empirical study

Learn X Design 2025 conference paper September 22-24, 2025.

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Peter Scupelli & Paulo Carvalho will present their co-authored paper titled “Design Futures Pedagogy: Does the type of exercise, year of study, order, and number of exercises matter?” at the DRS special interest group conference Learn X Design 2025 at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, on September 22-24.

Abstract

Teaching design for long-term, societal-level sustainability requires design students to learn new design methods that combine Futures Thinking with Design Thinking. This paper explores three questions: (a) how to teach Futures Thinking methods; (b) when to incorporate Futures Thinking into the undergraduate curriculum; and (c) how many exercises to assign to teach a futures method. In this paper, we focus on the Futures Thinking method called Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). Previous research has shown that a “Studio Project CLA” exercise is three times more effective than a “Personal Futures CLA” in helping students apply CLA to their design work. In this paper, undergraduate students in their first and third years did both exercises. We report on three studies. In Study 1, we replicated prior research using a larger dataset. Our results confirm that when performing a single exercise, the “Studio Project CLA” exercise is significantly more effective than the “Personal Futures CLA” exercise. In Study 2, we compared the performance of first-year and third-year design students on both exercises. We found that first-year students had more design insights on how they might apply CLA to design processes. In study 3, regarding the order and quantity of exercises, contrary to the maxim “more practice is better,” we found that “what one practices matters.” In other words, for first-year students, a single “Studio Project CLA” exercise provides more benefit than an additional “Personal Futures CLA” exercise. We posit that the observed transfer from “Futures Thinking” to “Design Thinking” may be explained by three theories from Learning Science literature: (a) concreteness and abstraction of the CLA exercises, (b) the layered aspects of CLA helped to emphasize structural similarities across contexts, (c) concreteness fading in the Design Studio exercise. This study examined the number of design insights; our future work will explore the types and quality of design insights.

Reference

Scupelli, P. & Carvalho, P. (2025) Design Futures Pedagogy: Does the type of exercise, year of study, order, and number of exercises matter?, DRS – Learn X Design intertwinia in Design Education conference in Aveiro, Portugal, on September 22-24, 2025.

IASDR 2023

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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.

IASDR 2021

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October 15, 2021 7:50 PM

Peter Scupelli will present a paper titled “Teaching Designers to Anticipate Future Challenges with Causal Layered Analysis” at the 2021 IASDR conference held in Hong Kong December 5-9 at TThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Abstract
Low-probability disasters like global pandemics, nuclear war, earthquakes, solar flares and so forth require anticipatory imagination and strategic preparations. The COVID-19 global pandemic amply illustrated how being unprepared results in tragic outcomes for human lives, families, organizations, and economies. Preparing for different kinds of possible futures requires new thinking, imagining, and acting. Globally, design educators are challenged to prepare the next generation of designers for a rapidly changing world. How might designers learn to meaningfully engage with the challenges of our time (e.g., climate emergency, sustainable development) and emerging opportunities (e.g., AI, fourth industrial revolution, and so forth)? In this paper, I describe two futures thinking methods taught in a design centred futures course taught in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA). First, an Alternative Futures exercise with a 2×2 matrix that yields four possible futures. Second, students explored one possible future in-depth with Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). The design futures course was taught with the flipped-classroom active learning pedagogy through five activities: online learning, mini-lecture, demonstration, small group in-class workshop activities, and weekly reflection/discussion. I report on text analysis of student weekly reflections parsed with five codes related to CLA (i.e., personal insights, thinking structures, design insights, CLA details, other). Step-by-step scaffolding and multiple integrated learning activities helped students to engage with futures studies methods. CLA provided students with new thinking structures for sensemaking, new insights into futures thinking,  and design methods and process insights on how to design for future challenges.

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