March 8, 2024 11:03 PM
Peter Scupelli gave an invited lecture at the Politecnico di Milano, titled “AI & SUSTAINABILITY: some dexign thinking for alternative futures,” for the Service Design and Innovation – Smart Service course taught by Prof. Marzia Mortati in the Master’s Program in Product-Service Systems Design, at the Politecnico di Milano, on March, 8, 2024.
September 1, 2023 1:45 PM
Peter Scupelli will be a visiting researcher in design futures methods at the Politecnico di Milano. Peter will also co-teach Design Futures-related methods in the Ephemeral Design course with Professors Anna Barbara, Nicolò Gobini, and Francesca Molteni.
Last updated: 1:44 pm
September 1, 2023 1:42 PM
Peter Scupelli will present a paper titled “Teaching to transfer Causal Layered Analysis from Futures Thinking to Design Thinking” at the 2023 IASDR conference held in Milan, Italy October 9-14 at The Politecnico di Milano.
Abstract
We live in exponentially changing worlds. Design educators are challenged to teach new design methods to productively engage with ongoing societal problems with planetary implications such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the unfolding climate disaster, zero-carbon lifestyles, circular economies, nuclear disarmament, etc. Such societal-level problems require both short-term design action and strategic long-term vision goal alignments. How might design educators teach new design methods effectively and efficiently within already packed design education curriculums? In this paper, I describe a required design futures course that teaches an experimental form of design, called Dexign Futures, it merges design thinking with futures thinking. One often unstated goal of teaching new design methods is to enable students to transfer such knowledge to other design courses, and, ultimately, to their professional practice. The futures thinking method, Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is the focus of this paper. Prior research on Dexign Futures, made clear that with a “Personal Futures CLA” assignment, only 19.8% of design students could articulate how the Futures Thinking method CLA related to future design methods and practice. In this paper, I describe a new way to teach CLA called “Studio Project CLA”; it more than tripled the number of undergraduate design students (62%) who described applications of CLA to their design practice. I posit that transfer of knowledge mechanisms likely explain observed performance gains. I hypothesize key insights relevant for design educators to create design exercises for undergraduate design students that likely facilitate knowledge transfer from futures thinking methods into design practice.
February 2, 2023 3:03 PM
Peter Scupelli gave the closing keynote lecture titled “Some experiential dexign thinking for alternative metaverses” at the “REFLECTING on the Metaverse through Experiential Futures,” as part of the Design Thinking JAM, Sixth Edition of the Observatory of Design Thinking for Business, Rethinking Design Thinking, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano. Hosted at the NHOW Milano (Via Tortona, 35 – 20144 Milano), January 26, 2023.
August 5, 2022 4:20 PM
Peter Scupelli will be a visiting professor in design at the Politecnico di Milano. Peter will be co-teaching Design Futures related methods in the Ephemeral Design course with Professors Anna Barbara, Nicolò Gobini, and Francesca Molteni.
Last updated: 1:44 pm
June 1, 2018 5:49 PM
Peter Scupelli taught the Design Thinking and Futures Thinking workshop June 7-9, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The workshop was called “Using the Flipped Classroom to Teach Design Thinking and Futures Thinking.”
The world is changing at an exponential rate. How might design educators teach different types of design thinking to address challenges such as societal level sustainability? How might technology be used to create innovative learning experiences for students? How might students get more practice opportunities and feedback to better learn new kinds of design thinking. The School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University launched a new curriculum undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students in 2014 to teach design led societal level sustainability. In this workshop, participants experience teaching innovations developed to teach alternative versions of design thinking for societal level sustainability through case studies of four courses taught. For example, in the Dexign Futures course, Design Thinking and Futures Thinking are combined to align short-term design with long-term visions. The Dexign Futures course was taught as a flipped classroom course with two main parts: (a) interactive online modules with interactive feedback that prepare students for (b) in-class hands-on design activities. Workshop participants will learn how to apply the design based teaching innovations demonstrated in the case study to solve current student learning challenges.
http://www.ieeac2015.org.cn/p/17/20180614/163847274598383.html
August 16, 2016 10:45 AM
Peter Scupelli gave a talk on the opening plenary panel 2016 a2ru National Conference at the University of Colorado in Denver. The theme of this year’s conference was ArtsRx: Creative Venture, Wellbeing & the New Humanities. The conference highlighted keynote speakers, panels, breakout sessions and workshops that explore and reflect arts-integrative interdisciplinary research and practice in higher education related to the following topics:
The opening plenary panel was a “Futures Panel” — using foresight as a cross-cutting lens to motivate a2ru’s work, to provide a bridge for adopting futures thinking into practice (as artists, scholars, interdisciplinarians), and to highlight it as a core skill for academic leadership.
The panel was composed of a collection of futures-based practitioners in the arts and was moderated by J.D. Talasek, Director of Cultural Program at the National Academy of Sciences, with student respondents from MIT, UT Dallas, and UC Denver.
Last updated: 10:45 am
June 22, 2016 1:30 AM
Peter Scupelli presented papers at the 50th Anniversary Design+Research+Society Conference 2016, hosted by the University of Brighton in the UK. The papers featured were:
1) Scupelli & Hanington: Design Studio Desk and Shared Place Attachments: A Study on Ownership, Personalization, and Agency
Abstract:
Increasing numbers of students, limited space, and decreasing budgets nudge many university administrators to shift from assigned design studio desks to flexible workspace arrangements. This paper explores student attachment to the individual desk and shared spaces in a graduate design studio in a Design School in a North American first-tier research university. The studio had four interconnected spaces with: individual desks, collaborative workspaces, a kitchen-social cafe area, and a distance-learning classroom. We explored student perspectives and attitudes on studio aesthetics, functionality, agency, ownership, personalization, and occupancy patterns with four methods (i.e., online survey, student class schedules, interviews, time-lapse study). Perception of ownership, personalization, and agency were greatest for individual desks. Students perceived the individual desk as a primary territory even though the administration said desks were shared hot-desks. Individual work and collaborative work occurred throughout the studio regardless of functional assignment (e.g., spaces for individual work, collaboration, classroom).
2) Scupelli, Wasserman, & Brooks: Dexign Futures: A Pedagogy for Long-Horizon Design Scenarios
Abstract:
The transition towards societal level sustainability requires thinking and acting anew. Traditional design pedagogy poorly equips designers to integrate long- range strategic thinking with current human-centered design methods. In this paper, we describe a three-course sequence: Dexign Futures Seminar (DFS), Introduction to Dexign the Future (iDTF), and Dexign the Future (DTF). The term dexign indicates an experimental type of design that integrates Futures Thinking with Design Thinking. Students learn to engage strategic long time horizon scenarios from a generative design perspective. DFS, online modules, teaches students to critique and deconstruct existing futures scenarios. iDTF situates students to explore futures based themes and apply design methods and research techniques. DTF takes students into a semester-long project designing for 2050. In this paper, we describe lessons learned that lead to a pedagogy for supporting novices as they develop skills and methods for long time horizon futures design.
Last updated: 1:30 am
June 22, 2016 2:00 AM
Peter Scupelli presented a paper he co-authored with Judy Brooks and Arnold Wasserman on “Making Dexign Futures learning happen: A case study for a flipped, Open-Learning Initiative course” at the 2016 Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) International Conference in Detroit, Michigan.
Abstract:
How do design educators make change happen to address new challenges? Currently, design educators are caught between challenges: first, teaching well-established design traditions based on craft and making; and second, training students to situate their artifact making within transitional times in a volatile and exponentially changing world. The tension design educators navigate involves teaching the core of a discipline in relation to an expanding periphery where multiple disciplines interact. The epistemic challenge is how to initiate students into the field’s crystallized knowledge at the same time as fluid, emergent knowledge. Some design educators may yearn for simpler times focusing on mastery of the deep disciplinary cores. Others may discount their own core disciplinary teaching in favor of exploration of the rapidly shifting disciplinary peripheries to meet new challenges and opportunities. We acknowledge both perspectives and further posit that students need exposure to both the core and periphery of design. This introduces an interesting learning challenge: an implicit contradiction for students of design where the core/making tends to reinforce short time horizon thinking; and the disciplinary periphery requires long time horizon visioning. We try to address this challenge by aligning short-term design opportunities with sustainable development plans for long time horizons. We merge design thinking and futures thinking to create “deXign” thinking. In this paper, we discuss a flipped classroom pedagogy that integrates design studio with an online component. The class we describe is called Dexign Futures. Dexign Futures is a required design studies class for all third year undergraduate students in the products, communications, and environments tracks in the School of Design at a North American tier-one research university. Because traditional design pedagogy poorly equips designers to integrate current human-centered design methods with long-range strategic thinking, a challenge we explore through the class is how to teach designing for the long time horizon. The Dexign Futures course is built on an elective three-course sequence: Dexign Futures Seminar (DFS), Introduction to Dexign the Future (iDTF), and Dexign the Future (DTF). The term deXign indicates an experimental type of design that integrates Futures Thinking with Design Thinking. In this paper, we discuss the process of making the Dexign Futures flipped classroom pedagogy happen by: (a) describing the online class modules in detail; (b) providing examples of in-class workshop activities; and (c) reflecting on lessons learned from iterative development of the online modules and in-class activities.
Last updated: 2:00 am
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
learning environments lab 