Diverse Approaches to Teaching and Learning
A Stimulant to Designer’s Mind: Embracing Yoga within the Design Process
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sourav Dutta
Industrial designers apply different processes to achieve quality and optimum results. The design processes today positions the user center stage placed well within the context. Designers drive the complete process from initial user research to the final stages of product realization through a multidisciplinary team. Interestingly, design output to the same problem statement may vary, even if the same design process is put into use by two different teams aiming to achieve separate workable solutions. Here, designer’s mind drives the complete process and influences others during the course through various stages of the design. A mind culture, therefore, may help enhance the quality of a proposal. Ancient Indian doctrines establish that Yoga cultures the mind from a gross physical state to a more subtle level. Some specific somatotype practices of Yoga are known to stimulate the mind; destined to enhance a sense of empathy and creativity of a practitioner. A tailored yoga module experimented with a set of design students to stimulate their minds during design stages and the outcome assessed by the experts and discussed further in the paper.
Putt-Putt Pedagogy: Making Interaction Design Tangible Through Play
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Hersrud, Levi Hammett
The discipline of graphic design has a history of evolving to incorporate new technologies and modes of production. This includes the relatively recent incorporation of interaction and interface design. Universities have kept pace with this evolution, engaging students in screen-based interactive projects. However, education need not simply be training for industry, it can allow students to explore the playful side of interaction design, preparing them to adapt to new technologies, modes of production, and opportunities. How might we prompt students to go beyond the screen and investigate interaction design from different perspectives, experiences, tools, and mediums? How might we make principles of interaction design tangible for students? These questions, along with an ongoing interest in game design, prompted us to think of ways to engage students in a project that would explore the physicality of material, introduce FABlab production methods, encourage collaboration, and investigate the intersection of play and participation. In tandem with a biennial art and design conference in Doha, Qatar, we co-developed a nine hole artist mini-golf course project that involved the entire graphic design department. This paper will discuss the pedagogical goals of the project, along with the methods, processes, and outcomes.
Folktales - Design Context in the Storytelling
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Prajakta R. Parvatikar
Practices of design have cultural-historical influence in context to India; where twenty-two official languages are written in thirteen scripts, with over 720 dialects spoken within the country. Design here is used as a diverse tool to convey messages of communication. There is a vast archive of (design) art forms-traditional and folk, which remain unknown or forgotten today because of modernity. Present day students apply principles of modern and western design to Indian context. This creates modern visual impact but the challenge lies in making them aware of the Indian traditional culture. Moreover, students rarely find ‘traditional reading’ interesting today. With advent of technology, even the book-reading experience is converted to digital reading one. There is a need to develop creative (cultural) awareness amongst current generations. The paper discusses a well thought design assignment that challenges the capacity of making ‘reading’ a book or story an interesting affair. Through research, developing an understanding of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’ a story, exploring various folk art forms from India to identifying and applying these art forms into a suitable design in context to the ‘reading’ material (folktales); students learn to appreciate and value cultural legacy they possess in spite of modernity. The experimental results accomplish the purpose of telling a tale, but moreover design results are beautiful to the eye!
