Abstract
This paper is about the methodology used in the first six months of the Design course at my university in Brazil. This was inspired by the so called Social Design methodology developed in another Design course where I previously worked as a lecture and researcher. Educating designers is a complex subject because it is a matter which integrates techniques to help the students to develop their observational skills, creativity, social awareness and individual talents. A student who arrives at the university has already skills, knowledge, and the capacity to project their life according to his/her education. Including this fact in the class’s approach is the first step of this methodology. The students are told to look for a group outside the university with an interlocutor, where they will develop a real design project. The purpose here is to guide the student, not to propose a problem or even resolve it, but he or she will be able to develop the capacity to identify fertile areas for action. Thus a constructive atmosphere will develop with the aim of bringing new benefit for the group, rather than the more negative mindset concerned with fixing a perceived problem. The student designs an object and tests it in order to get feedback from his adopted group. The student is encouraged to get as much feedback as possible in order to challenge his preconceived ideas and promote double-loop learning. This paper shows the techniques used by the students related to data collection as an attempt to generate a “model 2” operating system as advocated by Schön and Argyris (Smith, 2001), and some of the projects developed during 10 years of the university design course.
Keywords
Participatory Approaches, Design Methods, Design And Society
Citation
Pacheco, H. (2010) Involvement in the Design Student Approach, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2010/researchpapers/93
Involvement in the Design Student Approach
This paper is about the methodology used in the first six months of the Design course at my university in Brazil. This was inspired by the so called Social Design methodology developed in another Design course where I previously worked as a lecture and researcher. Educating designers is a complex subject because it is a matter which integrates techniques to help the students to develop their observational skills, creativity, social awareness and individual talents. A student who arrives at the university has already skills, knowledge, and the capacity to project their life according to his/her education. Including this fact in the class’s approach is the first step of this methodology. The students are told to look for a group outside the university with an interlocutor, where they will develop a real design project. The purpose here is to guide the student, not to propose a problem or even resolve it, but he or she will be able to develop the capacity to identify fertile areas for action. Thus a constructive atmosphere will develop with the aim of bringing new benefit for the group, rather than the more negative mindset concerned with fixing a perceived problem. The student designs an object and tests it in order to get feedback from his adopted group. The student is encouraged to get as much feedback as possible in order to challenge his preconceived ideas and promote double-loop learning. This paper shows the techniques used by the students related to data collection as an attempt to generate a “model 2” operating system as advocated by Schön and Argyris (Smith, 2001), and some of the projects developed during 10 years of the university design course.