AUTONOMOUS PROJECT

For my final autonomous project, I chose to represent my design process by using phrases found on the pages of an old book. They are hung on the twine in a way that shows the evolution of my design process, and the bird's flight is representative of the completion of a project.

A whole family of trial birds.

When I first started this project, my intentions were to create a piece of furniture out of recycled products that were common to a college student. As the project progressed I realized that I did not have time to complete the furniture, so for my autonomous presentation I still wanted it to be symbolic of transforming something old into something new and different.

PRESENTATION REFLECTION

Presentations are slowly getting easier for me, but still do not come as natural as I like. As far as my own presentation went, I was pleased with how my design and board layout turned out. Knowing that I had worked so hard, it was easier to communicate my design confidently than if I was presenting something that I did not like, or had not put forth as much work. I was excited about the work I was showing, but I still feel like my presentation could have been more polished. After presenting, I realized how much information I left out. It is like I assume that everyone automatically understands my project the way I do, and so I feel like I did a poor job of fully communicating my ideas to the rest of the room. If I were to do it again, I would organize my information more efficiently in order to better communicate my design to the rest of the class, or audience.

As far as other presentations went, I found the most successful ones to be those that had prepared the order that they were going to talk about their board. I had an outline of how I wanted to present the items on my board, but I feel like it would have been more successful had I thought in a little more detail like several other students did. Also, I noticed that the stronger presentations were ones that briefly discussed the artist that they were designing for. It seemed that some people spent more time discussing the artists work instead of their own which distracted from their personal work. My favorite presentations were the ones where there wasn’t a wasted word of information. And one last thing I observed from all the presentations was that if the board layout was not as carefully thought out as their design, it automatically reduced the quality of the drawings. My eyes first would scan the room for the boards that popped out at me, and then I would go further to look at the drawings. The plainer boards I seemed to skip over. This presentation made me realize that it is not only important to produce good work, but to also organize it and present it in a clear, expressive way.