Final: Course reflection

Week 1 vs week 13

Week 1

Studying Design Computing Studio I this semester, I expect it to be  I expect that  Through the glimpse I got during the first lecture, I’m hoping that this course will put the Masters program in a new perspective, pulling in skills learned from different courses so far. Most of the courses I have taken to date have stood alone but I think this course will start to bring it all together. I’m also hoping a might get closer to a definition of what design thinking is :P

I’m a little worried about the technical component of this course, and my current abilities. Learning Python last semester was so time intensive so I’m hoping it's not (but expecting) that it might be similar.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck into a new project and hopefully having something to add to my portfolio from this.

Week 13

My expectations of the course were both met and exceded. The concepts of design thinking are firmly planted in my brain and have almost become second nature in the way I approch design projects and design problems.

The group work was better than previous experiences but I think it was in part due to putting things in place to help prevent bad group expereinces (and our group were all great). We established team expectations early and lived by the motto of 'sawy what you'll do, do what you say, and raise any and all problems early'.

In terms of what I learnt, I spent way more time than I did on Python but learnt more too. I successful wrote and de-bugged php and mySQL queries and these weren't on my radar at the beginning of the semester. I was also able to learn some AngularJS and SASS which I have been wanting to look at but didn't know if I would get a chance in the course. I was also hoping to use HTML imports and maybe even polymer but that didn't pan out for our project needs.

Most of what I learnt was not through any of the formal learning (classes, workshops, etc) but through self-directed learning, either looking at documentation or doing differnt code tracks on Code Academy or Treehouse. The contact sessions gave me the pportunity to run prototyping sessions and garner feedback which was very helpful.