85 research outputs found
The threshold of uncertainty in teaching design
In many of our universities and colleges there is a long
established approach to teaching design through practice.
For most students their end goal is to achieve a level of
capability to function as designers in the professional
world. Their education helps them construct a passport to
enter this community of professional practice. Part of the
legacy of the funding initiative in England to support
research into teaching has been the development of a
better understanding of a practice-based approach to
design pedagogy. This was a principal focus in two centres
funded by the initiative in which ‘signature pedagogies’
were identified as a distinguishing characteristic for
developing student capability within various types of design
practice, each of which contains those elements, which are
characteristic of the discipline. This notion moves the
emphasis away from the content of the curriculum and
explores the importance of practical, embodied and
experiential ways of knowing. Where these were
investigated for product and automotive design the
concept of transformative practice was identified as crucial.
Designers typically employ two simultaneous interacting
cognitive styles. From a five-year longitudinal study
involving 89 design students, it became clear that in order
to develop the confidence to match these two modes of
thought, neophyte designers needed to surmount a barrier,
or a threshold concept, which we labelled the toleration of
of design uncertainty. Accommodating effective
arrangements to accomplish this has reinforced the
importance of employing the traditional arrangement of
studio teaching and given it a greater focus
Developing empathy for older users in undergraduate design students
Empathy has been recognised as a key skill by practicing designers. With rapid changes to inclusivity and accessibility in the transport sector, student designers need to appreciate and understand the way in which people of differing abilities are able to engage with and interact with transport. They need to not only develop an understanding of older and vulnerable users - how they experience products, vehicles, services and systems - but also have the confidence to try out new ways of finding information and gaining ‘authentic experiences’ to feed into their designs. Although empathic design is encouraged, there is often little opportunity for this to occur in a full educational curriculum.
To meet this need, the authors are developing a framework for teaching empathic design using low fidelity, experiential prototypes – using material that is easily available and affordable to design students. This paper reports the first steps towards designing a brief intervention to increase the empathic horizon of transport design students. It concludes with a set of guidelines on how to create high quality learning experiences for students that will enable enhanced empathic design outcomes as they embark upon design careers. 
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