The faculty and students were extremely generous to our group, from the beginning to very end of the day! We were all so impressed with them. They picked us up from the traditional Korean house and took us to their campus. Their grad students and professors accompanied us throughout the day.
In the morning we had a design workshop with their students and split off into groups. Each group had two Inje students with two KState students. This was quite the experience! We had little time to work on our design project.
The project??
We had to design a booth/exhibit for a site on Inje's campus to sell studying abroad at Kansas State University. This was very fitting because our colleges are trying to create a dual major graduate degree program for interior design between the two universities! Many things we had to focus on was lighting, signage, accessible heights, etc. Inje provided us with all materials for drawing and modeling... This doesn't seem so difficult until you add 2 major things into the mix...
1) Communication
In my group their were 4 students, three of the students were 100% fluent in Korean. I only know the English language, maybe a little Spanish from high school. I DONT KNOW AN OUNCE OF KOREAN. Well, I can say thank you, I guess. So Hee is decently good with English and the Inje students barely knew English. How do we design something when we can't talk? ...Translating and drawing a lot. The three Koreans in the group did most of the talking, since I was the minority. So Hee would help me to understand what was going on:) Communication was extremely difficult. I communicated by drawing and building very quick study models to explain my ideas on form.
2) The good old metric system...
We have never worked with the metric system in the KState program. For this workshop, our professors included this as a requirement. The Inje students only know the metric system. Trying to convert, translate, and explain dimensions was a struggle for all of us. I would imagine a design idea and dimensions in inches and then convert it to centimeters for the Koreans to understand.
The struggle and challenge made the entire design experience very interesting and fun! Sometimes our frustration would lead to laughs! After around 2 hours of designing, we all presented. The KState students ended up presenting since we knew English the best. Everyone had great ideas!
After the workshop, Inje students and professors took us out to eat a traditional Korean meal. We sat on the floor again which was quite uncomfortable after sleeping on a floor the night before!
After lunch we dropped the Inje students back at their campus and said our goodbyes! We tried to exchange names to make Facebook friends!
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