Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Wei Dai, you can also call me Dorothy. I was born and raised in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China.

I lived in the small city with lots of traditional Chinese food such as Shanghai Crab Soup buns, Steamed bun, spring rolls, and Pork Gyoza. My parents were both working for the first 7 years of my life and I stayed with my mother’s parents during all the summer and winter vacation(Chinese Spring Festival) in Shanghai.

My grandparents they all lived in Huzhou as well, but they both came from Shanghai and we’ve got lots of family members in Shanghai. In Chinese’s traditional, we need to stay with all the family members together in Chinese Spring Festival in winter break. So that I can speak Shanghainese and Shanghai is my second hometown.

Growing up in a relatively rich and warm family, I always keep pursuing spiritual enrichment and sense of identity on the basis of a stable material foundation and become more independent to manage myself orderly. Through constant contacts with fresh things, life aesthetics of my own is obtained as well. And with the pursuit of individual freedom, I’m eager to be a fashionable fashion trend maker.

I left home for school and want to Birmingham City University in UK. I studied Jewellery Design. This is the first time I went abroad alone and tried to take care myself. I explored lots of European countries and began to discovery my identity and self aesthetic during these three years study. This is one of my best memories in my lifetime. I saw myself bloom like a flower not only in art and design field but also for my life journey.

After my undergraduate study, I went back to China and lived in Shanghai for last 3years. As my second hometown, this is a magic metropolis being as the important business and financial center of China. With gradual increase of overseas and domestic talents’ attentions, job competition has become much more competitive.

As for me, my proposed program is a career changing opportunity for me. The scientific combination of academic courses with practice-oriented projects is the key point which I’m fond of. I think that this is a wonderful chance for me to enrich hands-on experience in design and management. And under guidance of well-designed curriculums and excellent faculties, I’m convinced that my academic knowledge scope will also be enlarged. Right after completing the whole program’s study, there will come a change to me. I can combine my previous design professional knowledge with advanced design strategic management conception together to establish an innovative brand and new business mode to realize my self-value. This might be the future career expectation of my own and I’m looking forward to flying my own design management dream.

Last but not the least, the United States, a magical country living with people of different cultural backgrounds for a long time, will endow me with new life experience allowing me to have a more comprehensive perspective to see the world so as to build my own country better. I want to see more culture collision and integration here.

I am now a second semester student at the School of Visual Arts, Design for Social Innovation program, I will be documenting my thesis journey here. This thesis is self-guided effort where I will identify opportunities in the social media anxiety, while focusing on collaboration and self growth. I will conduct research, engage with communities, and develop insights with a focus on iterative development. This is a space to track/reflect on process and progress.

To be continued...