Group 4: Research For Design Part 1 Week 1
Assignment
1. Working with your group, construct an initial mess map of the phenomenon you’ve chosen to explore.
2. Conduct secondary research into your phenomenon, and share and discuss your findings with your group.
3. Based on the group’s research, revisit and refine your mess map.
4. Prepare and record a 5–10 minute presentation of your map and research.
5. Create a bibliography of your research in MLA format. Include all sources that influenced your final mess map.
6. Each group member should update their process site with a reflection on the process, describing what you learned and did in your group.
The Origin Story
By fate, or some stroke of luck, three NYU students were unable to attend the last class. As a result, we were blessed with the good fortune of forming a group the likes of which have never been seen! Behold, the group ‘bicoastal’ comprising of the brilliant minds of Tracy, Justin, and myself. Given the fact we missed class, we started from square one by identifying our problem of focus.
Week 1 Progress
We kicked off our project with our first group meeting over zoom. We spent the hour walking through the assignment details and brainstorming problems we thought would be interesting to solve. We used a FigJam board as a platform to capture our ideas, seen below.
Once we had our ideas, we went one by one and discussed which ideas seemed to be most likely within scope, interesting, and broad enough that we could come up with many varied solutions. We used green highlights to show our favorites, as shown below.
From here, we each came up with a few problem areas or solutions that surrounded each of these initial problems. We did this to further determine the viability of each option and decide on the idea we would pursue for the rest of the project.
After careful, digital deliberation, we determined the most interesting problem space to explore was the first option listed above: Cleaning NY Rivers and beaches.
For The Week Ahead…
Over the course of this week, our team will:
- Create an initial mess map of our topic
- Continue researching and site our secondary sources
- Revise our initial mess/giga map
- Prepare our group presentation
Stay tuned for updates on our project!