Let’s Get Reflective
Posted on December 12, 2013 | posted by:
Some people like talking, some like coding. Me? I like thinking about the way people think. I am an observer, a perceiver, a reader of people and situations alike. I can’t help it; it comes naturally and I like doing it. It comes as no surprise then that my undergraduate focus was in psychology. Coming into the TransD program, I had no idea what exactly I could bring to the program. I started to feel better, however, when upon meeting the second years for the first time at least four or five of them said, “You’re background is in psychology? Oh we definitely have to talk!” An instant confidence booster.
As the semester got under way, my background started to seem less like an immediate asset and more of a tool I would have to learn how to use in this new discipline. This was particularly apparent in our first couple weeks of Design for This Century. The Artifice. The Singularity. None of this resonated with me. Then there was our recitation group. I felt a little bit overwhelmed and underrepresented when I was one of two TD students in a fifteen person group, especially during those first couple weeks when the content focused so heavily on technology and where it was heading.
I remember one of my fellow recitation members talking about innovation. He was saying that as a society we needed to be inquisitive because that is what pushes us to innovate. I had to say something. It wasn’t that I necessarily disagreed with that statement; I just thought it was incomplete. In my eyes, there is a second part to design that is equally, if not more, important than being inquisitive; namely, being reflective. It was through this interaction that I saw a difference between how I thought and how some of the Design and Technology students thought—one that went much deeper than their interest in technology. It became apparent to me that many of the DT students that I have met are focused on the question “Can we do this?” whereas the TDers that I know mainly ask “Should we do this?” Like I said, I like thinking about the way people think.
“…reflective practice puts the burden of proof on…designers to make explicit a value proposition as well as a rationale for their presence at the decision maker’s table.” – Jamer Hunt, So What Is It All About?
Fast forward four months. The metacognitive report we wrote for Design Led Research forced me to really reflect on what I had learned over the course of the semester, not just in DLR but in all of my classes. As I looked at Design for This Century, I started asking myself why we had taken the class with the Design and Technology students. The self-centered (feel free to read arrogant) part of me clearly saw the benefit for them in hearing our point of view, but what had I learned from them?
To be completely honest, if you had asked me even a couple of days ago I may have fumbled for an answer. But now, as I let the semester sink in and truly allow myself to examine it, I am starting to see things that had previously gone unnoticed. With an academic background in psychology, it has always been easy for me to fall into my reflective mode, looking at the world through the observatory within my own head. What hasn’t always been my first instinct is to make. It took about thirteen weeks of DLR for me to figure out that design led research is about doing as opposed to merely explaining. Likewise, as I look back on Design for This Century, I find myself almost thinking more about the DT students in my recitation group and how they thought rather than the content to which we were exposed. They are about the making. The “Can we…?” The How more than the Why. It’s not usually my first thought, but “Can I…?”