On each of these sites, choose one significant channel to examine; investigate a significant article/page, or study a detailed aspect/project which reveals how design
works in the articulation of a real-world problem within a specific field of effort, how design meets particular social needs, how design discovers and articulates
unique, interesting cultural/economic opportunities, and by what methods and finesses designers labor to generate viable and graceful solutions to the challenges and
projects they take on.
Your overall tasks is to build a ‘sampler’ of modern design and designers (their world, their ways, their works) which answers the general, thematic question:
What can design do to make the world better?
Topic: To give a clear structure to this project, I’m requiring that you use the following five information sources as your primary discussion material:
1) Blender:
(http://www.blender.org/)
2) Designboom:
(http://www.designboom.com/)
3) Touchbionics:
(http://www.touchbionics.com/newsevents/latest-news/2013/04/touchbionics-introduces-i-limb-ultra-revolution/)
4) Yves Behar and FUSEProject:
(http://www.useproject.com)
5) NeriOxman:
(http://www.materialecology.com)
Visit each of the design websites listed here. Be prepared to spend significant time exploring the extent of the site, following various channels, investigating pages,
documents, even downloads. It’ll definitely help to take as many notes on each study session as you can generate. These notes will help you work through the rich
material and find focal points for more detailed thought and writing. It’ll take at least an hour at each website for an initial, serious investigation, with more time
added later as you pursue one specific dimension of the site. Expect to do additional research using other avenues and archives, in order to define and explain points,
clusters, and structures of information you found on the primary sites.
Each of these design sites lives in a different world of ideas and strategies, and points its textured knowledge to differing aspects of social life:
1) Blender- addresses sophisticated CAD, modeling, audio, and animation design;
2) Designboom – is an online magazine/portal which samples the intricate, wild, wonderful ways that people shape and reshape reality and relationships throughcrafted
manipulation of materials, modification of existing structures, and refinement of precise processes;
3) Touchbionics- is a medical engineering site that address prosthetics, robotics, and adaptive technologies, as well as a distillation of a century of innovative
science, technological advancement, and ‘science-fiction vision’;
4) Yves Behar/FUSEproject- is a post-modern design visionary and his able team who constantly re-invent common objects and structures, enabling us to look at life
freshly, suggesting ways that we can escape problems of the past and present with new creations; and
5) NeriOxman- is a brilliant architect and new-materials engineer/designer who is revolutionizing how building/making materials are formed and used, and is taking both
object and object-systems design in the direction of organic structures and formation processes.
After reading and studying these sites (which might require you to search other resources for specific information), choose two aspects/projects from each website (ten
ideas in total over the five DEV paragraphs) which seem to you to be the heart of the particular design-site’s narrative, in terms of its aesthetic textures, design
themes, and conceptual arguments. Present and discuss how the structure and narrative/poetic aspects of these scenes can be ‘unfolded’ to reveal the key elements of
designing and/or re-designing theworld. Concentrate on the information which gets at the deepest concerns and messages of each work. Keep an eye focused on how the
design ‘transforms the world in productive, and positive ways.’
Because of the necessarily condensed nature of the DEV paragraphs, a detailed summary of each design site should be provided in separate end-notes and keyed to the
first mention of the respective sites in your essay paragraphs. Additionally, full project definitions, detailed discussion of materials and tools and process, and
meditations on the end-results of designing things should be provided in end-notes. Tie-in commentary linking the designer and her/his works with others engaged in
similar efforts should occur in end-notes. By following such a strategy, you will have generated a tight analysis of significant projects by a major contemporary
craftsperson or group, and also provided your reader with a halo or corona of background information and meditation which will illuminate multiple levels of analysis
and knowledge. In addition to the primary website for each designer, you must use (quote directly, engage specific ideas from the source in your presentation and
analysis) at least five other research sources per designer. This will assure that your primary Works Cited listing has a minimum of 30 references (more are easily
available the deeper into each area and its halo’ of responses and considerations you research and study). The placement of these additional references should occur in
the INT and SUM paragraphs, at tactical points in the DEV paragraphs, and in significant texture in the End Notes. Such a dense weave of references is meant to prepare
you for writing semester-long research essays in other General Education courses, especially those leading to university transfer.
Format: Use the extended seven-paragraph standard essay model as the structural form of this essay (that is the Standard Essay’s five-paragraph model with its three
DEV paragraphs extended to five). The essay should be composed according to the following conceptual outline:
1. INT paragraph:
1) Make a comment about the general value and nature of design as a modern craft;
2) Make a comment about how designers tell stories with their inventions, stories about the configurations of individual lives and social structures and dynamics;
3) Make a comment about the design process, and the way such methods and algorithms of design-action reveal specific ideas of modern society;
4) Introduce the idea of craft as a focused way to maintain, fix, refine, and extend modern societies and overlapping cultures;
5) Formally introduce the five primary design sites by name, with a brief characterization of each one (so the reader has a ‘handle’ to use as she or he goes deeper
into your essay);
6) Present a formal, explicit thesis that identifies the particular aspects/projects of each design site which reveal the aesthetics of the designers, the nature and
quality of their process(s), the artifacts created, and the argument about solving problems and developing opportunities as ways to better society and life which the
works make.

2. DEV paragraph 1:
1) Briefly identify and characterize the Blender design site and set up your analytical idea;
2) Identify a specific channel/article/project and characterize what it reveals about the methods, themes, and arguments of the particular domain of design;
3) Briefly situate the channel/article/project’s position in the structure and flow of the design website;
4) Carefully describe the elements of the channel/article/project ;
5) Discuss how the channel/article/project reveals the nature, dilemmas, desires, skills, actions of the designer(s);
6) Discuss what particular views of people and society emerge from the channel/article/project and the designer’s work;
7) Discuss what more general assessment of modern society—its high and low-tech institutions and practices—and the lives of individuals emerges from the design-site in
general.
*Special Note: Each of the 7 components listed in the DEV map above could support one or more end-notes, depending on the number and length of sentences you compose to
meet the concept target. This strategic opportunity holds for each of the DEV paragraph below.

3. DEV paragraph 2:
1) Briefly identify and characterize the Designboom magazine site/portal and setup your analytical idea;
2) Identify a specific channel/article/project and characterize what it reveals about the methods, themes, and arguments of the particular domain of design;
3) Briefly situate the channel/article/project’s position in the structure and flow of the design website;
4) Carefully describe the elements of the channel/article/project ;
5) Discuss how the channel/article/project reveals the nature, dilemmas, desires, skills, actions of the designer(s);
6) Discuss what particular views of people and society emerge from the channel/article/project and the designer’s work;
7) Discuss what more general assessment of modern society—its high and low-tech institutions and practices—and the lives of individuals emerges from the design-site in
general.

4. DEV paragraph 3:
1) Briefly identify and characterize the Touchbionics design site and set up your analytical idea;
2) Identify a specific channel/article/project and characterize what it reveals about the methods, themes, and arguments of the particular domain of design;
3) Briefly situate the channel/article/project’s position in the structure and flow of the design website;
4) Carefully describe the elements of the channel/article/project ;
5) Discuss how the channel/article/project reveals the nature, dilemmas, desires, skills, actions of the designer(s);
6) discuss what particular views of people and society emerge from the channel/article/project and the designer’s work;
7) Discuss what more general assessment of modern society—its high and low-tech institutions and practices—and the lives of individuals emerges from the design-site in
general.

5. DEV paragraph 4:
1) Briefly identify and characterize the Yves Behar/FUSEProject design site and set up your analytical idea;
2) Identify a specific channel/article/project and characterize what it reveals about the methods, themes, and arguments of the particular domain of design;
3) Briefly situate the channel/article/project’s position in the structure and flow of the design website;
4) Carefully describe the elements of the channel/article/project ;
5) Discuss how the channel/article/project reveals the nature, dilemmas, desires, skills, actions of the designer(s);
6) Discuss what particular views of people and society emerge from the channel/article/project and the designer’s work;
7) Discuss what more general assessment of modern society—its high and low-tech institutions and practices—and the lives of individuals emerges from the design-site in
general.

6. DEV paragraph 5:
1) Briefly identify and characterize the NeriOxman design site and set up your analytical idea;
2) Identify a specific channel/article/project and characterize what it reveals about the methods, themes, and arguments of the particular domain of design;
3) Briefly situate the channel/article/project’s position in the structure and flow of the design website;
4) Carefully describe the elements of the channel/article/project ;
5) Discuss how the channel/article/project reveals the nature, dilemmas, desires, skills, actions of the designer(s);
6) Discuss what particular views of people and society emerge from the channel/article/project and the designer’s work;
7) Discuss what more general assessment of modern society—its high and low-tech institutions and practices—and the lives of individuals emerges from the design-site in
general.

7. SUM paragraph:
1) Discuss how the channel/article/projects you analyzed fit into the broad craft of design, and how it illustrates the theme of changing a society for the better;
2) Sample the most important/vivid image/fact from each of the five channels/articles/projects you investigated (as a way of leaving the reader with a jewel-bright
idea/image of design transforming things);
3) Discuss how the designer’s method aided in making a vision into a reality;
4) Discuss how the design-site’s artistic and technical ideas aid in telling a particular ‘design story’;
5) Link this designs and designers–their objects, method, themes, and arguments to a range of similar social activities and problem solutions;
6) End with an assessment of what such designs and designers can enable us to see and terms of changing the world around us for the better.

8. EN: the series of supplementary notes offering such information as a general summary of the sites as locations of information, and the designers responsible,
detailed profiles of projects, tools, materials, and processes used by the designers, discussions of the effects of those designed objects/systems, and discussions of
how audiences/users ‘receive’ the designs, and so on.
9. WC1 : the required formal listing of works directly mentioned, referenced, paraphrased, summarized, described, quoted. (A minimum of 6 required references per
designer [the first gathered from the respective website, plus five more sources found through extended research]; a baseline of 30 total for the set; more are needed
and discoveredto be relevant.)
10. WC2: the required formal listing of works indirectly used to understand designstructures, processes, and formal genres, the effects of various design technologies,
social structure, psychological states and processes, and issues of law arising from the placement of designed objects and systems into the flow of the world.
11. APP: provide one or more images, charts, diagrams, tables from the sites that you discuss, as visual evidence of a particular designer’s work (including
descriptive captions and source citation codes).
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is several-fold:
1) scholarly approach to use of internet materials,
2) analysis of complex narrative and aesthetic objects,
3) comparison and contrast of similar analytical objects,
4) investigation of descriptive and explanatory language,
5) direct quotation, citation, commentary from a range of complex texts,
6) synthesis of five rich information-sites in the context of a critical analysis,
7) development of a long discussion which richly illustrates the general course theme,
8) preparation for semester-length research essays in other GE courses,
9) synthesis of multiple research resources,
10) extended practice with building and tuning a research/drafting system to study and produce high-end, information-intensive, knowledge-rich documents.
Because each of these five design websites is novel-like in length and complexity, analyzing them in a series is great practice for the kind of critical investigations
that you will undertake in English 4: Critical Thinking and Composition—Language in Context, and Humanities 2: Media of Creativity. Additionally, because of the
popularity, diversity, and sophistication of designers, their processes and works, you will certainly be able to write on other designers as examples of problem-
solvers and innovators in cultural, social, political, and economic domains in a number of GE classes required of an undergraduate.