An interesting outcome of this whole prewriting exercise is that I’ve begun to make better use of diagrams as tools to understand readings and organize my thoughts. This happened somewhat by accident. I started out just trying to make some rough concept maps as an initial prewriting exercise. Soon the sketches consumed my attention, and I began tweaking the spacing and arrangement as a way to refine my understanding. After writing a little bit, I went back to the diagram to try to turn it into an accurate representation of my argument.

For this assignment, I prewrote a paper to apply Verbeek’s material aesthetics (a reading from Erik’s class) to the design of PC hardware. Here is my attempt to chart Verbeek’s argument. I’m really interested to continue exploring this process of dialogue between diagrams and text as a writing strategy.