Abstract

This paper reveals the grounded results of the use of grammatical design as a foundation for study in a Masters of Design in Digital Media course. It builds on the strengths of a grammatical metaphor by offering a continuum of understanding of the nature and use of ‘rules’ that includes models, schemas and serialist approaches to form making. This continuum refers to two extremes of strict formal grammar and schematic ideas enveloping an hermeneutical understanding of design as explored in recent interaction design research (Amitani 2008). After Strawson (Strawson 1950), in any research endeavour one might move towards a quantifiable or qualitative extreme throughout the process depending on contingencies as explored in recent work on design pedagogy and higher education. As Rivka Oxman states “Any approach at a new pedagogy predicated on new forms of digital design thinking must necessarily move beyond the formal syndrome of representation, formal language and compositional collage aesthetics” (R. Oxman 2008).