written reflections

When writing purposely, we tend to become more conscious of our words compared to speaking. It takes longer to write a sentence than it does to say it, and therefore we slow down our thinking. By forcing us to stay with each sentence longer, writing allows us more time to think about the particular sentence we are writing. When writing multiple reflections it allows us to take a bird’s-eye view. You can take a step back and revisit thoughts by re-reading what you wrote. Moreover it works as a thoughts record. Your thoughts and feelings about an event will change over time, and therefore being able to read these and your learning outcomes can support you in maintaining the learning.

Reflective reports / essays

Diary / Journaling

Blog Posts

Post its

It is written in a logical stucture - use frameworks from the toolkit for help with structure.
Someone else will likely be reading it, hence think carefully about what you put in it, you want to provide context for the things you are talking about.
Even with reports, unless stated otherwise, you could illustrate your points with visuals and graphics, helpful for illustrating design decisions, inspiration, and visual research.

Can be used both for private reflection and for reflection with an audience.
Works particularly well to record multiple entries, recurring thoughts, and development. Reading old entries can help you understand your change in thinking and overall development.
You can use this to track daily progress and understanding, and then use major insights and understandings in your process documentation / reflections that you create for class.

In many ways these function in the same way as reflective journals.
As this is a online digital format it gives you ample space to incorporate a ton of multimedia to visually track research, inspiration, and critical decision making that can later be put into your process document / reflection.
As a designer this could be done in conjuction with an online portfolio, while this might add to your portfolio content, you will have to keep structure in mind.

Can capture thoughts as they come.
Easy to have available - can use both physical and digital ones.
Informal – you just need enough text to remember what you mean
Flexible and editable, you can use paper or digital post-its based on what you’re comfortable with.
Use it to make quick notes of important aspects of meetings, critique, feedback, research, inspiration, and major points in your design process. This can be used to populate your process doc and reflection.

audio reflections with self

When getting lost in thought, it is often the case that we are not actually aware that we are doing it – and often we are not thinking about what our conclusion means and we fail to put them in context or we forget. To ensure that the experience of getting lost in thoughts definitely transforms into reflection you need to be conscious about when you want to do/are doing it, and do it purposefully. This does not have to be as a debrief of a project or the process you worked on, you can use this as a way to audibly keep track of what you’re working on as you work on it. By recording your thoughts that you say out loud you might find it easier to keep track of nuances in your thinking without breaking away from the flow of your design process.

Thinking by yourself / out loud

Video recording

Audio recording

Speech to text on software

Ensure you are aware of when you do it, for example you might choose to do it on your way to the shop. You might realise while walking to class that you were thinking about a moment in your project while walking there, but that won’t necessarily make the thinking you did on the way to the shop reflection
Some people might find it helpful to talk out loud as this automatically makes it more conscious and purposeful
You'll need to conciously remember to note down important points and connect them to the appropriate visuals when you're done, remember you need to put this all in a document and provide context.

You might find that filming yourself while reflecting out loud might work well for you
This can be done for personal use, or as a vlog.
If it is done with the purpose of publishing it, or is required of you, be aware of the appropriateness of your reflection and the audience - someone else is seeing it, hence think carefully about what you put in it.
You can also do a screen recording while you work and record yourself talking out loud, this will give you visual context to your thoughts when you revisit them.

Allows you to revisit your thoughts later when compiling process docs.
Might be faster than writing it down and does not require pen and paper or computer, only your phone and a headset.
It can be done while walking or doing other activities with a headset and phone.
It can be done while working on a project, pausing to record yourself work through problems and major moments in your process.

Just like talking to yourself but you don’t have to go back and listen to yourself to go through old reflections.
Possible on all mobile and computer devices
Remember to take note of ample of visuals if it's to be used as a starting point for longer structured reflections for a process document

conversations with others

Reflecting with others provides many benefits to the reflective process. One thing that others might be better at than we are, is asking challenging questions. You might reflect really well by yourself and ask yourself lots of questions, to help identify your assumptions. It is important to note that there are many types of conversations with other people that are productive, valuable, and important, but not necessarily reflective.
Talking to others about your processs and development — either with someone who has more experience than your, or someone who went through the same project / processs as you — can provide you with fresh critique, feedback, and perspectives. All of this is valuable information to incorporate into your reflections and future plans and processes.

With someone more experienced

With a peer

With a group

This could be with a professor, supervisor or manager at work, or a mentor at work, school, or through your network.
Throughout life you are likely to end up having many senior individuals who facilitate reflection as a part of your development.
Getting feedback and critique on your progress and process gives can provide you with important information you can incorporate into your reflection.

This can be done just in conversation with a friend, but needs to be done with purpose. Using a reflective framework as a base for the conversation might help.
Reflection can be done in a pairs if you had to work with someone through a project together, use a list of questions based on a framework.
This can be used as a basis to understand your own thinking and experiences before going into writing reflections.

There are multiple ways you might find yourself reflecting in groups. The immediate benefit of reflecting in groups is the added value of multiple perspectives.
This can be reflecting on a shared experience, you might find that you have different experiences and these different perspectives can provide opportunity for learning.
Reflecting on collaboration at the end of group work, doing this regularly might help you develop your ability to work with a team

visual reflections

When working through the reflective process some people find they either don’t need words or they want to use words to explore feelings and thoughts differently. If you feel like you're too much of a visual thinker for writing straight away, there are a variety of visual ways to plan and track your progress to see major themes and trends in your thinking.
Just remember that if you're doing this for an academic project this has to turn into words eventually.

mind mapping

Rather than diving straight into text based reflection, you can create a mind maps of major concepts you've touched on in your process to track your thinking and track the steps you've taken through the project.
You can use digital white boarding tools like MURAL or MIRO to create maps with multimedia embedded in it, perfect for tracking research and inspiration links or screenshots and video embeds of your process.
Physically mapping on paper gives you the ability to be faster with taking down thoughts, and means you can do it in the middle of working on your designs without breaking out of the flow and switching to a different application. Plus, you can do it anywhere, realise a previous thought connects to a new one when you're on a bus? Pull out a notebook and map it out real quick.
You can add to your process doc by including screenshots, links, scans, or pictures of your maps and add them to the end with annotations explaining what it is.

tool:kit

Methods

Ways of Reflecting

Written Reflections

Audio Reflections

Conversations

Visual Reflections

ways of reflecting

written reflections

audio reflections with self

conversations with others

visual reflections