Abstract
Objects have shaped human societies and the interaction between subjects; they permitted to increase in relationship complexity. Objects' role became so significant that it impacts subject-to-subject communication creating a common ground to enhance understanding. To achieve it, objects stretch their meaning outside their usefulness, evolving alongside the surrounding context and subjects; they acquire stratified meanings depending on how subjects engage with them. Precisely, this research analyses the social role of objects in a design process to leverage communication between students from different cultural backgrounds and fields of knowledge. Such objects establish abstract communication channels via a material infrastructure to improve brainstorming in designing and developing two racing motorcycle prototypes. The study highlights how students implement their competencies to enhance project goals promoting collaboration awareness between workgroups and designing related components. The goal is to understand how objects' roles influence communication and subject-to-subject relationships to develop more integrated project solutions.
Keywords
Self-guided project-based learning; students collaboration; social role of objects; boundary objects; prototypes
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2023.143
Citation
Amadeo, A.,and Mattioli, F.(2023) The social role of a motorcycle prototype in fostering collaboration in a self-guided team of students, in Silvia Ferraris, Valentina Rognoli, Nithikul Nimkulrat (eds.), EKSIG 2023: From Abstractness to Concreteness – experiential knowledge and the role of prototypes in design research, 19–20 June 2023, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2023.143
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
The social role of a motorcycle prototype in fostering collaboration in a self-guided team of students
Objects have shaped human societies and the interaction between subjects; they permitted to increase in relationship complexity. Objects' role became so significant that it impacts subject-to-subject communication creating a common ground to enhance understanding. To achieve it, objects stretch their meaning outside their usefulness, evolving alongside the surrounding context and subjects; they acquire stratified meanings depending on how subjects engage with them. Precisely, this research analyses the social role of objects in a design process to leverage communication between students from different cultural backgrounds and fields of knowledge. Such objects establish abstract communication channels via a material infrastructure to improve brainstorming in designing and developing two racing motorcycle prototypes. The study highlights how students implement their competencies to enhance project goals promoting collaboration awareness between workgroups and designing related components. The goal is to understand how objects' roles influence communication and subject-to-subject relationships to develop more integrated project solutions.