Overall, Professional Orientation was a helpful unit as there was a lot of new content I learned in relation to design, including codes of conduct for the design industry, the wide range of career pathways and how varied the different design opportunities are. I was especially interested in both-ways learning and how it emphasizes the importance of understanding both my own culture, the culture of others, and how to promote collaboration between traditional aboriginal knowledge and newer western culture learnings. I found the Gantt chart planning exercise to be very useful when planning out assessments as it helped me visualize what steps needed to be taken and when they needed to be completed by to hand in assessments on time. A major setback I experienced during the semester was during the group assessment when I had substantial difficulty with communication between the group, ultimately leading to a less than desirable outcome in executing the oral presentation as well as the overall design of the slides used during the presentation.
Looking forward to the future, I would like to build on my group communication skills as well as my knowledge and ability to use design software such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. My experience during the group assessment caused considerable stress when it wasn’t needed so to improve this, I will be more involved in making sure others are meeting targets along the way so that any issues with the group can be mitigated in time before the due date. Along with this I will practice using the various Adobe programs to upskill ahead of the next semester as this will dramatically improve my efficiency when it comes to designing portfolios, design briefs and illustrated reports.