One thing that surprised me a lot in my master studies, was the number of individual reflective essays we had to write (on top of other assignments, of course!).
Maybe this is only the case in the design master, but in most courses (5 out 7 so far), we have to reflect either on what we did or what we could do in the future.
- In Codesign, we had reflections on two co-design tools that we experimented with: what did we plan? what did it do? what could be explored further?
- In Design strategy and management, we had to spin-off on our group assignment (how is the design function integrated into a company). In our reflective essay, we had to propose a reasonable and pertinent strategy change.
- In Leadership and Organizational Change, we had to write an individual development plan assessing our strengths and weaknesses, and how we could work toward a leadership position that we aspire to.
- In Thinking with Representations, we reflect for each seminar on how the concepts in the papers we read are related to our own experiences.
- In Studio 2 (aka Service Design Studio), we reflect on the tools we used in each phase of the project and what are the challenges our ideas might face in the next one.
So quite a lot of reflections, no?
While they are a bit confusing and annoying when you start, they actually provide a lot of insights on what we do, why we do it and how can we improve. They push you to make self-reflection a habit to better yourself and keep learning for your whole life. Kind of a self-learning plan, and not just learning theories and exercises. Cool, right?
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