A LETTER TO MY STUDENTS
Dear my students,
Second, Improve your sense of scale. Reviewers couldn’t point out your design’s details because they
Hi, everyone.
should give you overall feedback in a limited time. Just because the reviewers didn’t point out the prob-
First of all, I am sorry for the late completion of the
lem doesn’t mean that the design is great. If you make
coursebook publishing. I had unexpected family
a portfolio like this, and if your readers have enough
affairs during the winter break, and now I can finish
time to take a look, some problems emerge, espe-
making this book by entering this spring semester.
cially related to the sense of scale. Considering that,
How was your winter break? I hope you enjoyed your
we are not making decorative art but making space
time and are ready to tackle this semester.
for people to use with no problem with real people’s usability. It is our role to properly set the widths of the
How was this course?
passages where people come and go or the spaces
I wish you had learned something well and enjoyed
where people interact with each other. The best way
it. Since this class was my last design studio at UT, I
to identify this problem is to build a physical study
might have made too many requests to you because
model by hand. You can easily find errors in your de-
I wanted to teach you as much as possible. Even after
sign in the process of building walls and stairs. If you
this class, I am writing this letter because I have more
can’t figure out the errors, the errors will be projected
guides I want to give you.
on your drawings and perspectives.
First, experience a lot. If you don’t experience
Third, verify your design through Visualization. There
anything yourself, you don’t know what you like or
is a clear difference between thinking an idea in your
dislike yourself and why you like or dislike the thing.
head and physically visualizing it. By visualizing, your
As a result, your design intent might easily become
ideas become more concrete, and you can see if your
unclear. In other words, if you design something you
design intentions can be realized through the con-
haven’t experienced, it is extremely difficult to avoid
crete ideas. The more you present an abstract idea
designing a superficial outcome.
without specifying it, the more your audience intends to understand it by embodying it in their own way, so your design intent and understanding of the audience start to differ. When the differences are piled up, your design is not accurately communicated to the audience. Also, your ideas that have not been accurately conveyed are difficult to accept. All of this is the root cause of feedback from reviewers and me.
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