Holistic Development
Proyecto Perry : Using Design as a Catalyst to Engage a Community in Understanding How to Innovate, React, and Respond
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jeremy Swanston, Bernard John Canniffe
This paper focuses on a collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and team-based graphic design partnership between the two state institutions, and the community of Perry, IA. Students and faculty immersed themselves in the community for five days where we ate at local restaurants and used these opportunities to process what we had learned that day and to also invite community leaders. The paper highlights how utilizing graphic design resources and methods to engage the community to identify areas for improvement and problem solve around specific economic and health challenges that are important to the community. The paper also demonstrates how the Moonshot Theory and embracing ideas around the Peer-to Peer economy as it relates to Micro-Lending were essential in allowing the students to engage with the community and produce real and immediate design interventions. Students would respond to a specific community need, which would be placed in that community, and then the community would respond. Students would then strengthen or change the intervention and have it back in the community on the same day. This meant that student teams were producing two interventions a day and with each reintroduction the scale and scope of the projects grew. In five days a total of thirteen community projects were realized and the community was celebrated as we hosted a final exhibition and thank you party.
Can Ancient Philosophies Offer New Insight for General Philosophy of Design? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Paolo Grazioli
Telos, practical wisdom embodies the useful and the beautiful.What are the relations between philosophy of design and philosophy at large? Philosophy of design can draw on insights from other fields of philosophy, like ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy. Can these ancient philosophies also offer a new insight to a more general philosophy of design? Moreover, can results from the philosophy of design be put to use in contemporary design practice, by leading us towards better artefacts, better design methods and, especially, better ethics for the creation of a more just society?
How Will I Thrive?: Developing Designer Professional Identity Among Undergraduate Communication Design Students
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Denise Bosler
Research shows that communication design programs in higher education settings historically encourage design skills, a.k.a. the tech savvy designer, over personal attributes. This approach creates design students with excellent computer skills but who are identity deprived. When design students’ identity is underdeveloped, when students don’t know what it is to holistically become a designer, it becomes a barrier to successfully transitioning from student to professional. Research shows that it is crucial for students to not only benefit from learning what it means to act and perform as a professional but also what it means to become one. To better prepare them for the industry and respond to design-based challenges, it’s important for higher education design programs to help students discover their designer professional identity (DPI). With these implications, design educators would wise to incorporate DPI development into their classrooms. Providing students with authentic experiences, real-world challenges, reflection opportunities and extra-curricular activities begin to help students become a designer. In this study, Design-Based Research (DBR) provides the methodological framework to specifically explore the role of reflective practices in discovering how communication design students’ professional identities are developed through design curriculum.
