David Roedl

On Friday, I presented my master’s capstone project, which in a symbolic sense concluded and summed up my design school experience. Putting together the presentation gave me a chance to reflect on the type of work I did this year: my approach, my process and the tacit knowledge gained. I came up with a few concepts that I think especially characterize this capstone project, and also synthesize much of my learning experience from the last two years.

Chief among them is the notion of design as service. In their book, the Design Way, Nelson and Stolterman write that design is about creating intentional change in the real world. As such, a designer must always work within limited time, resources and knowledge. And furthermore, design is never solitary, but is rather defined by dynamic relationships, working in service of others. Continue reading ‘Reflections on service, strategy, protoyping’

I just found out that I have advanced to the final round of the 2008 Microsoft Imagine Cup Interface Design competition. The theme of this year’s competition is “Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment”. My design (submitted along with teammate Will Odom) is part of my capstone work creating an energy conservation contest for IU campus. We will be one of 6 teams to compete in the world finals in Paris, France later this summer. Here is the abstract that we submitted with our prototype: Continue reading ‘Imagine Cup Finalist’

For the past two months, I’ve been working to overhaul the look and contents of this site. I was getting bored with the generic Wordpress theme, so I decided to create my own style from scratch. This turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, but I am pleased with the results. The style came together with some typographic advice from Web Designer Wall, and some worn edges by way of designer Henry Jones. Along with the new look, I’ve also added a lot more content to my portfolio, notably bringing it up to date and featuring my ongoing capstone project. So please take a look at what I’ve been to and let me know what you think! Also, with the site design out of the way, I’m hoping to find time to start blogging again…