’s work as a digital portfolio. The features include: creating your own layouts using unlimited photos, elements, frames and text. You can move, size, and rotate photos, elements and frames anywhere on your layout. More importantly it has layout export for sharing online, texting and emailinghttp://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coolibah-digital-scrapbooking/id325079858?mt=8
Voicethread: FREE
VoiceThread is already in use by architects, executives, kindergartners, professors, and engineers around the world. More than 25% of the top Universities in the U.S. use VoiceThread to connect and communicate around digital media. Create and share conversations about documents, snapshots, diagrams and videos – basically anything there is to talk about. You can talk, type, and draw right on the screen.http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/voicethread/id465159110?mt=8
Minimal Folio: $2.99 AU
Minimal Folio is the easiest way to present your portfolio of images, video and pdf on your iPad. The app is unbranded so your folio does the talking. Minimal Folio allows you to copy and paste between folios or apps. It also allows Cloud sync to multiple devices with Dropbox as well as the ability to transfer files with iTunes. Settings in the app enable video scrubbing, sync options and more.http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/minimal-folio-design-photo/id385429744?mt=8
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