Good Design, Bad Design

• Group size: Individual
• DUE: Wednesday, January 18, 8:30am.
• Before you start this assignment, make sure that you have already read Learning to See

Overview

In this assignment, your objective is pretty straightforward: start training yourself to think about the design of things around you. Think carefully about how people interact with the physical or digital world. Is it good? Is it bad?

Sometimes these things are obvious, but other times, it turns out that we’ve adapted our behavior to bad design. For us, clumsy becomes normal. So take the time to look at interactions with a new eye. Are they really good? Are they actually easy to use?

Assignment

• Find 1 example of good design and 1 example of bad design on Emory's campus or website. Take pictures.
• Create a new Medium blog post where you explain why you chose each (good and bad) design. Include pictures to tell the story. Think about who uses this design, when they are using it, and why they are using it.
• Reflect on the design - what is it about this design that makes it good (or bad)? You might not necessarily be able to articulate this clearly at this point in the course… that’s okay! Try your best. Is it easy to use? Does it make people feel good?

Deliverables

• Post the link to your Medium post along with your name in the submission for Homework Assignment 1 on Canvas.
• Email your TAs the images for both good and bad designs. Do not include your name on the photos or any information about whether it is a good or bad design. The TAs will compile the list and in class, we will try to guess whether each design is good/bad.
• Grading: Grading will be based on a variation of the design rubric.