design pedagogy

Paper presentation @ IDSA International Conference 2015

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August 23, 2015 9:00 AM

Peter Scupelli presented a paper he co-authored with Judy Brooks and Arnold Wasserman on “Learn!2050 and Dexign Futures: Lessons Learned Teaching Design Futures” at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) International Conference 2015 in Seattle.

Introduction:

This paper explores how we might redesign education to face the challenges and opportunities of sustainable futures. Increasingly, designers operate within ever-broader contexts (e.g., technological, social, political, environmental, global). Design for sustainable futures requires the ability to envision longtime horizon strategic scenarios driven by forces likely to shape change in broader contexts. Traditional pedagogy poorly equips designers to integrate long-range strategic thinking with current human-centered design methods.

We present two interlocking projects: LEARN! 2050 and Dexign the Future. Please note the term dexign was introduced to indicate an experimental type of design. The LEARN! 2050 scenario describes design pathways from today to a new learning landscape in the year 2050. Dexign the Future, a course integrating Futures Thinking with Design Thinking, was introduced in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University in fall 2013 to a mix of third year undergraduate and graduate design students.

Students learned to engage strategic longtime horizon scenarios from a generative design perspective.

Lessons learned led to a three-semester sequence teaching design methods for longtime horizons aimed at transitioning towards sustainable societies. The sequence includes: Dexign Futures Seminar, Introduction to Dexign the Future, and Dexign the Future. The Dexign Futures Seminar is an online module that teaches students to critique and deconstruct existing futures scenarios. In the Introduction to Dexign the Future course students explore futures based themes, design methods, and research techniques. The Dexign the Future course deep-dives into a semester long project set in 2050. In summary, we provide here three contributions: first, an example of a future learning scenario set in 2050; second, a design course sequence that combines Futures Thinking with Design Thinking to create desirable design futures (what futurists refer to as Normative Scenarios); and third, lessons learned that lead to a pedagogy for designing for longtime horizon futures.

Last updated: 9:00 am

Design Studio Learning Environment Research

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November 14, 2014 9:00 AM

Studio-based design education is changing to include multidisciplinary design teams, geographically distributed teams, information technology, and new work styles. In this research, we describe the graduate design studio redesign in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. The old graduate studio went from a single room design studio to four interconnected spaces: an area with individual workspaces, collaborative spaces, a kitchen and social cafe area, and a classroom with distance learning technology.

  • Study 1 indicates student satisfaction significantly improved. However, open-ended survey comments suggest that functional needs were met, but some pleasure-related and emotional needs linked to habitation were problematic.
  • Study 2 explores ownership, personalization, aesthetics, function, acoustics, upkeep, and agency in the four connected studio spaces (i.e., individual workspaces, collaborative spaces kitchen and social cafe area, the distance learning classroom). Research methods included an online survey and desk interviews.
  • Study 3 determines student occupancy levels in the design studio spaces via a time-lapse study. One picture is taken every minute to determine where students work in the four interconnected spaces.

Key findings include: (a) users evaluated studio spaces holistically based on functionality, emotional response, and pleasure; (b) owned spaces differed significantly from shared spaces; (c) individual work and collaboration work occurred throughout the studio (e.g., collaboration in quiet individual workspaces, and individual work in loud collaboration spaces). The research approach above informs the study of IDeATE studio-learning spaces.

Principal Contact

Peter Scupelli, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in IxD
School of Design
scupelli@cmu.edu

Research Team

Bruce Hanington
Associate Professor & Head of Graduate Studies
School of Design

Andrea Fineman
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Design

Xiaowei Jiang
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Design

Frances Yin Wang
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Design

Collaborative spaces and individual workspaces in design studios: a study on ownership, personalization, agency, emotion, and pleasure

/ scupelli

October 24, 2014 9:00 AM

Studio-based design education is changing to include multidisciplinary design teams, geographically distributed teams, information technology, and new work styles. In this talk, I describe the graduate design studio redesign in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. The old studio went from a single room design studio to four interconnected spaces: an area with individual workspaces, collaborative spaces, a kitchen and social cafe area, and a classroom with distance learning technology. Study one indicates student satisfaction significantly improved but some open-ended survey comments suggest that functional needs were met, but some pleasure-related and emotional needs linked to habitation were problematic. Study two used an online survey and a time-lapse study to explore ownership, personalization, aesthetics, function, acoustics, upkeep, and agency in the four connected studio spaces: individual workspaces, collaborative spaces kitchen and social cafe area, and the distance learning classroom. Don Norman’s Emotional Design and Patrick Jordan’s Designing Pleasurable Products books are used as frameworks to explore user needs in design studios.

Last updated: 9:00 am