Where to start with a Design Dissertation

You know what, one of the things that I absolutely hate is formal writing - can you tell?! I know I’m not naturally good at it and to be honest hate reading, don’t enjoy research topics endlessly and how do you state a reference?!

Some of you may feel the same way… It took me a while and a great tutor to really understand how to approach my dissertation and by the end of it, thinking of the actual subject was the most difficult part!

Lets kick off with a bit of background of how we did our ‘design dissertation’. Essentially we had to pick a topic/question/statement which we could research, write 5000 words and make into a website.

I’ll be straight with you here is mine: MANIPULATIVE ARCHITECTURE

Getting the most out of your Lectures

Well sometimes you have to just sit in a big room and listen to someone speak for a few hours.. Sounds familiar right? Like something you’ve done your whole life throughout school..

Now here is the fundamental change. YOU have chosen to study this. YOU have paid to be here. Supposedly you want to learn this stuff. But I was right there feeling the exact same - I did not want to go to (what I believed to be) the most boring set up a class can be.

To be honest with you I’m not that great at listening and taking notes, especially when it is on technical information. The end of the day I am very slow at reading and if I write fast I definitely can’t read my own writing a week later.

10 Ways to Make the Most of your Design Course

Seriously we pay £9k a year to then be given by most universities a long materials list, book list, supplies list, excursion fees list… on and on the lists go… for 3 years!

Now there’s no real way to combat these things but from my time at uni one main thing I learned is that you have to make the most of the actual facilities and people that your university offers. I mean, at the end of the day surely that should have been one of the main reasons why you opted for that uni in the first place, right?!