Design for Change MA (eca) postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

When a bus route changes in our city, the paper notices taped inside shelters are often the only warning many passengers get. As a scheduling assistant at a bus depot, I help prepare the information that goes onto those notices, and for two years I have watched how little of it survives contact with the people it is meant for. Drivers tell me which stops generate complaints; I compare that with what we printed. The pattern is rarely that people did not read the notice. It is that the notice answered the operator's question, which service number has moved, rather than the passenger's, which is how do I now get to the hospital on a Tuesday. That gap between how an organisation describes a change and how people live through it is what I want to study.

My undergraduate degree in Product Design gave me a grounding in making physical things work, but my final project pushed me towards systems. I was asked to improve a small bike-share scheme on campus whose bikes were frequently left broken. My first instinct was to design a sturdier lock. After a fortnight of logging which faults were reported and interviewing six regular users and the one part-time mechanic, I realised most damage was minor and simply went unreported, because there was no obvious way to flag it. I ended up designing a modular repair kit for the mechanic and a set of tags riders could clip onto a bike to mark a fault in seconds. The prototype tags were tested over three weeks at two docking points. Reports increased noticeably, though the sample was too small to claim much, and I was candid about that in my write-up. What I valued most was learning that the useful intervention was in communication and routine, not the object I had assumed needed redesigning.

Since graduating I have continued this kind of thinking outside work. I edit the quarterly newsletter for my building's tenants' association, which began as a photocopied sheet that few people opened. I reorganised it around a single question each issue, such as how to report damp, and added a tear-off slip for replies. Responses are still modest, but more neighbours now come to meetings saying they read it, and two have offered to write pieces. It is unglamorous work, yet it has taught me patience with slow, collective change and with people who have good reasons to distrust official communication.

My reading has helped me name what I have been noticing. Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things gave me the language of signifiers and feedback, which maps surprisingly well onto bus notices. Ezio Manzini's Design, When Everybody Designs made me reconsider my role: in the tenants' association I am less an expert than someone helping others shape their own solutions. I am wary, though, of design presented as a fix for problems that are really about funding or power, and I want postgraduate study to sharpen my ability to tell the difference.

I am applying for an MA focused on design for change because I want rigorous methods for research with communities, for evaluating whether interventions actually help, and for working across disciplines where design is one voice among several. I bring practical making skills, a habit of checking assumptions against what people actually do, and experience of working inside a public service with real constraints. I am also comfortable with routine and detail; scheduling has made me careful with data and calm when plans change at short notice.

Outside work and study I play five-a-side every Thursday, and I organise the pitch booking for our team, which is probably the most reliable system I have designed so far. I hope to return to public transport or housing after the course, able to design changes that people can understand, trust and take part in.