Demirbilek, Nur and Smith, Dianne J. and Scott, Andrew and Dawes, Les A. and Sanders, Paul S. (2007) The role of the learning context and designer characteristics challenge and reveal the design process. In Proceedings Dancing with disorder: Design. Discourse, & Disaster, EAD07 Conference, Izmir,... (original) (raw)
Related papers
2005
Through this paper we report on an opportunity to engage with the design of an Underground Educational Tourist Facility located at Charleville, Queensland for the non profit organisation, 'Save the Bilby'. The aim of the organisation is to construct an underground display that will highlight the plight of Australia's endangered species while concurrently educating the general community about ecosystems and their relevance to sustainable lifestyles. A student elective was developed that integrated a multidisciplinary approach to the design problem by drawing on the diverse skills base within the University and structuring an elective programme that promoted collaboration amongst students and staff from various disciplinary backgrounds. The skills base from which the process was developed included architecture, interior design, industrial design, landscape architecture, civil engineering, education and tourism. The University contributed core knowledge and expertise, and in return, the project afforded the QUT team an opportunity to develop knowledge concerning design for arid and semi arid physical environments. Students were introduced in a hands-on manner to the concept of community service through the professional engagement of a design team in a non-hierarchical multidisciplinary process. Initially we will outline the background to the project and our objectives, before describing the process undertaken. Attention is given to the teaching and learning approach before discussing the outcomes of the elective. We highlight how pedagogical intentions can be undermined through other aspects of curriculum design such as context and duration of tasks. By involving multiple disciplines, some of the implicit and explicit tensions between conflicting interests or demands embedded in project work are amplified. We therefore, interrogate these issues and offer suggestions for others engaging in such projects. staff to contribute their skills and knowledge at times outside those required for their usual teaching and administrative duties. In this instance, a broad range of people were involved including client representatives (accompanied by bilbies) who introduced the project (figure 1), guests from Civil Engineering and Education who delivered specialised lecture material, as well as external guests from Practice and from tourism and marketing who gave presentations based on their experiences in Western Queensland. These were supported by staff and student presentations and discussion. Objectives While developing the unit, the underlying assumptions were that a community project with a real client would be an effective vehicle for allowing students to explore the complexity of a real-world design project, and that an elective unit, which incorporated students, guests, and staff from a range of disciplines, would be a valid analogue of the professional design process. In addition, the unit was explicitly informed by staff beliefs that:
2010
This paper describes on going research that investigates how learning (students and tutors) takes place in a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural postgraduate design programme in the UK. The research maps and makes explicit the effects of community, cultural and contextual environment on learning. Initial findings have identified that learning is taking place within communities of practice and further research is used to explore reasons for its emergence. The authors evaluate and discuss the effects of learning in a post disciplinary and multi-cultural environment, and its value to current design postgraduate pedagogy. A social model of learning and communities of practice is evident in the design programme studied and preliminary findings indicates that this model is particularly relevant model to adopt in the current post-disciplinary era.
The designer as agent of community
2018
A “changing paradigm” with a focus on design for social innovation (SI) has emerged over the last decade. (DESIS, 2012) The title of this article refers to a perception of design schools and design students as potential “agents of sustainable change” adding new designdomains to the existing traditional design domains. (Chick, 2012, Emilson, 2010, Manzini, 2008, 2012, 2014). The study finds it is hard for the design-students to establish their “roles” as designers and have a natural “authority” working in complex and time-limited process’. The paper produces recommendations for other educators in terms of preparing, planning and doing a SD for SI course and discusses the critics views on future requirements for Designeducations. (Bason, 2013, Mulgan, 2014, Norman, 2010) The empirical basis for the article is a case used as part of the collaboration between VIA Design; Design for Change (DFC) in 2014-18 and four external partners; Teknologi i Praksis (TiP), the City of Aarhus, BorgerD...
Impacting the Community through a Sophomore Design Experience
2016
– Cornerstone design at James Madison University is a two-semester, client-based service learning project. Each year, sophomore engineering students work to design human-powered vehicles for a community member with needs very different from their own as a result of cerebral palsy. This paper provides a reflection of the fifth iteration (2013-2014) of this year-long sophomore design experience with the overarching goal to provide a transferable model such that other engineering programs may learn from our lessons and develop their own service learning experience. The reflection contained in this paper was catalyzed through participation in the National Science Foundation-funded Integrating Design and Community Engagement within the Curriculum Workshop hosted at
Make the World a Better Place: Design Skills in an Academic Context
ACEID Official Conference Proceedings
This article aims to present a pedagogical practice carried out in an academic context with undergraduate students from the 2nd year of the Communication Design course at Lusófona University (UL) in the second semester of 2021/22. A proposal that provides continuity to a project developed in the 1st semester in partnership with this NGO. A collaborative endeavour to help build a school in Monte Chimoio, Manica, Mozambique, through a collection of design artefacts for fundraising-T-shirts and sweatshirts for different ages and genders, hats, key holders and tote bags. The creative process was done using the Design Thinking methodology (problem definition, project ideation, prototyping and implementation of the chosen proposal). The article is divided into four parts: Introduction, literature review, work methodology and final considerations. The President of the NGO will take part in the last step of the creative process by selecting for print the best propositions. This pedagogical exercise proved to be an opportunity for students to engage in a real-life project with the possibility of applying the tools and methods learned in the course. Design scholars must motivate and prepare design students to work on projects that contribute to society and to recognise the role design plays in social issues-a Design practice through co-working that educates students to use design processes to support positive social change giving them the ability to be part of a project with a cause.
Ph.D. Thesis INDISCIPLINE Social design principles and practices: how designers work in this realm
Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Design at FAUL - Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon, 2020
This thesis is an exploratory study of moves and movements of the design discipline towards social and activist critical practices. It departs from a growing concern for design as a socially committed activity that has been around since the 1960s. The social turn, as we describe it, was a historical plea for designers to expand the nature and complexity of the problems addressed by design, moreover, to involve the users and stakeholders in designing processes. Turning to work with different sectors and diverse publics, the ‘social design’ movement emerged in opposition to the industrial and the commercial paradigms. As participatory and co-design approaches spread to general practice and for all kinds of purposes, social design became increasingly seen as a culture to represent a wider historical actualisation of the discipline. Still, in recent years, authors point to the difficulties of becoming socially engaged. Although literature on the ‘how of’ collaboration abounds i.e. the motivations, structure and techniques to involve others in design processes; it appears co-design entails ambiguous practices where designers often find themselves without a discipline. Struggles to craft a role for design in initiatives coordinated by networks of communities and institutions too often has led to actions imported from other fields hence the end of design. Coming from a background in graphic design, taking steps to become a social designer, we experienced how difficult it is to do away with the discipline. Specific gestures, actions and products in our social engagements that destabilized the visual communication design process also revealed visual communication design practiced in unknown or unexpected ways. Shifting the perspective to consider, beyond destabilization, it is indiscipline that happens to design in the encounter with others we articulated the question: what if choosing to become social is not to lose the discipline? This matter is worth to research because while social design became known for its risky participatory moves, some authors point to shifts in the politics of designing that have not yet been clarified. Through a mixed methodology based on action research and grounded theory we devised case studies to better describe, explain and explore, from a performative perspective and deeper anthropological stance, all that happens in co-design beyond exclusive attention to the design expert. While disclosing different social form-acts of social interaction within design, four images of indiscipline emerged. 1) IT’S ABOUT THE HOW, 2) DESIGN IS THE SITUATION, 3) BEGININGS NOT ENDS, and 4) DESIGN IS A LIVING THING, all point to different sides of the performative and politics turn that happens to design when it becomes social. Addressing the lack of discourse that does not treat the social as a irreducible complexity, this thesis develops a theory of design that reclaims the encounter with others as the space and possibility to grow the discipline in ways that even unexpected may also be radically social. The main conclusion is that indiscipline is not anti-design but an expansion of design possibilities in the encounter with others, which not yet seen or made visible can potentially represent moves from conventional practices towards critical socially engaged designing. Recommendations for future research are to expand the inventive and pedagogic potentials of indiscipline as a concept to understand the social turn and to practice becoming socially engaged in ways that are deemed better for others and ourselves. Another opening is to understand how indiscipline may be articulated in design education how and when students may be ready for design practice to become a more living thing.