Design Journal # 3 - Design as a composition

"To design is to be creative and innovative, but more importantly to... cause things to stand together as a unified whole-- a composition." (207)
Nelson and Stolterman discuss design as a sequence of different parts put together as a whole. This past week in my project, I have been trying to identify the unique and different parts of my project. The parts that I have identified are: the actual scrapbook pages, the website holding the project, the front page of the project (homepage of the website) and the display options of the scrapbook. This week I began work on designing the scrapbook pages. I have identified pictures that I want to include and illustrative elements that I want to add to the book. What I am having problems with is desiging the "look" of the website. Do I want each individual scrapbook page to be a page, do I want it to look like a book full of scrapbook pages, do I want to incorporate flash.... there are so many unknowns... that it is a bit paralyzing.

Nelson and Stolerman's words spoke true to me when I read this article. "It is not the intent of design to search for the absolute solution, or the one true answer, to a design challenge. Designers must compose a whole that adequately responds to the intentions of teh client, in rlation to a particular context." (209) I need to follow the mentality that it may not be perfect, but it is ok to start designing with the intention of editing and improving along the way. Nelson also states that " a designer can quickly wind up with a crisis of complexity, if his or her focus on the detail is not balanced with principles of organziation, such as systems thinking. A systems approach allows complexity to be taken into account without leading to paralysis. Systems thinking provides skeletal design logic for dealing with this kind of complexity" (222) Paralysis caused by a lack of a plan or insight is something that I need to avoid. Unfortunatley, I am still unsure of the look of the project, but I must press through and work on the parts that I do have a vision for.

Next Steps:
I will continue to work on my project, at least the pages that I have the idea of the direction that I want to take. I will continue working until I reach my "sudden flash of insight, a breakthrough, which is typically reffered to as an ah-ha experience" (212).

Develop my skills: I also plan to search through collegues pages as well as other websites to try to figure out the design of my page. As Nelson and Stolerman explain in their reading, "It is also possible to develop design skills by critiquing existing designs."

References:
Nelson, H. & Stolterman, E. (2003). The design way. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. (Chapter 9: Composition)