Reflection on Growth

One project that I think I could have improved on from the 7 weeks is the logo design project. I think I could have improved on this project because in my opinion I think the logo turned out pretty ugly. I tried to use symbols like money and houses to represent letters in our group's name, but the symbols didn't really look good and also didn't really connect to our topic. I remember a specific piece of feedback from my classmate who said my symbols (especially the tree symbol) looked pretty ugly and also didn't connect to my topic on houses.

After my first project pitch a specific piece of feedback that I remember I got was that people couldn't really tell why we cared about our specific sdg and issue and that our community partner didn't really directly help our issue. After getting this feedback before our second project pitch our group finally found a topic that we were all passionate about which was how unaffordable housing was becoming in Taipei. We also found a lot of research that taught us about the root of our issue and why the issue persists. Before the pitch we also found a community partner that directly helps with the issue that we're trying to solve.

My first project pitch could also be connected to my science class last year. Last year in science class we learned about how loss of diversity in biomes could slowly ruin the environment. We thought that because some members in the group had learned about this topic that it would be easy. I used some of the knowledge that I learned last year to start the research on our issue. Since I already knew about how environmental exploitation our group decided to sort of start our research there.

Last semester in pbl I had a pechakucha presentation. Before the presentation I didn't prepare at all which led to an awkward presentation where I had to freestyle all of my lines. This changed when I had to do my second project pitch.  Before that presentation I had prepared a lot of what I would say. I remember reading over the presentation 2 times before the actual presentation which helped me be more confident and also helped me give a smoother presentation.

One thing that I could improve on in pbl is the working and communicating with my teammates. In both this year and last year's pbl I was easily distracted by some of my groupmates making it hard for me to complete work efficiently.

Social Justice Investigation

The social justice issue that me and my group are focusing on is the high housing prices in Taipei. The group of people affected by this issue are people with lower income. This issue is close to me becuase growing up I always wanted a big and safe house, but now that I have gotten older I slowy realize that getting an actual high quality house in Taipei requires years of hard work. For many people they were never able to achieve their goal of buying a high quality house because the housing prices in Taipei are too high.

Graphic Design Growth

At the beginning of the semester I didn't realize how powerful graphic design was. I didn't realize that it could be used to affect people's emotions and express my ideas. Slowly after learning about the elements of design, I realized how easily people could be affected just through something simple like changing the colors in a picture. One important thing I learned about graphic design is the elements of art. I can use it on my magazine to make people focus more on the important information that I want to present and also attract people's attention.

GSP 2 Weeks 8-16

Week 8

In week 8 we focused on designing a logo that would show the theme of the social justice issue we were researching. We took one logo from our groupmates that the group thought was the best and made some improvements to them in order to create the best version.

What I worked on: I also made a version of the logo for my groupmates to choose from. Even though it didn't make the final cut I gave my group an option for a log design.

Week 9 - 13

Between weeks 9-13 we first made a project outline to get a general idea for what content was going to be in the magazine. Then we started writing our drafts. We made 1 draft where the writing and layout were separate, then we combined them and made a second draft. After that we made 2 more drafts that were improvements of the previous versions.

What I worked on: I contributed to the completion of these drafts by gathering research with my groupmate Andrew in order to write articles in the drafts. I worked on the issue, past interventions, community parter/get involved articles using the research I gathered.

Week 14-15

Tshirt Making: Our class made a Tshirt for everyone to wear to exhibition.

Mock Exhibition: Our class had a mock exhibition where we could practice our pitches and also get feedback on how we could improve them.

For the project pitch we each gave an individual pitch to the teacher so they could give us feedback what was good and what we could improve about them.

What I worked on: I "contributed" to the project pitch by also preparing my own pitch so people would know what I would say during exhibition.

Reflection of Growth

During the process of creating the final magazine I contributed to it's completion by doing research, finding pictures, and writing articles based off of the research that I found. Throughout the whole process I learned the importance of finding relevant but also trustworthy sources while researching.

One important piece of feedback that I received was in my articles my data or claims didn't attribute to the sources they came from.  After recieving this feedback I went back and changed many of my claims in the articles so that they would reference where the information came from. This made the article sound more professional and a lot more credible since people could now see where the facts came from.

Compared to my previous projects in this project I found myself being more responsible for my own work. In past projects I often found myself procrastinating and completing the needed work at the very last second.  But during this project I was able to complete my work on time and responsibly in class.  As a group member I grew by caring for the whole group instead of focusing on completing my own work, I was able to remind my groupmates who were off task to complete their work. In the future I would like to improve on this by adding a schedule for what work should be done on what day. for this project I simply completed work when I had to. But with a schedule I would actually know what I had to do each day greatly reducing the work load. This PBL project also connected to several of my previous classes. One example of a class was my geography class. In geography we also learned about how to find good sources that could contribute to my project. We learned about the SIFT research. I was able to apply that to my PBL project so I could find credible sources to aid in my research.

Social Justice Investigation

Investigating housing injustice significantly deepened our group's understanding of the  systemic inequality when it came to housing in Taipei.  I didn't realize that housing inequalty is such a huge problem in Taipei. I was surprised by the fact that the house's price to income ration was at a 16.43. That means low-income households have to spend almost all of their earnings on houses which would affect people quality of life, safety, and finacial flexibility.

Before conducting the research I thought that housinf inequality in Taipei only affected homeless or people with extremely low-income. After doing deeper research on the issue I realized people with average income or nromal jobs are also slowly being affected since the house prices are rising at a much faster pace than the worker's income.

After conducting these investigations I realized that the housing inequality in Taipei is a systemic issue. I also learned that high housing prices also affects many aspects of people's lives such as their safety and health since they have to spend a lot of money on mortgage prices. The reality that many people still try to ignore is that housing inequality isn't just because of the lack of buildings, it is also because of speculative pricing and people who think of housing as a chance for profit rather than a human right. I now understand that true social justice is actually advocating for a systematic change rather than helping temporarily.

Graphic Design

Throughout the semester, my understanding of graphic design has evolved significantly. I used to think graphic design was  just putting random images and texts on a page to guide the readers eye to the most important information.  After helping with the layout and logo for the magazine. Some principles of design like contrast helped me visually show the inequality that was caused by the housing market to give the readers a feeling before actually reading the article.

Visual communication was crucial in our message so we can emotionally connect with our audience so they may get into the mindset before reading our text. I am particularly proud of the magazine cover for our final draft because it showed the contrast between high rise sky scrapers and the reality of the situation with houses that are of lower quality. It really showed the duality of the situation and shows the difference between the low income and higher income households.