Abstract
This paper presents a recent experiment in mocktail design conducted with a group of industrial design students. This pedagogical strategy was devised to foster students’ creativity and confidence. After observing a level of creative deficit among the student body, we initiated an annual design charrette back in 2021. Through this short, sprint-like effort, we aimed to provide an exhilarating, risk-free space to foster students’ creative prowess. After two years, with interesting yet mitigated results where we observed students taking the assignment too seriously, at the expense of risk-taking, we looked for parameters that would more successfully support the goal of sparking a creative mindset. Inspired by speculative design methods, boundary objects, growth mindset, and self-efficacy theory, our approach was to engage students with an uncanny topic - mocktails - to catalyze multi-level creative engagement.
Keywords
self-efficacy; boundary object; design education; confidence building
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.781
Citation
Proulx, S.,and Nickley, W.(2023) Sparking Creative prowess through a peculiar design challenge: a mocktail design charrette, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.781
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
shortpapers
Included in
Sparking Creative prowess through a peculiar design challenge: a mocktail design charrette
This paper presents a recent experiment in mocktail design conducted with a group of industrial design students. This pedagogical strategy was devised to foster students’ creativity and confidence. After observing a level of creative deficit among the student body, we initiated an annual design charrette back in 2021. Through this short, sprint-like effort, we aimed to provide an exhilarating, risk-free space to foster students’ creative prowess. After two years, with interesting yet mitigated results where we observed students taking the assignment too seriously, at the expense of risk-taking, we looked for parameters that would more successfully support the goal of sparking a creative mindset. Inspired by speculative design methods, boundary objects, growth mindset, and self-efficacy theory, our approach was to engage students with an uncanny topic - mocktails - to catalyze multi-level creative engagement.