MDes first year journey map

Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan

The MDes in Integrative Design program includes a First Year Review (FYR) benchmark to reflect on our progress, learning, and key takeaways from our first year and facilitate a conversation with MDes faculty on our projecting our next steps forward by identifying our research and learning goals for our second and final program year (year-long thesis projects).

As part of the FYR process, my cohort and I were encouraged to prepare a journey map as a sense-making exercise of individual MDes experiences over the past two semesters. Taking cues from New York Magazine’s notorious “Approval Matrix,” I constructed a visualization of my points of revelation, accomplishments, as well as pain points and challenges; cumulatively contributing to my growth and learning over that year and identification of key concepts and methodologies that I planned to explore through my thesis project.