CMU Fall 2022

In my first semester at CMU School of Design (SOD), we explored basic concepts in design by deconstructing products, communications, and environments. We examined interactions in the built and natural worlds from a design perspective. Below are descriptions of each course, followed by some of the highlights from the semester.

Studio: Survey of Design — Conducted activities with a focus on noticing design in the real world, investigating how it works, and describing how we think about design through vessels like photography, video capture, sketching, note-taking, and modeling.

Visualizing — Worked through the frameworks of design drawing using perspective, storyboarding for explanation, diagramming for clarification, and field notation.

Design Studies: Place — Examined how design sustains everyday human lifestyles in the context of urban development. We recognized relations between natural and artificial worlds presented in the form of video essays.

Design Studies: Histories — Explored a plurality of design histories extending beyond the dominant, Anglo-European story of Design.

Introduction to Psychology — This course provides an overview of the major areas of scientific psychology, exploring the models of our mind, brain, and behavior that explain wide areas of human and nonhuman functioning.

Interpretation & Argument — This foundational, inquiry-driven writing course introduces students to a variety of strategies for making compositional decisions in writing and communication.

To get a behind-the-scenes look from my Studio course, view my blog posts at www.medium.com/@lpbarnes. The descriptions of CMU's BDes courses are viewable at design.cmu.edu/content/bachelor-design.