• DUE: Friday, March 16. 11:59 PM.
  • Before you start this assignment, make sure that you have already read Learning to See

In this assignment, your objective is pretty straightforward: start training yourself to think about the design of things around you. Think carefully about how people interact with the physical or digital world. Is it good? Is it bad?

Sometimes these things are obvious, but other times, it turns out that we’ve adapted our behavior to bad design. For us, clumsy becomes normal (for example, WPI’s Banner Web). So take the time to look at interactions with a new eye. Are they really good? Are they actually easy to use?

Assignment

  • Find 1 example of good design and 1 example of bad design on WPI’s campus or website. Take pictures.
  • For each design (good and bad), create a new Medium blog post.
  • For each post, explain why you chose this design. Include pictures to tell the story. Think about who uses this design, when they are using it, and why they are using it.
  • Reflect on the design - what is it about this design that makes it good (or bad)? You might not necessarily be able to articulate this clearly at this point in the course… that’s okay! Try your best. Is it easy to use? Does it make people feel good?

Deliverables

  • Post the link of each Medium post along with your name on our submission page. Please try not to read any other student’s links until after the due date. All future submission links will be listed on the homepage only.
  • Bring 1-page printouts of both your good design and bad design to class. The printout should NOT include your name, or any information that indicates whether it is a good or bad design. It should simply include a single picture, or sequence of pictures showing the design. In class, we will try to guess whether each design is good/bad.