Time to +Change

For the anthology I present my practice as a design teacher and how I have applied +Change mindset in a bachelor course I am responsible for. I start by describing the traditional set up of a design course no matter the discipline. Then I present a case where I described the implementation of +change and my learning. Finally, I reflect on my learning in my trial.

When referring to disciplines I mean the division of the design field in the professions. I am an Architect and an Interior designer. Thus, my professional field include knowledge of other design fields as graphic design, lighting design, product design (furniture, textile, ceramics, wood, metal), as well as systems engineering and business and marketing strategies. All these matters are general, the width and the depth of them relate finally to my own interests. When thinking of methods, especially artistic methods, the sketching, and prototyping are what we all have in common, and the knowing how differentiate us from those who work with the knowing what.

My design education was carried out in studios, the spaces where design students interact with fellows and teachers coming from within or outside the school. The courses were project-based and combined lectures with a project intended to develop a practice while learning by doing. Readings specific matters was usual but there was no need to reflective papers concerning the process or the result. The proposal –the artifact, was accounted through visual and oral presentations and with a model. Once the assignment was given the process was conducted in steps enabling the knowledge acquisition which was only articulated in the visual presentations. Architecture and interior design are different to other design practices as the resulting artifacts cannot not be reduplicated as they are attached to a physical context, but also because they are a response to social needs of spaces for human interaction and often mirror a society’s complexity. Max-Neef explains satisfiers of need as having, being, doing and he has a fourth category referred to the spaces where these needs are going to be satisfied.

I would say that in general, the process of conducting a design process has not changed since the idea of design as a certain way of thinking was established. Besides the purpose –satisfying needs, the start in any design project is full of uncertainty. The pursuing of an intervention aimed to create a better situation is carried out through an explorative journey. Overcoming the fuzzy phase is difficult but staying in it gives the understanding of the situation. The “research” as it is often mentioned in industrial design methodology, is nothing else than gathering the data necessary to understand the situation and facilitate decision-making. Thus, the research is not aimed to create new knowledge as it is understood in academy, but it applied to create a new artifact. For this matter, the artifact is articulated as artistic knowledge, tacit but concrete: something to be with and experience both with the intellect and the body.

Once a path for a possible solution is discovered, the aha-moment erased the fuzzy phase and make everything obvious. Through prototyping the realization -what is possible to do with the means at hand, is enabled. The final proposal is then tested and evaluated, and process and result are discussed to resume the learning. Putting a proposal in the world is a longer process, but understanding the impact that a non-existing-yet artifact causes is a very important insight and helps us to understand what a designer really does.

This is what the students learn with design projects. In the design schools, the student-teacher interaction is characterized by a dialog through tutoring sessions. The teacher addresses each student in their search of a path and development of a proposal, a dialog meant to pass embodied knowledge in the specific visual language of the corresponding design field. The dialogue should also encourage the students to find they own individual expression to their proposal.

The design teacher reacts to a students’ visual proposal and bring in their own practice and experience while observing the design process the student is carrying out. This situation repeats along the whole process of a design course, whether is a short or a long course.

We have now moved towards thematic approaches to design, the design education is evolving to address the particular in the themes. What is essential to take with us from the existing design fields into the emerging design practices?

Our education has a student-led pedagogic model in which design teachers encourage students to independently carry on a complex project. The complexity is given in the shift of paradigm, from actions to make a situation better, to change the situation, which can even result into no actions at all, but enables a better understanding of the situation.

This is what I had it in mind when taking the responsibility of a course in the first year of the bachelor program in design +change. The case is in the course “Design Tools” in the first semester. The third module is called the 3D module. According to the course syllabus, after completing the module, the student should be able to:

• practically apply design as a change agent in relation to the concept of “the Other” and its context,
• conduct a design project focusing on “the Other”, using material and form,
• explore the concept of “the Other” and its contexts through design,
• in writing reflect on the concept of “the Other” and its contexts from the perspective of sustainability.

At first sight it seems to refer to the practices of product design. The agency must though become explicit, as well as the concept of the Other. As soon as I finished my plan, I communicated to the students how we (and I included me intentionally) were supposed to reach those goals:

I interpreted applying design as a change agent in terms of studying the difference between needs and wants as well as the understanding the complexity behind products. The module is about tangible products and refers to the first level of the nested design order. The learning how to materialize them with the adequate resources and how to produce them in the best conditions targets both change and the perspective of sustainability.

The other was a complexity I did not manage to handle in terms of a postcolonial references. This part was simplified to an interaction between “me” and “you”. I pointed out the practice of a designer: we design for somebody else than us. By means of empathy we get a better understanding of The Other. Besides, designers design together with somebody else, we do not produce the design. I also mentioned that The Other can take many names according to a situation, client, customer, end-user, public, target groups, stakeholder(s), etc. However, Otherness was important to refer as designers need to communicate with the many Others, all needing special attention as communication varies.

To conduct a project was a general concern of design: design work is carried out in limited time regardless of the character of the artifact. It means that the proposal’s goals must adjust to time (and time is also the budget to manage). The project must use material and form. No doubt, it is about any material if it is a sustainable one, which does not guarantee the proposal will be sustainable in environmental terms, but at least we can learn from it. However, how to cover material as a concept? As we are situated in the tangible part of design, then it is about what characteristic the designer is searching for that are adequate for the materialization of the proposal. The same is valid for the form concept. Applying the principles of materials give form, and form seeks for material I wanted to make the students aware of the experience of design: something to be with. Then, to determine this experience was central for the design work.

Exploring through design. I interpreted this as design as a verb, focusing on the design process, as I described above. I set up a progression in connection to given assignments to enable the actions. First addressing the chaotic start: the fuzzy phase and the fears. The lesson is to be excited AND scared, as in Little Red Riding Hood’s song. Creativity not only depends on openness to the unknown, but fear is also there for creativity too.

The teacher’s role is to time activities to enable the process and due to the short time, they were simplified in three main steps:

• firstly, with the help of artistic and scientific methods, understanding a situation in the daily life of somebody other than you.
• then, by creating ideas find a path to a tangible solution and reflect on the developing and testing as well as the evaluating the solution.
• finally, via artistic methods such as persona, mood board, artifacts analysis and prototyping, understand how the features of a design satisfy another person’s need.

Besides I wanted to give them the opportunity to discuss their means of expression through design and exercise a critical stand, not merely academic but in a designerly way through a recession of another design work, which is how I carried out with the last of the module’s goal.

The students’ evaluation of the module I conducted was satisfactory. They felt they learnt a lot and working practical was fun, however they needed better instructions and criticized me for being too hard in my critics sometimes. I would have more time for tutorial, but I wrote comments to almost all the assignments. They appreciate a lot the collective collaboration while brainstorming, which I emphasized, as designers should collaborate. Exercising sketching and applying gestalt laws was also very much valued.

The question was though if I coped to apply the +change mindset as a teacher. I think I did well, with awareness and observations and found the results -the 3D forms, interesting, some of the students did very well as the result was advanced. My awareness is given in the way the model of the nestled design order became a support for the dialogue with the students in what I called “form seminars”. Arranging the classroom to allow a conference-like disposition allows the students to share and the projects were visually accessible all the time. Then the lectures, the dialogue and the critics were given by trying to address each individual process and its result on the three levels. The many projects allowed to discuss many aspects for both the case and for all the projects in general.

I made assessments of the projects across the nested design order, moving from the lowest level to the highest level and vice versa and pointing out how the different parts of the design practice are shown. As the students are highly motivated to sustainable change, it was easy for them to found materials and consider their environmental impact, which covered the first level. Searching for industrial processes make them aware of design in collaboration with Others and gave them insight to the systems their project might be part of, and understanding the needs of the Other –even if sometimes could have been seen as banal, let them put in practice their empathy and analyze the meaning, which we find in the third and highest level. It was in the banal were I saw the conjecture of being a complex species. Values and norms were then articulated; however, it was enough to identify them this time, a more critical approach might come later during the rest of the bachelor’s studies.

I feel free from tradition and normative aesthetics, decoration is not longer a crime and the only requirement for form-content is to make sense in the context it is going to be placed, sustainability is inclusive and cover all tastes. I was not asking for the modern, I did not expected innovations either, it was what emerged from the students’ genuine interest of the Other that I focused on, and if the projects might be regarded as conventional, they were not easy tasks as I tried to relate them to the whole complexity of making change. We might indeed consider the whole module as an introduction to design defined as problem-solving activity, where the artifact is central, but taking any opportunity to question it, and ultimately reflecting on intentions rather than results was what I consider the applying design as a change agent, learning, and acquiring the +change mindset.