Abstract

In this paper, I explore a single case of vernacular clothing design—the learning and practice of design for contemporary Iñupiaq-Inuit clothing made by the women of Kaktovik, North Alaska—and I hope to contribute to a better understanding of design practice and learning in general. Design research has many unexplored areas and one of these omissions is vernacular design—or ‘folk’ design. In my opinion, professional and academic design may well have something to learn from vernacular design, although this research is about vernacular learning, didactics about what, why and how to learn within the ‘making discipline’ of clothing design. The study was based on observations, interviews with seamstresses and authorial participation in designing and sewing in conformity with Iñupiaq tradition, and everything was recorded on digital video film. This investigation of Inuit clothing design indicates that learning-by-watching is the most common way of learning. Learning-by-watching is important within learning-by-doing. This concept of learning-by-watching can be seen as a development of both Schön and Wenger’s theories of learning, a concept that will probably be of great importance in further research on the learning process of design, from kindergarten to PhD.

Keywords

Vernacular design, clothing design, design thinking, learning-bywatching, learning-by-doing

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Share

COinS
 
Sep 11th, 9:00 AM

Learning by watching: what we can learn from the Inuit’s design learning

In this paper, I explore a single case of vernacular clothing design—the learning and practice of design for contemporary Iñupiaq-Inuit clothing made by the women of Kaktovik, North Alaska—and I hope to contribute to a better understanding of design practice and learning in general. Design research has many unexplored areas and one of these omissions is vernacular design—or ‘folk’ design. In my opinion, professional and academic design may well have something to learn from vernacular design, although this research is about vernacular learning, didactics about what, why and how to learn within the ‘making discipline’ of clothing design. The study was based on observations, interviews with seamstresses and authorial participation in designing and sewing in conformity with Iñupiaq tradition, and everything was recorded on digital video film. This investigation of Inuit clothing design indicates that learning-by-watching is the most common way of learning. Learning-by-watching is important within learning-by-doing. This concept of learning-by-watching can be seen as a development of both Schön and Wenger’s theories of learning, a concept that will probably be of great importance in further research on the learning process of design, from kindergarten to PhD.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.