Time flies，it has been one semester since I started MA Communication Design at University of Southampton, and I have to say that I have learned a lot during these time.
There are some key words about the knowledge and skills that I learned in the first semester: Design thinking, Personas, IXDA, Sketch-notes, Prototype, Affordance, PACT, Interaction Design, User Interface design, etc. All of those keywords were essential to redirect my way of thinking on design in the future.
The ‘keyword’ of making a persona is one of the most useful skill that help me to do the design project. ‘A persona is a representation of a particular audience segment for a website, product or service you are designing, based on various types of qualitative and quantitative research. It captures a person’s motivations, frustrations and the “essence” of who they are.’ I know that when I make a persona, I have to pay attention at the users’ or customers’ experiences, emotions, feelings,actions, thoughts, etc. This is an influence on my design behaviour. The pain points is the crux of the users/ customers for my design. This allows the me to make a comprehensive research and try to find a way to know the user groups’ feeling and thoughts, design that follow this way is the most accurate also could resonate with the users.
PACT is another most important ‘keyword’ for me doing design, It has an affect on my design thinking. P means people (who), A means activities (what), C means contexts (why), and T means technology (how). Those could help me to do communication design better.
The New Year and new semester are both the time to reflect on and sum up what has passed and to look ahead to the new challenge to come. This semester I will study more hard in our major MA Communication Design, since I had I have completed a bachelor’s degree and a master‘s degree in China, two countries of China and UK are two different ways of teaching. For me, every day here is new. I came to England to learn something different, and to make the world a little different because of me is my aspiration.
Finally, thanks to the teachers who have taught us t, I will work harder for the next semester. Wish us all have a peaceful, prosperous and happy new year.
LJ 