When I thought my final project process at NC State University was finished, this morning I had an unexpected surprise when I realized that my research investigation has already been catalogued into the library system. I realize this is a trivial thing… but I have to say it made me smile.
On May 4th 2009 I carried out the last of three formal presentations related to my Final Project at NC State University’s College of Design. Even though the step is a required component of the academic requirements at the graphic design program, I enjoyed the opportunity to share some of my interests, ideas and research with faculty, students, and other members of the community.
The presentation was a 25 minute summary of the research and work carried out on my final study at the graduate program: Design as Choice Architecture: informing consumers about debt-related behaviors. The following video is a recording of the original May 4th exposition.
In retrospect, having worked on this final project felt more like a rite of passage than anything else, signaling a transition into a deeper and meaningful design life. I am happy to report that all requirements for graduation were successfully met and I have been granted the degree of Master of Graphic Design. :)
Myself in front of my research poster. Photograph by Rebecca Kirkland.
As I have written before before, this past week was the Fourth Annual NC State University Graduate Student Research Symposium. Marty Maxwell Lane, Deb Littlejohn and I were asked to present our current research at the event. In retrospect, it was just like presenting for judges back in one of my high school science fairs… Presentations were made with the aid of posters. We participated in the Humanities and Design category, where I am happy to report that I was recognized with a first prize for the current research I am carrying out with my final project. :) Read the rest of this entry »
The University Graduate Student Association and the Graduate School hosted the Fourth Annual NC State University Graduate Student Research Symposium. The goals of the symposium were to showcase the outstanding quality and diversity of graduate-level research at NC State, and to share it with state decision-makers.
Marty Maxwell Lane, Deb Littlejohn and I were asked to present our projects at the event. We each made posters, like mine shown at top, to share and explain the goals of our investigations. We participated in the Humanities and Design category, where I am happy to report that I was awarded the first prize. :)
In the morning I had the opportunity to share my current research with the accepted candidates for next year’s incoming graduate graphic design class. The presentation, a shortened version of my Orals Presentation, went really well.
In the evening, I volunteered to present at the 2nd annual Intercom Research Exchange at the College of Design. The event had two ways in which we could share our research with the university community: via a poster where the research was presented in a printed format (you can see Rebecca Tegtmeyer’s poster here), or via a Pecha Kucha styled projected presentation.
This is a self playing movie, but please click on it to get it started. The first 14 seconds are static, so be patient. This is the Pecha Kucha version of my final project presentation
Marty Maxwell Lane also did a Pecha Kucha style presentation to share her research on the way teens understand visual content online (it’s much more than that, but that my version of her project in a sentence. I am sure she will kill me soon over this butchering… ;)
As second-year students of the NC State Graduate Program in Graphic Design, our final semester is dedicated to the work on our final project. As part of the process, we are required to make three major presentations.
The first presentation serves as a public unveiling of our interests to the entire graphic design department. At this point we are supposed to have an initial idea about our interests while we are still negotiating with all of the research that we have so far collected. This point also helps the first-year students, for it allows them to get an idea about what a final project investigation is all about.
The second, the Oral Presentation, occurs the week after Spring Break, half-way between that first exposition and the conclusion of the investigation. At this point, there should be a cohesive argument that makes sense. A design project should exist. The final project must be on its way… and this is the presentation that I recently made.
This post includes the slides of that presentation. You will see notes underneath each one, but the morning of the event I decided not to read any of them. I presented using my train of thought. Of course, what I eventually said is rooted in these notes, but I really did not have time to cover these and read them over. The full development of my ideas will be expressed in the final written document, which will be the core of the third and final presentation coming in up on May 4th.
I am getting a bit nervous. The calendar dates keep progressing and my making seems to be resting stagnantly. Nonetheless, major progress was achieved this morning through the discussion and appreciation of smaller details. These procedural wireframes have begun to seriously integrate much of the research, expressing itself through a series of functionalities.
As it can be anticipated, my system has already changed again, but here I present what I showed in the meeting today. Read the rest of this entry »
After the most recent discussion about the progress of the final project, I decided to stir things a bit… and materialize the sketching. I’ve devised a usable paper-prototype that allows me to explore the possibilities for the interface and its contents. Read the rest of this entry »
You know… When you wish you were doing everybody else’s project but your own? Don’t get me wrong. I am immersed and excited over what I am working on, but there is always that little instance when you just become extremely jealous of the inspiring work your classmates make. I mean, how can I not be?
Marty Maxwell Lane is doing these amazing explorations that still have me speechless. Rebecca Tegtmeyer has created these gorgeous compositions that provide structural cues to her content. Robert Ruehlman works on animated typographic explorations aiming directly at my past with Spirographs… and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, the cyber-hippie who sits in the back, would not even share her super-secret thesis blog… which kills my curiosity now.
The body of work of these individuals serves to remind me of the right choice I made in coming to this particular program.
Power-Hog is a power consumption metering piggy bank designed to sensitize kids to energy cost associated with running electronics devices. Plug the tail into the outlet and the device into the snout; feed a coin to meter 30 minutes of use. Read the rest of this entry »
Next month I will be presenting the progress of my final project at the NC State Graduate Research Symposium to be held in the McKimmon Center on Wednesday, March 18, 2009. What follows is the abstract of the submission, which is still highly speculative since visual making has only just begun.
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Alberto Rigau
Graphic Design Master’s Candidate
College of Design
Advisors: Meredith Davis / Martha Scotford
In what ways can design address consumption induced behaviors and provide a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities?
Credit cards have become an essential financial tool for individuals and families. In 2004, the Census Bureau reported that there were more than 1.4 billion credit cards for 164 million cardholders—an average of 8.5 cards per cardholder, out of which 115 million carry a balance at the end of the month. In the pre–credit card era, households used a pay–as–you–go accounting system. Today, if there is no cash to fill up the car, there is always the credit card. Such a reliance on this payment method generates experiential patterns, more than often translating into family debt. This investigation studies behaviors and patterns associated with credit card use to identify moments in which design intervention can bring about reflective thought about spending habits.
Yiannis Gabriel and Tim Lang, in The Unmanageable Consumer, argue that our actions and experiences as consumers cannot be detached from our actions and experiences as social, political and moral agents. They claim that the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary consumption are part of the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary living. It is not the case that at one moment we act as consumers and the next as workers or as citizens, as women or men or as members of ethnic groups. We are creative composites of simultaneous social categories, with histories, presents and futures. The authors see consumers as central characters of stories, many times exhibiting varied behaviors, such as those of explorers, choosers, communicators, identity-seekers, hedonists, victims, rebels, activists, or citizens.
This research focuses on evaluating some of the ways in which design can address these consumption induced behaviors and on proposing a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities.
At the end of the fall semester I made a presentation to publicly share with classmates and professors my thoughts, process, and ideas of what I will make my final project to be.
What follows are the slides of such presentation, and the text after each slide are the notes of what I said on each one. This represents my moving forward on this final project, which I hope to conclude by the end of the semester. Read the rest of this entry »
Swipe… review… sign… pay later [repeat?] Understanding Martha Augustinos’ and Ian Walker’s approach to schemas and how it can aid a designer frame reflexive behaviors during a consumer experience.
Reflect about the purchases made in the last few days. Did any transactions involve checks, money orders, cash, or even a visit to the bank? Most likely the quantitative answer to this question will be low, if not zero. Physical currency no longer plays a major role in commercial negotiations. Items, information, and services can be acquired, and sometimes are required (try to reserve a vehicle without a credit card), through the use of credit-based-cards in lieu of tangible currency. The benefits of such a system are hard to deny: a credit card is often faster than paying with cash, avoids having to deal with change, offers an ever-present source of funds in case of an emergency, minimizes economically-based social judgments, and serves as an element that grants certain social power.
American critic Frederic Jameson, in Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, wrote: “Any return to the haptic and tactile… seem to hearken back to… the “late modern,” when building materials were expensive and of the finest quality and people still wore suits and ties. It is like the transition from precious metals to the credit card: the “bad new things” are no less expensive, and you no less consume their very value, it is the value of the… equipment you consume first and foremost, and not of its objects.” (Jameson, p.99) The credit card is not only a means to consumption, but it now represents consumption itself, and as such, it has developed its own set of appeals. The credit card is now a must and there is no turning back. Read the rest of this entry »
Armando Rigau currently pursues a Master in Architecture I at Cornell University. He received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy with History and Spanish minors from Georgetown University.
