Goal: Maximize Current Skill Set

December 4, 2021 admin Goal

How does this goal fit?

One of the more significant reasons that I decided to pursue a Master’s degree was the belief that my current skill set was well-suited to this accomplishment, and could be a vital step towards establishing a direction for my career that is in line with the skills I am most comfortable with, confident in, and happy when I put them into practice.

The skills I view as part of my “current skill set” are:

• Writing
• Conducting research
• Solving ill-defined problems
• Synthesizing theory
• Analyzing data
• Systemic thinking
• Crafting speculative futures of design, technology and society
• Empathy-driven design decisions
• Understanding and accounting for human behaviour
• Teaching and mentorship on writing, researching and designerly skills and knowledge

In the past, I have found it difficult to define a clear place for myself within the design industry, since it is normally expected that a novice in a designer and / or researcher role should have well-developed technical skills for creating physical and digital products and communication outlets, while high-level speculation, planning of research designs, and documentation of design and / or research projects are skills one develops at a higher level.

This view may not be entirely accurate, however, I believe using this current set of skills to the fullest extend in this incredible opportunity to be an important step in evaluating this assumption and finding my best possible path forward in my career.

What activities will progress me towards this goal?

• Find employment as a teaching assistant
• Find employment as a research assistant
• Mentor peers and students on writing skills
• Find and produce summaries of readings on theoretical design knowledge
• Plan research design for MRP and seek feedback

What resource(s) will I need to achieve this goal?

Planning to achieve this goal entirely individually would be unwise – relationships with others often yield unforeseen opportunities to challenge myself and learn from others in necessary ways.

Similarly, the opportunity to work as a TA and/or RA depends on relationship building and use of resources through which the positions are provided. It would be short sighted to restrict these goals only to what is offered through the OCAD U job postings system.

Naturally, many of these actions in pursuit of the goal will be fulfilled by participating in course assignments and projects within the MDes Inclusive Design program. The most prominent examples are the Lab 1: Design Opportunities and Lab 2: Prototype Generation courses, in which I am pursuing a project on cross-sensory interface design and future inclusive learning environments. There will be other opportunities to pursue design and research-oriented projects that can challenge my skills listed above.

Finally, for all of my goals involving broadening my knowledge in relevant disciplines, I am well positioned to pursue this goal with my existing channels (I use an RSS feed to aggregate sources such as Singularity Hub, Co.Design, FiveThirtyEight, Smashing Magazine, and many others), and with my running list of books and prominent articles to read.

However, pursuing the creative endeavour of writing summaries of notable sources of knowledge and sharing them would be a new approach to learning more actively, and an excellent way to incentivize myself to make more consistent progress.