I have worked at the BYU Electric Shop with the Fire Alarm Crew for about a year and a half. The Fire Alarm Crew is required to test and maintain fire alarm equipment throughout all of BYU campus. Entering the job, I felt like I had no knowledge about Fire Alarms, but I’ve learned a lot since then, and not just about Fire Alarms.
With attacks on the scientific community happening everyday, I thought it would be helpful for people to know more about the peer review process. Yes, the peer review process does have problems, but currently it is our best bet at getting to the facts. Find out why this matters to you as a designer.
I started thinking about the story behind the things around me later on in my middle school career. I can't remember what exactly initiated the thoughts, but I remember them eating at me. "Why is this thing like this? Why couldn’t they have done this other thing?" I began contracting the product designers' disease of perpetual criticism of the created environment around me early on.
The BYU Design Review just turned one year old. As we go into our second year we want to continue to grow and help designer’s make better products. We have a new editor and associate editor, so we wanted to give you a chance to get to know the team.
During my graduate program, I finally fell in love with school. That's right. It took more than four years after high-school, but it happened to me.
Simply put, a fellowship is a distinguished honor accompanied by a monetary award “that graduate students or postgraduate scholars typically compete for, and fellows are selected based on their potential to make a positive, long-lasting contribution to their academic discipline”
The long term relationship between a design team and it’s client has everything to do with what the design team delivers and when. Setting clear expectations about the quality and completeness of the design work keeps both the design team and the client from changing the expectations without thoughtful discussions together. Simply articulating early in the development process, what good, better, and best solutions look like can make all the difference in what is delivered and in the long term relationship.
Learning is an essential skill as an engineer. New technology is always emerging and the skills needed for a particular design are always changing. Learning new skills isn’t always easy, especially when you progress past what Youtube can teach you.
Think of your favorite fictional characters. Who are they? Do they live in a world like ours or somewhere very different and far away? What do they look like? What do they like to do? Consider your relationship with these characters. Though they are not real, you are invested in their story.
It’s time to design… even while we can’t design together face to face.
Conceptual design is the early part of the design process, which is often envisioned with post-it covered walls, smart interdisciplinary teams, and concept sketching. Conceptual design is full of energy and optimism. Until it is not. In this article I give a few tips – centered on the ancient philosophy of yin and yang – that help me keep conceptual design full of energy and optimizing the whole time.
Seniors in engineering around the country are about to start their capstone experience. For many of them it will be the biggest project they have ever undertaken. As a previous capstone student and coach here are some tips to help you be successful.
Have you ever zoomed in on an image and it was so pixelated you couldn’t read or understand anything? Have you ever had an email get stuck behind a filter because your figures or images were too big in terms of file size? If any of that sounds familiar, you might be using the wrong kind of images or figures.
The new school year is right around the corner. Succeeding in engineering coursework is no easy feat. Here’s some articles to make it a little easier for you.
Ever think about design while brushing your teeth? There is a lesson or two, during the minute or two, we use a tool in our mouth daily.
Many of you are headed back to school and are about to be put in an environment that will challenge your knowledge, expose your weaknesses, and encourage you to build new strength. I hope this personal story about my relationship with math will encourage you to turn fear into growth.
I observed that the general degradation of classes once they shifted online was common to many students, for reasons such as the added complexity of interacting over video calls, reduction of interpersonal interactions (including non-verbal), and the dehumanization of the class community into floating profile images.
Metaphors, similes, parallels, allegories, symbols, and, of course, analogies are some of the tools designers, engineers, and scientists often use to communicate, discover, and develop their trade. Johannes Kepler was one of the foremost scientists to apply analogies to discover the design of our solar system. We should follow his example in our efforts.
If you think your design will be “right/good/complete/perfect” after just one cycle of creation, you’ll be disappointed and frustrated. It won’t be right, it probably won’t even be good. If you accept that iteration is a normal, healthy, and expected part of the design process, your love for, and competency in, designing things will skyrocket.
Never heard of the data-to-not-data ratio in figures? It’s a good thing to know and consider. This is one article in a series of techniques and practices for designing good figures and visualizations.
