Reflection Overview

View the full reflection here. 

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Throughout the semester, as the documents became more intricate and difficult, I was forced to consider information design more in depth with each assignment. At the beginning, I was able to rely on my natural “knack for design,” if you will. Being a daughter of a graphic designer and an artist of my own, some things about design are intuitive for me. As the semester progressed, though, these intuitions were challenged, and by the time the brochure assignment rolled around, I was relying almost entirely on my information design skills learned in class. This also means that the most transformed document is the brochure because it was the one that challenged me the most and therefore had the most room for growth. In that design process, I learned to consider color more than what I think might look good: at times, single-spaced text is the way to, that a logo can do wonders, and a brochure about kids without any pictures of kids is rather ineffective. Of course, I learned other things throughout my other design processes and revisions, which I will now discuss in detail in the rest of the paper.

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In doing the Information Design Critique and evaluating in such detail the choices of someone else, it opened my eyes what decisions I was making both consciously and subconsciously about my designs. Likewise, evaluation my own choices throughout the semester in each memo also prepared me to think about someone else’s choices. I have felt my ways of thinking grow and expand to be more aware of the “why?” question to every aspect of a document, no matter how simple, intricate, or non-conclusive the answer to that question is. This process of inquiry and analysis will carry me into any processional setting, whether it is tech writing, grad school, or even the dance studio. It has developed a thinking skill set that is applicable to almost anything. Beyond this critical thinking skill, I have also become familiar with the Adobe software that I previously had not had any experience with. Luckily, my mom was very familiar with these programs and could help me when I got stuck, but at times I got very frustrated when it wasn’t similar to the way functions operate in Microsoft Word and Publisher. But despite these frustrations, I am glad to have this experience to put on resumes and use in future personal situations.

Overall throughout the semester I feel I have participated thoroughly in class as well as put in good effort for all the assignments. At times, I actually made myself not speak up in order to try to make room for other to speak (even though often they still did not). I enjoyed the fact, though, that I almost always did have some I could have said during the discussions and I recognized that that means I was regularly engaged in the class—which doesn’t always happen, especially in night classes. I actually think that this is one of the most practical courses I have taken, as it has effectively prepared me to go into any field with not only technical writing knowledge but also an informed design process.