Design activity #1: preliminary reflection
The preliminary reflection is an opportunity to articulate the goals, assumptions, and feelings that
you bring to the beginning of a project and to begin thinking about how these might help or
hinder your process. You can also use the preliminary reflection to consider strategies for
transcending potential barriers to continued innovation.
Your preliminary reflection should be a written document that considers these types of questions:
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What do I think I’m doing? How do I currently conceptualize goals for this project? What
do I think I’m creating? What are its components? Do these ideas seem adequate? Would
I rather be doing something else? What? Why?
What are my fundamental assumptions? What values am I bringing to this project, and
how do I see those values affecting my ideas? Is that a problem? What are my feelings
toward this project? Is it cool? Challenging? Kind of stupid? Why?
What do I think I know? What’s my current plan? (For example, do I know what
alternative medicine and wellness means, as a subject area? Have I already gotten a sense
of what types of videos I would select for my collection? How I would describe and
arrange them? What my audience thinks and wants, and how I respond to that?) What has
led me to this point? What would change my mind?
What do I think I don’t know? Where am I totally confused? What do I need to learn to
proceed? (For example, do I need to do some subject research? Do I need to think more
about how collections communicate?)
What would I rather not think about? Would I be happy to ignore the audience? Would I
rather have my audience tell me what to do? What seems like a black hole? Why? Where
would clarity come from?
What seems like a barrier? What are project constraints? Are they really constraints? Am
I secretly glad of certain limitations? What kinds of questions should I keep asking
myself each week as I work on this?
Where do I go next? Yes, the course has a structure. But what do I think I should be
doing next?
What am I aiming for? What would a successful project look like? What would a failed
project look like?
While these will not be graded, write out your reflection as a professional document of about 500750 words. Bring one printout to class on February 3; we will read each others’ reflections and
discuss as a class.
INF 385U, Digital Media Collections
Spring 2011