Abstract

The formal design education in the 21st century is confronted with an expanding list of challenges: knowledge availability on the Internet; handicraft vs. computer skills; amateurism; specialist vs. multidisciplinary curriculums; national vs. international agendas, etc. In a multifaceted design education where everything is accessible and the disciplines’ borders are blurred, there is a rising necessity for structured and intelligent design process, to reflect the need for smart and sustainable design solutions in the complex high-tech Era. Equipped with computers and internet resources, students are allowed instant access to infinite repositories of visual material and ready-for-digital-recycling creative solutions. This may accelerate the research and the development stages in design projects, often resulting in omission of important cognitive processes, hence the weakening of decision making ability and decline in original thinking. This paper aims to underline the significance of the employment of basic handicraft techniques in comprehending the design process, beneficial not only for developing spatial understanding and enriching tactile experiences for the Net Generation, but also for enabling critical thinking, problem solving and decision making on the road to intelligent, relevant design solutions in professional design education. The analysis is made through a series of empirical studies including: observation of trends; tailored workshops with constrained design tasks; semi-structured interviews with students.

Keywords

Design education, Design process, Design thinking, Problem solving, Decision making, Basic craft techniques, Practical skills

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

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Oct 18th, 9:00 AM

Low-tech skills in high-tech solutions Era: the cognitive benefits of basic craft techniques in formal design education

The formal design education in the 21st century is confronted with an expanding list of challenges: knowledge availability on the Internet; handicraft vs. computer skills; amateurism; specialist vs. multidisciplinary curriculums; national vs. international agendas, etc. In a multifaceted design education where everything is accessible and the disciplines’ borders are blurred, there is a rising necessity for structured and intelligent design process, to reflect the need for smart and sustainable design solutions in the complex high-tech Era. Equipped with computers and internet resources, students are allowed instant access to infinite repositories of visual material and ready-for-digital-recycling creative solutions. This may accelerate the research and the development stages in design projects, often resulting in omission of important cognitive processes, hence the weakening of decision making ability and decline in original thinking. This paper aims to underline the significance of the employment of basic handicraft techniques in comprehending the design process, beneficial not only for developing spatial understanding and enriching tactile experiences for the Net Generation, but also for enabling critical thinking, problem solving and decision making on the road to intelligent, relevant design solutions in professional design education. The analysis is made through a series of empirical studies including: observation of trends; tailored workshops with constrained design tasks; semi-structured interviews with students.

 

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