Exploration through drawings in the conceptual stages of product design

This paper argues that sequences of exploratory drawings - constructed by designer's movements and decisions - trace systematic and logical paths from ideas to designs. This argument has three parts. First, sequences of exploratory sketches produced by product designers, against the same task specification, are analyzed in terms of the cognitive categories of reinterpretation, emergence and abstraction. Second, a computational model is outlined for the process of exploration through drawing and third the model is applied to elucidate the logic in the sequences of exploratory sketches examined earlier

Making meaning: developing an understanding of form in distance design education

Design education throughout the world provides students with a variety of experiences that help them develop an understanding of form and shape. The conventional model of such education requires students to participate in studio and workshop-based projects to develop skills through the creation of models and prototypes. However, with the increase in distance education worldwide we need to explore new ways for students to create and manipulate form remotely. This paper presents new work at the Open University, UK which set out to engage design students in form-making from a distance. Participants were given access to technical and design support that took rough sketches of chair designs and converted these into tangible scale models which were mailed back to the students. Several cycles of this activity generated data on how such supported modelling activity stimulated students' creative ability, design knowledge and motivation. This paper proposes new priorities for distance design education

Shape exploration in product design: assisting transformation in pictorial representations

The sketching of pictorial representations forms a key technique for professional designers in the generation and exploration of product shape. It allows ideas of shape to be externalised and communicated, but more importantly, sketched pictorial representations can operate to assist designers' creative thinking. While computer aided design tools have a proven capability to support the development of design ideas, there is still much scope to develop computer based tools that support the free-flowing exploratory thinking that characterises shape generation and shape exploration in product design. Far from being a straight-jacket in creative design, shape rules have significant potential to bridge the gap between traditional sketching techniques and modern computational methods of design. This thesis presents an inquiry into the exploitation of shape rules within product design. It includes studies of design sketches by professional designers and these inform the development of a theoretical model for assisting design transformation. A formal model of exploration is proposed with two mechanisms; shape decomposition and shape transformation. This model is applied using pictorial representations which may be seen as the computing equivalent of freehand sketches, and reveals new strategies for systematic shape generation and exploration in product design

Límites y posibilidades de las TIC en el campo de la intervención socioeducativa

.The past few years have seen increasing interest and a great impetus given to the applying of comunication and information technologies (CIT) to educational uses. It is still early to judge what resuts all of this experimentarion and applicarion will bring; nevertheless, it can be said that certain challenges or possibilities, certain limitarions or exaggerations can now be derived from the effort to apply CIT to the field of socioeducational inrervention. This article also analyzes the proliferarion of web spaces known as "virtual communities" designed for the social construction of knowledge thought cooperation and collaboration.En estos últimos años, se ha experimentado un gran impulso y un crecido interés en el uso de les Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC) aplicadas a la eseñanza. Todavía no sabemos cuáles son los resultados, ya que toda experimentación y aplicación es muy reciente. De todas formas, sin embargo, sí que podemos hablar ya de ciertos retos o posibilidades así como de ciertas limitaciones o exageraciones derivadas de plantearse la aplicación de las TIC en el campo de la intervención socioeducativa. Se analiza,por otro lado, la progresiva proliferación de espacios web, llamados comunidades virtuales, destinadas a la cooperación, colaboración y construcción social del conocimiento

L'intercanvi de cromos al Mercat de Sant Antoni de Barcelona els diumenges al matí. Què amaguen els cromos?

Treballs Finals de Grau Antropologia Social i Cultural, Facultat de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2014-2015, Tutor: Llorenç PratsHe escollit com a punt de partida d'aquest treball un element completament personal com és el fet d’acompanyar cada diumenge als meus fills, nen i nena, a canviar cromos al mercat de Sant Antoni de Barcelona. L'experiència, no per coneguda em deixa de fascinar setmana rere setmana i any rere any, degut a la seva persistencia, i, tot i estar immersos en una era digital, per la seva creixent intensitat bo i tractant-se d’un fet analògic i tradicional. Sembla com si les lleis del màrqueting arribessin a qualsevol racó i haguessin trobat en el fet de intercanviar cromos una extensió perfecta dels seus tentacles consumistes

Supporting shape reinterpretation with eye tracking

It has been argued that reinterpretation is an essential process in design generation and idea exploration. However, computational design tools, such as computer-aided design systems, offer poor support for shape reinterpretation, and as such are not well suited to ideation in conceptual design. One of the key difficulties in implementing computational systems that support shape reinterpretation is the issue of interface – how can a user intuitively guide a system with respect to their interpretation of a designed shape? In this paper, a software prototype is presented that uses an eye tracking interface to support reinterpretation of shapes according to recognised subshapes. The prototype is based on eye tracking studies, and uses gaze data and user input to restructure designed shapes so that they afford manipulation according to users’ interpretations

Categorisation of designs according to preference values for shape rules

Shape grammars have been used to explore design spaces through design generation according to sets of shape rules with a recursive process. Although design space exploration is a persistent issue in computational design research, there have been few studies regarding the provision of more preferable and refined outcomes to designers. This paper presents an approach for the categorisation of design outcomes from shape grammar systems to support individual preferences via two customised viewpoints: (i) absolute preference values of shape rules and (ii) relative preference values of shape rules with shape rule classification levels with illustrative examples

On curves and computation with shapes

Few computer implementations of shape grammars have been written that are applicable to curved shapes. The reason for this is that underlying representations of curves do not lend themselves to providing a unique description of curved shapes. Such a representation is essential for shape algorithms. This paper explains the problems posed in representing curves for shape grammar implementation. The paper demonstrates how the fundamental structures for implementing shape grammars for straight lines can be extended to shapes with curved elements

Students as digital leaders in the classroom

Summary. Over the past few years, the growing use of technology in the classroom has left many teachers feelingoverwhelmed by the new imperatives of classroom management. Contemporary educators are faced with the needto devote attention not only to teaching and curricular matters, but also to other areas for which they are often notas well trained, including issues of digital competence and the tasks of resolving technical problems that sometimesarise with electronic devices in the classroom. This drove the school Jesuïtes Bellvitge to draw a distinction betweenpedagogical and educational aspects on the one hand and technical tasks on the other. The aim is to make possiblea greater focus of efforts on the ultimate goals of the teaching and learning process. The teacher acts as theclassroom leader when it comes to educational matters, but in every class there is a group of students who play therole of «ICT experts», both taking charge of technical issues in the classroom and offering support to the teacherand their classmates. The objective of this article is to collect data from the participants in this ICT experts programmeat Jesuïtes Bellvitge and to describe and assess the experience. The article concludes that this programmehas allowed for a broader use of ICT resources in the school, with classes of different grade levels now able to incorporatethem regardless of individual teachers’ digital competence.Resum. En els darrers anys, l’ús intensiu de les tecnologies a l’escola, ha provocat que el professor de vegades essenti desbordat quan ha d’atendre la gestió de l’aula i no tan sols els aspectes d’ensenyament i aprenentatge curricularssinó també altres, pels que sovint no està preparat, com són els relacionats amb la competència digital ila resolució de les incidències tècniques que es produeixen amb qualsevol dels dispositius de l’aula. És per això,que a l’escola Jesuïtes Bellvitge s’ha decidit separar els aspectes pedagògics i didàctics dels tècnics per tal de concentrarels esforços en la finalitat última del procés d’ensenyament i aprenentatge. El lideratge pedagògic de laclasse el porta el professor però és un grup d’alumnes «ICT experts» el que a cada classe porta el lideratge tecnològici fan de suport al professor de l’aula i als seus companys. En aquest article es pretén descriure i avaluarl’experiència dels ICT experts de l’escola Jesuïtes Bellvitge segons els seus protagonistes arribant a la conclusió queaquesta experiència, ha fet que l’ús de les TIC a l’aula es pugui estendre homogèniament en els diferents cursosamb independència de la competència digital docent del professor