Creative Pathways
Designing for Experience View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Azizi Arrington Bey
Design is an intuitive process involving the designer’s full participation as they deconstruct design problems into plausible yet imaginative solutions. Creative design solutions are the result of designers focusing and fully immersing in user experiences. Reisner (2010) urges twenty-first century designers to create emotional experiences for users. He argues twentieth century architecture neglected to provide its users with emotional environments. The problem facing design instructors is centered around how to create designers that focus their design solutions on the emotional experiences of the users. This presentation explores design pedagogy relationships between communication and experience. Architects and interior designers are communicating a story. Each design move affects the use of a space and its users’ experiences. How can design pedagogy convey the importance of creating imaginative design solutions and shift the designer’s focus to create a story that communicates user experience? Pedagogy can provide student designers with tools to communicate emotional experiences into their design. This study explores the parallels existing in design process. Focusing specifically on Dillon and Howe’s (2003) design model, and Jensen’s (2014) three realms of design, a five-step technique that can be integrated into the design process has been developed. The goal of the proposed technique is to have students think about the emotional experiences they are creating by designing the story and user experiences. In this way, students begin to realize their role as designers and take control of their ability to communicate a story through the design process, spatial layout, and design elements.
Back to Nature: Approach in Teaching Design Basics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Faredah M Al-Murahhem
“For the artist, communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human, himself nature; part of nature within natural space.” Paul Klee emphasises the relation between the artist as a producer of art and nature as the surrounding environment. Humans are part of this symphony (nature), and communication with the environment is fundamental. Although Klee stresses the importance of such communication for artists; designers are no exceptions as well. Nature remains an accessible source that may shape designers’ thoughts and creativities. Such an endless source to obtain ideas from is worth highlighted through courses. The course Design Basics in the College of Design is highlighted as a case study . The study is a reflection of this approach, which relies on nature as the birthplace of inspiration. It stresses the importance of observation from nature and the role of contemplation in teaching strategies. Teaching design basics through nature observation aims to discover the beauty of creatures. Observation teaches students that nature has a creator and every creature has its intended laws. One never found a single object in nature without the elements of design; nor design principles in its constructed system. This reflection demonstrates students’ projects, and how they learned elements and principles of design. It illustrates the stages of thinking from the concept stage to the final submission. Conclusively, the study is not just a call to observe and benefit from nature; it teaches students how to search for knowledge and analyse elements of design.
Advanced Design: Systemic Education Patterns for the Designer of the Future
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Valentina Gianfrate, Flaviano Celaschi, Elena Maria Formia, Roberto Iniguez Flores
This paper explores the application of the Advanced Design notion into the educational methodologies of two different territorial and socio-economic contexts (Italy and Mexico), that share the same interest towards this field, carried out inside the Latin Network for the Development of Design Processes. The two research groups of the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna and the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, are developing their activities merging Design Cultures with Anticipation, to provide innovative skills in the design education. Advanced Design practice creates new paths and portfolios with an unbroken dynamic, resulting in continuous innovation, from product development to visions of possible futures. These research lines find very operative spillovers in the education formats proposed by the two Universities, facing the systematization of design practices and adopting systemic strategies for knowledge management. This strategy helps the educational realities to move from “traditional” learning-by-doing approaches to a learning-systems dynamic where the individual, the team and the organization develop new skills that fit the definition of Advanced Design culture and competencies. This learning-system approach figures out a cultural transformation in the education patterns based also on the idea of collaborative and open laboratory structures built up with the direct involvement of industries and public institutions, in the educative formats. These knowledge alliances support the creation of innovative design practices that can bridge the gap between “traditional” design-centered education and already consolidated Advanced Design practices, for the development of a new generations of designers.
