In this week’s thesis workshop we focused on articulating intentions in order to decide what actions, directions, methods or outputs would be good or bad. One of the helpful and clarifying examples that Abby (Covert) gave was “casino carpets”. Showing the images of carpets, which have tons of contrasting colors and tiny patterns with lots of details, Abby asked us if they are good or bad. After we had a quick discussion as a class she asked the purpose of the carpet and discussion moved forward. Then the realization was that those carpets are actually “good” when considered the intentions of a casino. The main idea is that it is not logical to judge something without considering its context and the intentions behind that decision.

Then we teamed up with two of our classmates to articulate our intentions about our theses. While one of the team members was talking about his/her thesis, other team members wrote downs the words by picking up from his/her sentences. Finally we sorted out those words to see which are good and which are bad. Some of the good words popped out in my turn were “solving real problems”, “producing meaningful products”, “speculative”, “viable”, “interesting” and “inspiring”  and some of the bad ones that came from my fears and the directions that I avoid were “fostering capitalism”, “unclear target”, “inadequate research”. Moving forward to the next steps, it was very helpful to learn about these strategic thinking tools in order to judge my potential decisions in my thesis.