Writing in the Disciplines

The College of Design here at NC State functions as its own small community of like-minded people, mostly people of artistic and creative pursuits. Many times professors in my large Design lectures encourage design students to spend time outside of their studio, interacting and meeting people outside of the college. This shocked me at first because I did this already, and I didn't spend as much time as the studio-based majors did in their studios. This is also when I realized how invested the design students become during the semester, and how many students seclude themselves within their studio working for hours and hours on projects. The College of Design has multiple studio-based majors such as Architecture, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, and Art and Design. These first- year studio classes mostly last from 1:30-6pm, and the students naturally grow closer and develop bonds after spending such long hours together. I am a non-studio based major, and my design studio time is only 1:30-4:15. Still a long time to many other students I've spoken to, but not quite as invested as the other studio-based majors.

The College of Design shares a mutual understanding and appreciation for innovative thinking, and problem solving through our own unique and creative way. Writing doesn't seem to be as prominent within this discpline, and most of the communication taking place is face to face interactions between peers. In my Design Thinking lecture, we submit Friday forums responding to lectures or videos we watch, and this is one way we use writing. Several projects in this course involve reflections about our thought process, as well as an ethnography assignment similar to the one in this course in which we observed and tried to solve a design challenge here on campus. This Design lecture with over 150 students uses Moodle to keep daily tasks and projects up to date and organized, and this online environment is useful in staying on track with what is going on. My other course, 2-d Design, is not utilizing Moodle or any online environment to communicate, so often times the class can be confused and lost with what is going on.

Communication and writing are extremely useful within my life in order to make connections with others and express myself and my thoughts in a productive way. Writing within the design discipline will be a useful way to explain the process behind the designs and projects I will encounter in the future.