Educational Horizons (Asynchronous Session)
Learning Design by Design Experience: The Theoretical and Methodological Evolution of Industrial Design Shaped by Cultural, Economic, and Social Frameworks
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Davide Bruno, Luisa Collina
Project design verve: this is the key concept on which the experience in project design pedagogy of the Milan Polytechnic Design School (Italy) is focused in the field of research and training. It is also the key concept that this paper summarizes and formalizes in terms of results and intuitions. The theoretical and methodological evolution of industrial design project is shaped by cultural, economic, and social frameworks. The paper analyzes issues related to design project pedagogy in an economic context that interests universities, large corporations and international companies, researched through a survey on the new figure of the designer in the era of the information society and through a wide range of case studies, true evidence of project experience in training. The main purpose of this paper is therefore to indicate pedagogical guidelines for the university project that will help fine-tune the student's training path, seen as a real experiential path, whilst at the same time demonstrating the need and the effectiveness of this kind of path. Four main topics are examined and investigated: cognitive processes, the new figure of the designer, new products and intangible goods, and tools and experience in project design pedagogy .
Immutable : (re)Designing Graphic Design Historiography
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christopher Lee
Building on an overview of the preliminary outcomes of a project entitled “Immutable—A Mineral History of Currency and Typography” this project rethinks graphic design’s historiography, centering the banal genre of the document and its entanglement with statecraft and colonial(ism/ity) in order to make an intervention in the assumptions that structure conventional graphic design pedagogy and practice. By counterposing what I call “the design imperative to publicity,” which entails a graphic design historiography and studio pedagogy that centers artifacts like logos, brands, posters, websites, apps, etc. against, I propose the centering of the document (which entails artifacts ranging from money, to passports, to property deeds, etc.) as a ground against which to figure what I call “the design imperative to immutability” (or “the design imperative to remember”). This presentation grounds its reflection on some recent assignments given in graphic design studio courses, as well as through a critical evaluation of graphic design historiography as an “ontologizing” force that shapes the horizon’s of a student (and eventually) practitioner’s disciplinary horizons.
On the Verge: An Architecture Studio of Thresholds
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ross T. Smith, Cecilia De Marinis
This paper explores the conceptual and research approach, based in phenomenology, of a Master of Architecture urban design studio conceived and taught by the two authors. The provocation of the studio brief was ‘On the Verge’. This open-ended statement challenged the students to consider the broad context of ‘threshold’ and ‘edge conditions’ as both physical and psychological barriers, boundaries, and transformational positions determined by materiality, physicality, and perception as creative moves of analogy and metaphor. Similarly, our human potential is always ‘on the verge’ of an action or spatial location and, therefore, we are determined by thresholds. The given site was the residue of a disused factory located on a cliff-edge facing the ocean in an industrial area of a semi-rural town in Australia. Complimentary to architecture the studio insisted on a definite consideration of the site landscape to be conceptualised and interpreted from a phenomenological method of observation. Because of this complexity and holism, many of the students’ projects have been determined by rigorous site analysis and ecological concerns which then have informed the constructed components of the architectural interventions. The pedagogical impetus was to remove the usual pre-determined list of presentation requirements and for the students to take complete responsibility for how they interpret, research, conceive, propose, and present their projects. This method is contained within the theory of constructivist teaching and learning in which the students take individual responsibility for their education. Therefore, every project is unique adding pedagogical excitement and challenge for the students and teachers.
Experiential Learning Including the Physical Space within the Online Space: Experiences in the Human Factors/Ergonomics Course View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Burçak Altay, Can Kultur
Human Factors/Ergonomics is a course for interior design students where experiential learning during course hours has customarily been a significant feature. Thus, with active engagement, students examine themselves and others relating to space/products through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and bodily orientation. Maintaining experiential learning has been a challenge when the course transferred to online education last semester where our main environment became the online space of the computer screen. Therefore, online educational tools were explored in order to support the class and include participation within both real and online spaces. This paper presents the rationale behind the changes of the course components from the instructional design perspective. Within this presentation, the main objectives and applications of a number of tasks, embedded within the class sessions are explained. Through these tasks, students investigated and instantly shared the positive and problematic aspects of their environments. They also analyzed their own physical characteristics and evaluated their postural features during the session. Online analytical tools allowed us to view all contributions from an expanded perspective. These tasks widened our horizons to include the students’ spaces, which enriched the class discussion with on-the-spot engagement and the ability to view all data within a very short time-span. Through the action research approach, learning effectiveness and the course design are discussed based on feedback from students. We seek possible future directions to maintain and improve spatial experiential learning which is crucial for the instructional design of similar courses.
