What I Made During My 2 Years at Harvard MDE Program (2/3)
After my first semester at Harvard, I was able to build up my confidence to survive in this environment. Also, I was able to build a rapport with my dear cohorts after all of the disasters we went through together, we all had strong motivation to tackle the studio projects.
In addition, I was feeling the sense to rework on my design approaches, which I had developed through the years by working at an advertising agency. By collaborating with my cohorts, I wanted to observe more how they approach problems, and if possible, even take in their methods as my own.
Collaborative Design Engineering Studio II (STU1232)
Just like the previous semester, our studio theme was mobility. The difference from the last semester is instead of having 3 projects in one semester, we now had 2. As a warm-up, we spent approximately 3 weeks on the first assignment and spent the rest of the semester on the second assignment. We were able to approach the project without rushing too much. I did have to pull a lot of all-nighters at the end of the semester, though…
Project 1: Design Research Proposal
I thought this assignment was novel and exciting. Our task was to build a proposal to conduct design research for innovative mobility. After some discussion with my teammates, we decided to work on dementia, which we claimed that it’s the mobility of memory.
To construct an appealing proposal, we had to consider the project from various angles. What are the precedents in this research area? What does the market look like? What exactly is the research question we are trying to address in this proposal? How will that question be answered? What’s the schedule? What does the budget look like?
I teamed up with a design researcher and a former architect and going through their approach, and their process was a huge learning experience for me. I wrote about this more in detail here. Around this time, research has become a crucial process for me more than ever. I also felt my research methods have updated by working through the project together with my teammates.
Project 2: Design Award Entry
For this project, our task was to design something under the theme of mobility under the premise of submitting the project to an Italian design award called A’ Design Award and Competition. We had approximately 2 months to work on framing the problem, to building the solution. I teamed up with a former UX researcher, UX designer, and a product designer. I wrote more in detail here about this project.
Since this project, I was feeling my approach is starting to change drastically. My research method has changed, and I understood the importance of failing early through iterating on the prototypes and progressing the project to achieve the goal.
Not only the final presentation, but we also submitted a design report for this project. More about this project in detail below.
As a side note, we actually submitted this project to A’ Design Award and Competition, and we won!
While having a sense of updating myself in terms of my skills and approaches to solve problems, I finished the first year as an MDE student. By the time I finished the summer, I had become ready to tackle my Master’s thesis project.
