The Design Autobiography (DA) project results in a narrative essay that explores your history with a design (artifact, experience, system) that has impacted (and perhaps continues to impact) you in significant ways. The DA is challenging because it requires you to examine your relationships with the world through narrative, analysis, and reflection. This project develops over 2 stages.
This project requires prototype and final submissions (Version 1, Version 2). All files are submitted to a Design Autobiography folder in your shared course space on Dropbox.com.
For each submission stage, you'll post a set of project documents. By your final submission stage, your folder should contain 10 files for my review. For the full list of core and supporting documents/files, see Submission Requirements.
The DA project brings together several strategies for thinking and writing while challenging you to reflect upon an expanded definition of the word (and concept) design.
Writing scholars note that the level of preparedness among new students for engaging in university-level thinking and writing has dropped dramatically since 2020. There are many factors that contribute to this phenomenon. And I call attention to a comparison of qualities here. Students now are no less capable than those who came before them. They are just less well prepared to do the work that this level of study demands.
I will also point out that the recent challenges posed by underprepared students and shifting attitudes about investment and outcomes of pursuing a degree have disrupted institutions such as SVSU. The education industry has not responded consistently or effectively, overall. I have responded to these teaching challenges by exploring alternative pathways for engaging students in thinking and writing. We'll explore one such pathway with this project.
As a scholar and teacher of technical communication and information design, I must continuously explore emerging technologies for creating documents if I want to remain current and keep my courses even with the pace of change. That means I am almost always an early adopter of new tools, tech, and design strategies. At a time when so many people in so many professions are alternately baffled or threatened by the recent emergence of smart tools, I am instead striving to harness the possibilities, highlight the limitations, and prepare students for a professional future where AI is part of their daily doings.
Although smart tools will serve us during this opening project cycle, we'll focus more initially on audio technology. Specifically, you'll record yourself explaining to me your ideas for the first essay. You'll produce a transcript of the resulting audio file that will serve as the predraft of version one of your essay. Asking you to follow this process to produce scholarly writing is a deliberate move to disrupt your writing habits (both the positive and the unproductive) to offer an alternate pathway to developing ideas. Some of you will feel taken out of your comfort zone. Others of you more likely do not have a comfort zone when it comes to writing. However, even students who initially were not happy with me for requiring them to follow this process admitted that the change was productive in the end. That is my hope.
Your relationship with design is core to this assignment. With that in mind, the design you choose to write about is core to your success with the project. To select a worthy topic for your DA essay, we need to first clarify what we mean by design, and then consider what makes a wise choice of topics.
What Do We Mean By the Term Design? In Design for a Better World, Donald Norman talks about how we humans shape our surroundings to control our experiences of the world. We build houses to live in that protect us from the elements. We build automobiles to travel in so we don't have to walk everywhere we go. We plant the crops that we like best to make sure we have food we like when it comes time to eat. We use technologies such as email, telephones, and social media systems to engage with other humans. All of these things we create and all of these experiences we share are constructed, designed, artificial.
In Workshop 1, where we explored the use of heuristic ideation to identify potential essay topics, we divided designs into three categories that we will continue to rely on here for structure and guidance.
What Designs Make Good Topics for Your Design Autobiography? Your selection of a design to discuss is an important one. I have already established that I want you to discuss a design that is in some way meaningful to you. That significance can be anywhere on the emotional spectrum. We sometimes have powerful connections to designs that impact us in negative ways, or that represent challenges of some sort. It is certainly appropriate to write about relationships with designs that impact us in a positive ways as well. You get to define what you mean by meaningful. The more authentic your connection to that design, the stronger your essay about your relationship with it is likely to be. Choose carefully.
In the Google document that I provided for Workshop 1, I discussed a set of example designs related to playing board games. The three designs I listed were Settlers of Catan (Design Artifact), playing a board game (Design Experience), and a gaming tournament (Design System). After discussing some of the pros and cons (aka, roses and thorns) of each, I said that I would likely choose to write about a specific board game or about playing board games in general. Because these designs are so tightly connected, it would be easy to talk about both kinds of design in the same essay without diffusing my focus in that discussion.
If you would like to revisit that workshop document, you may connect to it via the link on the Canvas Pages page, or here: [workshop doc for heuristic ideation].
Deliverables: memo, essay
Document scope: 150 words (memo), 1250 words (essay)
Project value: 250 points (50 for V1; 200 for V2)
Evaluation rubric: _Eval_DesignAutobiography.pdf
Recommended tool(s): Microsoft Word (for the essay), Otter.ai (for the transcript)
The DA project asks you to craft an essay that examines your history with a specific design. In that document, you'll explain what that design is and why it is meaningful to you. You'll also share a story about the design that illustrates how it has impacted you or how it continues to impact you.
The details for what to include in your Design Autobiography appear in the next segment. Again, for this project, you'll record your thoughts, produce a transcript of that recording, and refine the results into your first submitted essay version. This assignment represents an ideal teaching moment for exploring a different process for essay development, one that I assume will be rather different from the way you have approached such tasks before.
We will also draw on strategies that you first explored during the Design Encounter workshop. Specifically, you'll develop Version 1.0 of this essay using the following process.
Although you may think of this as an outline, you need not develop a formal outline to prepare for this writing experience. I myself despise formal outlines and never use them as they are taught in typical writing courses. A simple progression through a list of topics would serve you well here.
During the workshop, you were focused on rehearsing one segment of this larger discussion. Now I want you to use that same process to record your whole exploration. If you find that thought intimidating, consider breaking up the recording process into segments that correspond to the different elements of your discussion that are listed in the content requirements. You'll end up with a transcript for each segment, but that is fine. It is the process of speaking your thoughts that I want you to focus on.
This is also a moment where you need to assess whether or not your threaded transcripts provide enough content to meet the assignment requirements. Do a word count. Did you make it at least to 1000 words? Did you go way over? Your goal is to get as close as possible to that 1250 word target (which is pretty close to 5 double-spaced pages of work). If you are under that target, add content to build your discussion. If you are over 1500 words, work on focusing your discussion and trimming out any moments that are less focused or less meaningful to understanding the relationship you describe.
You may notice that your essay does not sound formal, that in speaking directly to me your expression is less scholarly. Depending on the "rules" of essay writing that you have encountered during past classes, that may not feel like an essay to you. However, it is appropriate here. Do not alter the tone to make yourself more distant or authoritative. In particular, I do not want you to recast what you have "written" to use third person pronouns. There are few instances outside of outdated academic contexts where that voice is appropriate. We seek a more contemporary voice with a more human connection here in this essay.
Now that we have established how this essay will develop, we can turn to the content of your Design Autobiography. Your essay should incorporate all of the following discussion elements.
Do not include the standard MLA assignment block at the top of your essay that identifies the class, the assignment, and so on. That is an unnecessary element that we need to move on from.
Note that you may need to write or rewrite this section after you have the rest of the essay developed well. I almost never begin by writing the introduction first. I almost always write it somewhere along the way, after it has become clear from what I say just how I might best set things up for my readers.
There are so many ways you might approach this segment of your discussion. First impressions. Lasting impressions. Begin by explaining what the design is. (Note that you need not frame it as fitting in one or more of the categories we used to help us develop ideas. Now that we are here, we no longer need to call attention to that framing, unless it somehow helps you explain the design.) Go on to explain the version or versions of that design that you have found meaningful. For example, I could list specific board games and contexts where I encountered them.
Again, you are the only one who can determine what makes a good strategy for explaining how and why your design topic is important. Remember that you are going to tell a story next that illustrates your relationship with the design. Whatever you say prior to that story should offer framing and context (e.g., your emotional connections, the way the design is or was present in your life) for the story itself. Whatever you do, do not say things such as "this design is meaningful to me because ... ."
A note on formality. I will return to the topic of tone and style here briefly. Perhaps it might help to think of this as your entry into an open-mic-night presentation of your relationship with a design. You want to sound intelligent, coherent, and well prepared, but you need not come across as stuffy or overly academic. Limit your use of jargon and slang. But you need not seek the extreme formality of an analytical essay.
Do you have any photos to share? If it makes sense to include any images to support your discussion, feel free to implement them into your essay. For example, if you have photos of you experiencing the design you discuss, that might offer you an anchor for establishing your relationship to the subject, or it might help readers imagine the story as it unfolds. Whatever the case, photos might help make things more authentic and real for you.
A memo of transmittal introduces the document it accompanies, providing context for its audience(s). You will craft such a memo for both submissions of the DA project. Both memos should be addressed from you to me.
Your Version 1.0 memo should incorporate the following content and design elements.
Consult the sample documents (see SVSU Canvas Files: Project Support) for additional guidance.
Your Version 2.0 memo should incorporate the following content and design elements.
Again, consult the sample documents (see SVSU Canvas Files: Project Support) for additional guidance.
This section offers guidance for how to interpret the project and how to proceed with your work on it. Consider the following strategies.
I understand that this should be obvious. However, I have provided a lot of strategic advice in this assignment description. More than is typical. Focus on the details. Invest some time in understanding the assignment before you jump into the process of completing it. I will add that you should return to the processes we rehearsed during our early Workshops. The whole point of those assignments was to prepare you for this project.
In an essay like this one, readers see the world through your words and images. Ask yourself these questions as you write, and again when you think each version of your essay is complete.
You establish your writer ethos with the way you present your discussion. Be as specific and concrete as you can throughout your essay. The more details you incorporate into your discussion, the more reader-aware you appear to be. That helps establish and maintain your credibility and authority. However, it is also important to focus on the details that truly matter for understanding you and your relationship with this design. Focus on the details that are important to understanding these things.
Remember that academic (and professional) contexts value highly the ability to write and speak with economy, directness, and professionalism. Another way of saying this is to make every word count. Stay focused on the details necessary to understand the design and your relationship with it. Write and rewrite until your explanations make sense, until they represent careful, concise, professional communication.
Edit carefully, seeking to express your ideas clearly and concisely. Edit out loud with the intent of writing in such a manner that your sentences sound focused and confident. Strive for high levels of professionalism and consistency in your work. Refine your essay continuously throughout the stages of development.
The revisions and refinements you make from the first version to the final submission may help you understand your writing process, and therefore your professional development in more-sophisticated ways. Archive your early versions of projects throughout your academic career, so you are able to examine your growth and maturation along the way.
Read and attend carefully to these submission guidelines. Failure to do so may result in delays in receiving feedback on Version 1.0 of your project, or in points lost on the final evaluation of your essay.
Create a project folder inside your shared class folder on Dropbox.com. Remember, I can only view files that you place inside the shared folder. Until you place files in that space, you have not in practice submitted the assignment.
Name the folder Design Autobiography.
Note. Do not share this folder with me. By placing it in your class folder, you have already shared it by default.
Pay attention to file types (e.g., .mp3, .pdf). Make sure all of the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the V1 submission date. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Note. If you recorded your essay over multiple sessions, resulting in multiple transcripts, then number the recording and transcript files (e.g., DesignAutobiography1.mp3, DesignAutobiography2.mp3, Transcript1.rtf, Transcript2.rtf) to make the sequencing clear.
Note. Do not share the individual files with me. By placing them in your project folder, you have already shared them by default.
Pay attention to file types (e.g., .mp3, .pdf). Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the V2 submission date. Keep the required files from the V1 submission in the same folder. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Feedback files. If you participated fully in the peer review process, you should have 2 review forms that you completed for peers in the class (that is the first pair listed above), and 2 complete forms with commentary & recommendations from your peers (the second pair of review forms listed above). Replace the text YourLastName for these with your last name. Replace the text PeerLastName for these with the last name of the peer whose work you reviewed, or with the last name of the peer (or Writing Center tutor) who reviewed your DA Version 1.0.
Note. Again, do not share the individual files with me. By placing them in your project folder, you have already shared them by default.
Take the time to organize your work as directed here and to name each file properly. This helps me keep track of your work, and makes clear which files are meant to represent the on-going and final stages of project development.
This section describes the standards by which your prototype and final submissions will be evaluated.
There are 50 possible points for this project stage. You will earn points according to the following standard.
The final project submission is worth 200 possible points. You will earn points according to the standard described on the policies page (see Policies for a description of these categories).
The specific areas of emphasis for the DA project are drawn from this description and our discussions of the project (including the supporting teaching materials that I provide to you along the way). Review the project rubric (_Eval_DesignAutobiography.pdf) for the specific qualities and characteristics emphasized in each evaluation category.
Remember that I will only post the point values for projects on the Grades page in SVSU Canvas. I will provide the supporting details relevant to that evaluation in your class folder in a project-specific file. Look for a Microsoft Word file in your shared class space on Dropbox with a filename that that follows this pattern:
YourLastName_Eval_DesignAutobiography.docx.
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