As a design professor there are certain cyclical occurrences that you can count on feeling eerily similar every year. Submitting course packs, setting your class schedule, trying to put names to faces, the staff BBQ etc…
One that seems to happen yearly, for me anyway, is that pre-grad project angst, where students with the best intentions of getting ready during the summer realize they have two weeks (or less) to submit their abstracts and project outlines.
So here is a bit of advice I’ve given to the students I have:
- The tendency of many students I’ve worked with is to feel like they need to make grand explorations of large (universal) themes, which is tough on a one or even two semester project. Avoid that initial impulse.
- Grad projects are the beginning of a lifetime of exploration – you don’t need to answer all of the questions you have about design in one project. (But if you manage it – send it to me, I’m curious)
- The flip side of that is that simple questions can end up being really rich and complex because the field of exploration inevitably changes path and gets larger as you go anyway. If you start vague you run the risk of ending up even more vague and in a short project you run the risk of not being able to pull it back together again.
- The kid gloves solution isn’t rocket science (unless your thesis happens to be about rocket science, I guess). It’s best to get the pain of vagueness over as early as possible. The best projects come from a very clear single idea/question developed early on, even if it’s not exactly right – set a deadline for the question, stick to it. With the hard work front-loaded you’ll be better off. Get help early on.
- Even if it feels reductive at the start (or not exactly the right path) starting small is good – for me it’s actually depth rather than breadth that seem to make successful projects, those large themes inevitably emerge from good questions anyway (um… because they’re universal).
- By early in the semester you should be refining research – not finding questions, they just happen. This will save you panicking with a pile of books or links wit no ability to decide what’s relevant. you If you do that you can re-frame your question as you go (note: that doesn’t mean it’s allowed to be vague, make sure you track the evolution of the question in a formal way).
- Finally… remember a thesis or grad project is a personal exploration (done by you) therefore rigor will always take you where you wanted to go anyway – remember there are no bad questions, but there are tons underdeveloped projects.
- Enjoy.
