Documentation and the Process Journal
| English | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| documentation | 记录 | jì lù |
| process journal | 创作过程日志 | chuàng zuò guò chéng rì zhì |
Make the thinking visible
- Investigation must be visible: documentation 记录 captures questions, tests, failures, and turns (CED 1.B).
- Document with anything quick: phone photos, taped-in tests, dated notes, thumbnails.
- Record the why at decision points — two lines today saves reconstructing it in April.
Real documentation or staged?
Sort each journal habit by whether it is credible process evidence.
Process images from your journal ____.
Process images can be part of the 15.
You should record the reason for a decision at the moment you make it.
Real-time notes beat April reconstruction.
The process journal
- Keep material tests physically in the process journal 创作过程日志, with outcomes noted.
- Photograph work-in-progress stages; a before/after revision pair is gold.
- Process images may be submitted among the 15 Sustained Investigation images.
Select all good documentation habits.
End-of-term reconstruction looks staged.
Showing beats claiming
- A true journal is the difference between claiming inquiry and showing it.
- Scorers reward evidence they can see, not descriptions of work you did.
- Date everything — "over time" is a scored idea.
"____" is a scored idea, so dating your pages matters.
Development over time is explicitly scored.
Match the entry to what it proves.
Show the process, don't just claim it.
Do not reconstruct your "process journal" the week before submission — it always looks staged, and scorers have seen a thousand of them. Document in real time; the honest mess is the credibility.
A dated spread: "Tried ink on wet paper — bled too far (photo). Cut water by half (photo) — better. Kept the accident on the left, it looks like fog." Three lines and two photos prove experimentation and a decision.
Documentation makes investigation visible — dated tests, photos, and the why at decision points, kept in a process journal. Show, don't claim: real-time, dated evidence is what scorers reward.