Friday, October 25, 2013

Design 101: Adventure Awaits!


Screenshot from: http://www.mooc-list.com/

I just signed up for my first MOOC, aka Massive Open Online Course. I found it listed here, along with this screenshot which explains what a MOOC actually is.

I've worked in Design for years but have never taken a design course. I'm also obsessed with Innovation and there's nothing quite as thrilling as daring oneself to go on an adventure and try something new. Beginner's Mind is not necessarily an easy or comfortable place to live... but who said life was supposed to be comfortable??

Adventures are thrilling because they test our fears and our willingness to move out of our comfort zones. They are also thrilling because there's nothing like that adrenaline rush of accomplishment once we've done so and find ourselves still breathing.

Given the whole MOOC meme -- no big surprise to find a Pinterest Board dedicated to it -- I scoured the internet and found a course that sounds right up my alley: Design 101 (or Design Basics) on the iversity platform.

I also found a thought-provoking opinion piece about Design and eLearning on Dezeen, and it mentions this particular course:
Stefano Mirti's "Design 101" course, for Iversity via Accademia di Belle Arti in Catania, indicates some of the promise for design education in this medium. Irresistibly Italian in presentation, Design 101 provides challenging briefs of things to make, with Mirti supplying context and inspiration.

After reading about the course, its founder, Stefano Mirti, and viewing its fantastic introductory video, I enrolled today (it starts on Monday October 28th) and so my adventure begins. I can't wait to get started.



Luckily, this team seems to mean serious business and is offering a series of preparatory exercises. I dared myself to complete one today.

Here's the tweet with the exercise:

And here is my submission -- It was a dare and a thrill to complete because I have a huge mental block when it comes to drawing and sketching. But I pushed myself to just get over it and DO IT.


The submissions are posted here. It's interesting to see how different people approach a given exercise.

1 comment:

  1. superlike!

    looking forward to start the journey...

    :-)

    see you on design 101!

    ReplyDelete