Written by Janette Li, 2018 Cohort
Thanks to my teacher, Aida inviting me to write this blog.
I felt so honoured to share some of my experiences and thoughts in Pre-MDM. It has already been two years since I graduated from Pre-MDM, how time flies!
Life in pre-MDM is a little bit vague for me, but when I tried to recall it, warm and cheerful feelings still the first impression comes to my mind.
Not to mention how nice and supportive all the teachers are. Long story short, Pre-MDM was my first time studying in a country with a different culture, it was quite challenging for me, but three things that I learnt from this program created a profound influence on me.
1. Keep asking why before making any design decisions.
Before I came to pre-MDM, I wasn’t pretty good at critical thinking because all my past learning experiences never emphasized that.
I used to believe that all the questions are supposed to have a right and standard answer.
Until one time in Jason’s class, where I tried to explain my design decisions with my team but I couldn’t make a convincing point, then he kindly reminded me that I might try to figure out the reasons before trying to sell my solutions, and a solid solution comes with the understanding of the problem, and we could always make a right answer if we could articulate the reasons.
2. Experience cultural differences but keep your personality shine.
When I just came to Canada, just like all the new immigrants, I experienced culture shock and felt a bit nervous about the new environment. But thanks to Aida, she not only always helped us understand the Canadian culture in classes by introducing the social manners, and slang, etc, but she also organized field trips every semester and encouraged us to widen the horizons of knowledge through outdoor activities such as visiting local museums, These activities helped me to quickly fit into the new environment. At the same time, we had pitching and presenting courses, which taught us to show our personality when selling our ideas. We knew that though we might have different cultures, our personality is important to impress people and make connections.
3. Designing, Prototyping, Testing, Iterating
Pre-MDM is the place where I got a start in understanding the meaning of creating minimum viable products within a set of constraints, both technical and time-based. We developed web-applications, games and even multi-platform content as a team, sometimes different roles might have conflicted with each other, but learning to create prototypes helped us to move faster without wasting too much technical effort. The concept of agile development also helped me to get ready for the MDM program.
Last but not least, a huge thank you to all the dedicated teachers for their unconditional support, and for being my partners in this journey.