I had a lot of anxiety initially coming into the class, but as the quarter progressed, a lot of my anxiety dissipated and I was able to get engrossed into the flow of the class. I really enjoyed seeing how the project was coming together. I loved seeing how the different parts of the project built off of each other, and how we were able to incorporate different theoretical concepts of our readings and class discussions into the iteration and design of the prototype. Although initially I felt like there were a lot of deliverables due each week, I came to appreciate the fact that a lot of the deliverables in the class were front loaded as this gave me the time to focus primarily on the project during the latter half of the quarter.
This class was instrumental in instilling in me the principles of design thinking. I loved that the class allowed us to draw and definitely see myself using sketchnoting regularly, especially as part of brainstorming and ideation, and as a way of summarizing the key concepts from different books and readings. I was also able to brush up on my Figma skills, a really important tool in design and prototyping. My experience working in CS147 was particularly stressful, as it was during a time when I was navigating multiple challenges in my personal life. And although I hadn’t realized it before, it had given me a very negative outlook on design in general. Although I initially didn’t expect to enjoy my experience in this class, I was surprised that I actually ended up enjoying it. Despite the 9:30 am time slot, this was easily one of my favorite classes of the quarter. I really enjoyed the class format, from the youtube videos at the beginning of class, to the different discussions which yielded really informative viewpoints on the different topics we were talking about in class. My favorite part of the class was definitely the Ethics discussion, which, during numerous times, reiterated the futility of trying to implement change within the capitalist system. The insights of the students around various issues, such as the discussion on the ethics of Facebook and their impact on their users, really broadened my outlook and helped me learn how to approach the issues with the nuance that they deserve.
I’d say that the main issues I encountered during the project was learning to speak up and really express my viewpoints and my ideas as I’m usually a quiet person. However, after the initial round of team feedback, my teammates reiterated the value of my input which in turn pushed me to speak up more during meetings. The concept of behavior change is something I was able to explore in multiple other classes, from my classes in Media psychology, to numerous other writing and philosophy classes. As such, I was able to visualize ways of iterating on the concepts and ideas I had developed in those other classes and in turn learn how to develop my ideas into a product that different users can interact with.
