Initial goals

When I was preparing my trip to Parsons I had in mind some ideas that I wanted to develop through my Master. Since I finished college I have been always concerned about how design can take place into architecture. I knew that I feel a strong passion about how large-scale graphics can transform a space and I have confirmed that while being here. I am also interested in how design can help people to understand the world and here I have had the chance to study more in deep the information design as a existent field; in Colombia it is just an emergent area of design and it is not ease to find not either people who work in the field nor material related to it. The combination of both subjects led me to focus on signage for about 5 years before coming here.

When I decided to come to Parsons one of my first thoughts was how through “new technologies” I could improve the work that I have been doing. I also aimed to discover how elements such as interactivity, sound and motion could become new tools for me and how they would let me to create more compelling design experiences.

Learning process

During my process as a student here I have trying to absorb as much as I can from the insane bulk of information that I receive everyday. Sometimes I feel that my learning process has been so slow that I have not learn that much. Now, I am in a campaign for convincing myself that I did. Due to my knowledge about “new technologies” was pretty basic I started learning about web design (html, databases, action script) and most of the projects I had been doing are screen-based. I guess it was a good start to immerse in the field. I am still not sure about how much I have absorbed from classes in term of technical skills, but I feel I definitely have a better understanding of “new tech” possibilities and I am starting to fell that I am “on the filed”.

Although I feel surprised about all the possibilities of screen based project, -and I am saying that keeping in mind that I have still a log long way to go-, I don’t want move away from my initial goals. I do not have a specific idea about what do I want to do for my thesis, indeed I have to say that I am pretty lost, but I know some of my interest and domains.

Public Spaces / The city and the way people moves around it.
Environmental graphics
Interactive Design
Signage / Maps / wayfinding
Information Design

I hope this awareness can help me to develop my ideas and come up with a solid concept.

My fears

I was not sure about how ambitious should I be while conceiving my ideas in the sense that usually when people think of “thesis” their first thoughts aim to “change the world” and this almost never happen. But I have been told that at the begging you should be as much ambitious as you can and then someone will make you “ground” your ideas in order to make them reasonable and feasible.

My second concern and maybe the one that I feel more scared about is that I don’t feel technically strong. I am just scratching the surface of technologies used for screen based projects and I do not know how to jump outside of the screen to do what I really want to do: work in a physical space.

Recently I had a conversation with friend, an architect who goes to MIT and he told me that screen-based technologies are not a trampoline where you have to jump for starting to design in physical spaces. He told me that one thing is different from the other and he encouraged me to explore RFID and physical computing technologies. Although I do not think that my thesis is going to be a physical computing based project I think that I am going to need to work with sensors some way. That’s why I plan to stat my RFID workshop with Alexis soon.