chadlypow – ChadCo. Studio

Reflective Journaling – Week 7

These last 7 weeks have flown by! I’m happy to be finishing my first course in the UXD program and have learned quite a bit about myself in the process. Although, the majority of the coursework has been review for me, I’ve ignited inspiration in many areas of design that I love, including: using Pinterest, hand-drawing & lettering, and overall ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 6

This week we focused on one of my favorite, and often complex, areas of design – typography. I’ve been surprised by the expressiveness and capability of type to elicit a response throughout my career, and I find working with it to be a fun puzzle to explore within the design process. I was excited to be given access to the ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 5

Coming off an intensive week of sketching and creating workflows, it was nice to have some time to focus on reading and writing. This week, I realized how subjective design can sometimes be. An award winning website (which they flaunt across their site) exhibited several design “no-no’s,” which I point out in my description of an ineffective design. I also ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 4

This week I was surprised to finish both Designing With The Mind In Mind (Johnson), and The Design of Everyday Things (Norman) so early into the course. I haven’t read books at this pace in a while, but I’m glad to have successfully completed both of them and am looking forward to the supplemental materials and presentations for the rest ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 3

At the beginning of this course, I did what a lot of visually inspired creatives do, and judged two books by their covers. From the outward appearance and titles, I made a judgement on which of my textbooks I would prefer. I chose to purchase The Design of Everyday Things (mainly because I recognized it, as it has been a ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 2

This week we covered Motivation, Norman’s “Two Gulfs” and Johnson’s notes on Visual Perception. I was most fascinated with the information about how the eye works, and why these principles are important to and related to design. These are concepts that we as designers need to remember, along with aesthetics, design principles and color theory. Sometimes the general framework of ...

Reflective Journaling – Week 1

This has been my first week in the Masters program for UXD at Kent State. Being that it is an introductory course, I expected to be somewhat bored, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve even picked up a few new things from my weekly readings, and have been encouraged by the diversity of backgrounds and excitement of ...