Study Task 06 - How To Write Correctly - OUGD401

On the 22/07/15 whilst I was visiting Leeds, I took the opportunity to pop into the university library to look at some past dissertations of Graphic Design students to get a good perspective on their written form, such as grammar, punctuation, tone-of-voice, vocabulary and referencing.

I chose the following 3 pieces of text to study:

1.

2.

3.

This task has given me good insight on where I went wrong in my own writing. Giving points and not providing sufficient evidence to back them up. I have now get an idea of what I need to focus on changing for future essay's to strengthen my own academic writing.


1. "In what ways can user experience inform graphic interface design for online services?", firstly, I like how Ellen has began with a question in the title. I feel this gives the reader a brief outline of what the essay is answering, rather than having a very short answer as the title (Funnily enough, all 3 I have chosen use this exact element, a question for a title.). Her introduction is well scripted, she has thought hard about the things she will be mainly focusing on, and has given a brief description of some of the acronyms she will be using throughout the essay. I specifically like how she has engaged with the reader, meaning she has thought thoroughly about how she is communicating her message and what points she will be focusing on in each chapter. Continuing onto the 1st chapter, she starts off by using a short paragraph to emphasise the main focal points to ensure the reader knows what she will be talking about. This is always useful and will ensure your message is always fully understood. Overall, I like her style of writing and think she has hit the nail on the head on structure and I feel the essay makes great sense. The conclusion is pretty much the opposite polar end of the introduction and goes hand in hand. Almost as if the intro was written in past tense, focusing on what hypothesis were correct, which were wrong and if she eventually managed to catch the essence she was looking for throughout the essay. Which I think she has, this paper was an insightful and interesting read.

2. "How can advertisers influence emotional responses?" - A pretty broad title by the sounds of it. One thing I noticed however is how her title has no subject matter, who's emotional response is going to be triggered by these advertisers, the consumer? designers? But this is not derivative of the actual body, it is quickly made clear that Anna is focusing on consumer which is an important factor I feel she should have included in the title. The introduction tells the reader she will be focusing on the psychological aspect of consumers, how they respond to advertising techniques and the morality of manipulating the consumer mind. Moving swiftly onto the first chapter, she uses a rather long paragraph to introduce you to the 'responsibilities of the advertiser'. I feel the long passage is acceptable because she focuses on another author's research, this preps the reader and tells you what kind of things she'll be investigating and where the evidence is coming from to back it all up. I feel this writing is a little less focussed on design and more towards advertising which is slightly unusual but she makes it work through extensive research and evidence in her text. Anna's use of technical vocabulary throughout her essay proves an impressive feat I have yet to refine myself. Her conclusion solidifies this statement, by namely focussing on the author's she studies throughout the essay to affectively end the paper with statements earlier proven in the previous chapters.

3. "Is planned obsolescence an essential element of global capitalism" - Again, this is another focusing primarily on capitalism, which I have studied myself. This is a very difficult question to answer as it is very popular and there are many theories surrounding the area Bethany had chosen to focus on. Her introduction is almost a list of what her chapters will be focusing on, whilst I appreciate this straight forward approach, I am starting to see how your essay must be fully thought out before beginning to write the intro, as they have all pretty much looked as if they had written the introduction after they'd written the whole paper. Telling the reader what they are going t investigate and what topics within their question they will be striving to answer. Bethany provides an outstanding amount of referencing from a wide veriety of sources which I feel is extremely important as obsolescence relies heavily on statistics and data, which is clearly evidenced within her writing, she herself is not making the statements, she is gathering a healthy body of research to provide sufficient evidence that her question is indeed correct. I feel the conclusion is a little spoon fed, again she has used an almost list of chapters in each paragraph, for example "Chapter one showed...", "Chapter two showed..." and "Chapter three focused on...", which I don't think is necessary and the structure should explain this for you, instead of having to individually explain which chapter focussed on what.

The major thing I have taken from this exercise is that I failed to split things up into chapters, chop it all up and make it flow. I made the mistake of letting myself go off-topic and get in a bit of a tangent. Which I have now later learned from my mistakes and will ensure this doesn't happen again through proper preparation and a planned structure.

One huge asset I have gained from these dissertations is to answer the questions in the introduction, then conclude at the end by summarising each chapter and whether you were successful in your endeavours.