Narrowing Thesis Topics
Or die trying!
For this week’s assignment, we were asked to narrow our potential thesis topics to only 2. And this was way more difficult than I imagined.
I don’t know why exactly is so hard for me to settle down on 2 topics. And I feel like the workload of other classes is really making it hard to focus on the thesis.
I wasn’t fully convinced about the 5 topics I presented last week. So I decided to brainstorm more about it. I opened Miro and started mapping topics in two big areas: “Important Matters” and “Other things I am Interested”.
After the exercise, I was able to determine 4 topics of interest: Music, Memories, Veganism, and Remote Learning.
Music is something that I really passionate about. And since my undergrad, I am interested in how we could visualize music. So, I decided that one of my two topics would be around music visualization and how to make it more intuitive and informative for not music literate folks.
I ended up having to choose between 3 options for the final spot. And it wasn’t easy (to be honest, I am still far from sure). I rated my options in different categories to find a winner.
I “measured” my options in 5 categories:
Personal Interest: How much the topic resonates with me.
Social Impact: How it can affect society.
Commercial Fit: How easy would be for a solution to “sell”.
Post-Grad Possibilities: How it can be positive in looking for a job after graduation.
Complexity of the Topic: The potential of suffering I can be submitted during the thesis.
After rating my options, Remote Learning came out as my second topic (and honestly, I have no idea about this decision).
These are super weird times (oh! this lovely 2020) and I have to be sincere and say that I have a lot of concerns with my thesis. My priority is my mental health and this is having a huge influence on how I am looking at my topics.
For now, my top 2 are decided, but I like to think of my other 2 ideas as escape plans.
