I took part yesterday in a Thesis Committee meeting for a student working on a project for her Masters degree in design. She is designing a website with the purpose of facilitating a community for female cancer victims. There was a fair amount of discussion surrounding how far she must take the project to be granted the degree. There were faculty members on the committee from other visual arts disciplines, and they expect a thesis project to result in a finished work of art. There was some discomfort in the suggestion that the website would not have to be implemented and put into use for her to complete her thesis and her degree.
While the student very much wants to build and launch the site and is working on getting the sponsorship/funding and collaborators with the necessary skill sets to make it a reality, it is my own opinion that her thesis is much more about the process she followed and what she has learned than it is about the final artifact. I and the other design faculty argued that as long as the design was completed satisfactorily, she could deliver her thesis and receive her degree before implementation has finished. I know that when I was working on my own Masters degree, there was no expectation that my project would result in running software. With the advances in web application development in recent years, and with technologies such as Ruby on Rails and Flash making "running software" a more accessible possibility to those without a degree in software engineering, I wonder if expectations are increasing. I'd like to hear what the IxDA community thinks about it. Best, Jack Jack L. Moffett Interaction Designer inmedius 412.459.0310 x219 http://www.inmedius.com There is no good design that is not based on the understanding of people. - Stefano Marzano CEO of Philips Design ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
