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Design Thinking Pedagogy In A Culture Of Information Immediacy, Ahu Yolac, Philip Plowright Sep 2025

Design Thinking Pedagogy In A Culture Of Information Immediacy, Ahu Yolac, Philip Plowright

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This paper investigates design thinking pedagogy within the context of information immediacy, analysing student work from the Design Principles studio, an interdisciplinary introductory course for first-year students enrolled in five professional design programs. The course emphasizes foundational design thinking skills, including divergent and convergent thinking, abstraction, coherence, cohesiveness, and the hierarchical organization of project information. Through qualitative analysis of student projects, we identify three distinct patterns of engagement: procedural application, emerging integration, and flexible, critical workflow. These patterns reveal how students navigate and internalize design thinking tactics in an era of abundant information and digital tools. We discuss the pedagogical …

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Fostering Circular Competencies In Design: From Uncertainty To Agency, Snorre Näsman, Lotte Nerup, Ditte Bangsund, Rasmus Simonsen, Eva Brandt Sep 2025

Fostering Circular Competencies In Design: From Uncertainty To Agency, Snorre Näsman, Lotte Nerup, Ditte Bangsund, Rasmus Simonsen, Eva Brandt

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This paper examines the concept of Intertwinia as a representation of new possibilities and futures in sustainable design, juxtaposing it against the often-misused term of sustainability in the corporate world. Our investigation draws upon Tony Fry’s notion of “sustain-ability” to challenge traditional discourses on sustainability, advocating for a new paradigm that recognises the finite nature of resources and the significance of ethical design interventions. We focus on the pivotal role of design educators in equipping students with the necessary capabilities to affect change in a circular economy. By highlighting the importance of incorporating a circular mindset within design education, we …

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A New Career Path For Designers: Crowdwork And Designers’ Motivations To Engage In This Employment Model, İrem Dilek Alptekin, Pınar Kaygan Sep 2025

A New Career Path For Designers: Crowdwork And Designers’ Motivations To Engage In This Employment Model, İrem Dilek Alptekin, Pınar Kaygan

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The unabated development of technology continues to affect human life in many aspects, one of which is working life. Over the past decade the world of work has been experiencing digital transformation. Integrating the digital processes and tools into business models, digital transformation has led to the shift in the traditional business structures, hierarchies, relations, and the workplace. Thanks to this shift in the traditional way of work, today, it is possible to outsource the work through an open call to a geographically dispersed mass of people. This means that, companies or individuals now have access to an indefinitely large …

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Is Industrial Design Education Prepared For Industry 4.0?, Christoph Koch, Blair Kuys, Gianni Renda Sep 2025

Is Industrial Design Education Prepared For Industry 4.0?, Christoph Koch, Blair Kuys, Gianni Renda

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This article explores the current state of industrial design in relation to future manufacturing technologies and paradigms. To date, no empirical research has been conducted that specifically examines the role of practising industrial designers in relation to their understanding and preparedness for technologies and systems as part of the next manufacturing revolution—Industry 4.0. As industrial design historically emerged in response to mass production, its continued relevance depends on how the profession evolves alongside technological transformation. We argue that changes in current production influence the development of the design profession and therefore its education. Although new technologies and systems are being …

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Positioning Roles Of Ai Representations In Creative Conversation, Lisha Ren, Zhiwen Deng Sep 2025

Positioning Roles Of Ai Representations In Creative Conversation, Lisha Ren, Zhiwen Deng

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In design practice and education, emerging representations and tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are challenging the dominance of sketches as the primary creative medium. However, the role of these new representations in design disciplines and education remains ambiguous. To address this ambiguity, this paper proposes a "creative process as conversation" framework to understand representations and tools within the creative process. This framework decouples representational mediums from creative acts driven by subjective intent and knowledge source, revealing the cognitive functions of representations in ideation.. The conversational perspective clarifies AI's advantages: generating inspiring representations, accessing expansive knowledge resources, and integrating different …

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Can Design Inform Education?: A Conceptual Framework For A Learner-Involved Approach In Education, Pelin Efilti, Koray Gelmez Sep 2025

Can Design Inform Education?: A Conceptual Framework For A Learner-Involved Approach In Education, Pelin Efilti, Koray Gelmez

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Relying on teaching as design conceptualization, the analogies between designer-user interactions in design and teacher-learner interactions in education are developed to form the framework of this paper. Reconceptualizing teacher role as designer and learner role as user leads to the discussion of design education from the view of user experience perspective. This paper explores context- and methodology-oriented transformations from a user involvement approach in design to a learner-involved approach in education. The transformations are addressed regarding the process and outcome-specific aspects of design practice, as well as position and instrument-specific aspects of user research. We believe that these aspects can …

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Leveraging Neurodivergent Design Students To Co-Design Education And Develop A Resource For Inclusive Teaching, Karina Bhattacharya, Sabir Khan Sep 2025

Leveraging Neurodivergent Design Students To Co-Design Education And Develop A Resource For Inclusive Teaching, Karina Bhattacharya, Sabir Khan

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This research advocates for a shift towards inclusive teaching practices in industrial design education. Neurodivergent industrial design students and recent graduates were leveraged as experts in their lived experiences to promote inclusivity. This study investigates what recommendations the neurodivergent participants could co-design toward inclusive teaching practices. Seven participants (graduate design students) from a North American institution were asked to share their background, comment on the state of industrial design education, and articulate what an inclusive version could be in the future through interviews and co-design workshops. Thematic analysis revealed 6 themes: (1) Interest: engaging in projects that interested them, (2) …

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Stories And Shaping: How Narrative Methods Enhance Decentralized Studio Learning, Andreas Lanig Sep 2025

Stories And Shaping: How Narrative Methods Enhance Decentralized Studio Learning, Andreas Lanig

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The author investigates how digital and hybrid design studios reconceptualise distance learning from a decentralised perspective. To achieve this, ten narrative interviews were conducted with students and graduates of DIPLOMA University of Applied Sciences during the winter semester of 2024/25. These interviews were then triangulated with visual artefacts, such as sketches and development diaries. Through thematic and interpretative analysis, the author identifies three core dimensions of transformation (professional, personal/interdisciplinary, and epistemic exchange) and delineates a three-stage hierarchy of reflective learning comprising self-observation, dialogue with peers and tutors, and collective narrative construction. Based on these findings, the author has developed a …

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Connectedness In Design Learning Experience – A Qualitative Study Using Nvivo Analysis, Christy Gogu Sep 2025

Connectedness In Design Learning Experience – A Qualitative Study Using Nvivo Analysis, Christy Gogu

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Design being a collaborative field, often requires designers to engage with people from multi-disciplinary backgrounds to bring a concept from sketch to product or service. Social connectedness has been reported to help in this collaboration within and between teams. A design learning environment that promotes perceived social connectedness can aid future designers to cultivate greater collaboration and empathy that is essential for a user-centred approach to designing. This research was conducted to study the role of social connectedness in learning experience from the design educators’, students’ as well as practicing designers’ perspectives. Qualitative data collection was done with 35 semi-structured …

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Design Futures Pedagogy: Does The Type Of Exercise, Year Of Study, Order, And Number Of Exercises Matter?, Peter Scupelli, Paulo Carvalho Sep 2025

Design Futures Pedagogy: Does The Type Of Exercise, Year Of Study, Order, And Number Of Exercises Matter?, Peter Scupelli, Paulo Carvalho

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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 …

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Intertwining Briefs: Reflecting On The Craft Of Design Studio Briefs, Ricardo Sosa, Enya Moore, Jody Watts, Nina Hansopaheluwakan, Rodrigo Hernandez Ramirez, Yaron Meron Sep 2025

Intertwining Briefs: Reflecting On The Craft Of Design Studio Briefs, Ricardo Sosa, Enya Moore, Jody Watts, Nina Hansopaheluwakan, Rodrigo Hernandez Ramirez, Yaron Meron

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Design briefs are widely used in professional practice and design education, serving as key means for communication and learning. This paper explores the functions of design briefs in educational settings, drawing on the collective insights of experienced design educators. Through a series of case studies and collaborative reflections, the paper identifies five key themes: briefing as a relational process, the agency of learners, skills or practice, positionality and values, and briefs for scaffolding. The study also critically examines the potential of generative AI tools for effective brief development, demonstrating their applicability through a hands-on exercise. The findings underscore the need …

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Learning Memories Unlocked: Capturing Design Graduates’ Reflections Through Evocative Objects, Miray Hamarat Dundar, Koray Gelmez Sep 2025

Learning Memories Unlocked: Capturing Design Graduates’ Reflections Through Evocative Objects, Miray Hamarat Dundar, Koray Gelmez

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Memories and evocative objects play a significant role in establishing enduring connections with past experiences. They serve as powerful reminders of our personal histories, enabling us to revisit crucial moments and maintain a lasting bond with our past. From this perspective, this study aims to provide reflections on the learning memories of industrial design graduates. Specifically, the research question addressed in this paper is: How do industrial design graduates recall and articulate their memories about their university education? To investigate this question, a warm-up and reflective session were conducted with a group of industrial design graduates, who were former classmates. …

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(Inter-)Disciplinarity In The Making: Urban Design Education In Türkiye, Irmak Yavuz Özgür Sep 2025

(Inter-)Disciplinarity In The Making: Urban Design Education In Türkiye, Irmak Yavuz Özgür

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While the disciplinary and substantive bases of urban design have long been debated in academic circles, its institutionalization has rarely been a central area of inquiry. Often addressed as an inter- or multi- disciplinary field, the processes through which urban design has emerged and taken shape in education has yet to be explored. Although the disciplinary trajectories of architecture and urban planning have been examined both independently and in relation to each other, urban design—often marked as a bridge between the two—has attracted comparatively little attention. However, such endeavour is of great significance for understanding the disciplinary grounding of urban …

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Now We Know: Findings From A Critical Pedagogy Experiment On The Nature Of Codesign Knowledge, Azadeh Jalali, Lucia Londoño Davalos, Frederick Van Amstel Sep 2025

Now We Know: Findings From A Critical Pedagogy Experiment On The Nature Of Codesign Knowledge, Azadeh Jalali, Lucia Londoño Davalos, Frederick Van Amstel

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When learning codesign, design students often find themselves in the anxious position of not knowing whether they know codesign. Codesign' emphasis on shared knowledge and facilitation stands in contrast to the individual knowledge and mastery cultivated by expert design, with which students are more familiar. Critical pedagogy, an emergent approach in design education that emphasizes developing critical consciousness of the contradictions behind design, is a promising candidate for learning the shared nature of codesign knowledge. To verify this possibility, this research conducted a critical pedagogy experiment with graduate design students in the United States supported by the Blind Side gamestorming …

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Anxiety, Gratitude And Beyond: Emotional Journeys Of Design Students Through Design Juries, Ebrar Cosar, Koray Gelmez Sep 2025

Anxiety, Gratitude And Beyond: Emotional Journeys Of Design Students Through Design Juries, Ebrar Cosar, Koray Gelmez

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Design juries are a critical component of design education, offering students a platform to present their work and receive feedback to enhance their skills and projects. Additionally, they serve as assessment tools for design educators, evaluating student progress and understanding their strengths and areas for improvement. This article explores the evolution of students' emotional responses to design juries from the 1st to the 4th grade and their role in design education, addressing a gap in the existing literature that lacks studies on these changes over time. To understand the perceptions of the students, a phenomenological approach was used, and the …

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Designing The World Precedes Designing The Word: The Paulo Freire Method Applied To Typography Education, Hiền L.D. Phan, Azadeh Jalali, Frederick M. C. Van Amstel Sep 2025

Designing The World Precedes Designing The Word: The Paulo Freire Method Applied To Typography Education, Hiền L.D. Phan, Azadeh Jalali, Frederick M. C. Van Amstel

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This paper describes a critical pedagogy design experiment in typography education in a public university in the United States of America. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s claim that reading the world precedes reading the word, typography was reframed in this experiment as a designing of the world through designing the word. To design words this way, graphic design students need first to re-read the designs of their worlds, have something to say about that, and then critically embed their (designed) word into their (designed) world. This experiment builds upon the critical design pedagogy program set forth by the Design & Oppression …

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Applying Intersectional Theory In Design As A Practice Of Raising Awareness In Design Education, Federica Caruso, Venanzio Arquilla Sep 2025

Applying Intersectional Theory In Design As A Practice Of Raising Awareness In Design Education, Federica Caruso, Venanzio Arquilla

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This paper examines the integration of intersectionality theory into design education to foster critical awareness. Intersectionality, which acknowledges the interconnectedness of multiple identities and systemic oppressions, challenges traditional design paradigms that often perpetuate biases and exclusion. This research aims to prioritise inclusive design, focusing on its integration into meta-design. In this context, "meta-design" indicates a methodological approach to reframing design briefs (problem-framing). Research on problem-framing, which directly influences decision-making, often incorporates biases that lead to superficial efforts to address inclusivity. It is imperative to address awareness, power dynamics and prejudices at the beginning of the design process to mitigate them. …

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Designing Playful Education: A Game Changing Matrix To Rule ‘Em All, Letizia Vaccarella, Giulia Teverini, Annamaria Recupero Sep 2025

Designing Playful Education: A Game Changing Matrix To Rule ‘Em All, Letizia Vaccarella, Giulia Teverini, Annamaria Recupero

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Games have transcended their role as mere entertainment tools evolving into powerful mediums for driving meaningful change. Whether addressing environmental sustainability, health promotion, or educational engagement, these games for change hold immense transformative potential. But the successful design of this type of games requires consideration of several aspects (context, objectives, participants, game elements), and there are no structured methods available yet to support this process. To fill this gap, this paper introduces the Game Changing Matrix, a novel methodology developed to support the design of games aimed at meaningful transformation. Building on the frameworks of the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, and …

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Learning From The David Collection, Else Skjold Sep 2025

Learning From The David Collection, Else Skjold

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This paper elaborates on a 2nd semester project at the MA [x] in Fashion and Textiles, that is conducted in collaboration with the David Collection Museum in Copenhagen. It will showcase three student projects and how the students individually work with various implications of cultural heritage and cultural appropriation in design. As the MA is born out of the user-led, situated and contextual principles of so-called wardrobe research, it will be highlighted how this lens can help offer pathways for engaging with museum objects that hold deep levels of cultural heritage. Especially, how ‘learning with history’ with a student mix …

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Design Education Exploring Iot In Sports With An Ethnographic Toolkit, Luca D'Elia, Mariia Ershova, Miriam Saviano, Alessandro Aiuti, Viktor Malakuczi, Lorenzo Imbesi Sep 2025

Design Education Exploring Iot In Sports With An Ethnographic Toolkit, Luca D'Elia, Mariia Ershova, Miriam Saviano, Alessandro Aiuti, Viktor Malakuczi, Lorenzo Imbesi

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Design emphasizes the understanding of user needs through direct interaction to build empathy before developing solutions. This approach is crucial for emerging technologies like IoT, which lack defined roles in daily life. Modern design education incorporates ethnography to enable students to engage with approachable communities, facilitating effective user research within academic project timelines. This contribution presents a didactic approach that intertwines human-centered research skills with technological prototyping. The focus is on sporting communities in public spaces, explored with a purpose-built ethnographic toolkit designed to uncover user insights and develop IoT solutions that enhance community activities. The article describes the preparation …

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Living Lab For Human Life In Space. New Education Experiences., Laura Succini, Valentina Gianfrate, Veronica Pasini Sep 2025

Living Lab For Human Life In Space. New Education Experiences., Laura Succini, Valentina Gianfrate, Veronica Pasini

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Over the past two decades, advanced design cultures have worked to integrate complexity management and long-term vision into design practices and learning models. Learning is no longer seen as a transmissive process, but rather as an intentional, active practice involving reciprocal activities of action and reflection, experimentation and prototyping. What happens, however, when designing for extreme contexts such as deep space? How can this field be used to improve the education of future designers? Building on the Responsible Advanced Design approach, the paper presents the results of the Space Living Lab, a learning environment and an experimental system applied to …

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Intertwinia Elitism: Educating Leaders Through Power, Myth And Ai., Francesco Galli Sep 2025

Intertwinia Elitism: Educating Leaders Through Power, Myth And Ai., Francesco Galli

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What is the hidden message behind the Sator Square, and why does this palindrome continue to generate multiple and contradictory interpretations? Rather than resolving the hermeneutics of this ancient and enigmatic design symbol, the article adopts it as a speculative lens to examine how power circulates through the cultural manifestations of art and design. Revisited in the conclusion, the SATOR operates as a metaphor for the intertwined, recursive, and ambiguous forces that shape creative knowledge and leadership. Drawing on soft power as a force of attraction and influence, the discussion critiques design elitism—which constrains inclusivity and sustains hierarchical structures in …

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Intertwining The Materiality And The Criticism In The Critical Making Studio, Özgün Dilek Sep 2025

Intertwining The Materiality And The Criticism In The Critical Making Studio, Özgün Dilek

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This paper presents a studio-based course in a higher education setting that explores the pedagogical potential of the Critical Making (CM) approach. The course was designed to investigate how B.Sc. level industrial design students could integrate critical thinking and material exploration within the design process. It aimed to cultivate students’ abilities in three interrelated areas: articulating social criticism through design, employing interactive technologies to support critical expression, and engaging in personal inquiry into design processes. Structured at the intersection of art and design, the course employed studio pedagogy supported by class exercises and coding workshops. These activities encouraged students to …

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How To Sketch Things With Words?, Suleyman Enes Himaki, Ozge Merzali Celikoglu, Elif Sen Himaki Sep 2025

How To Sketch Things With Words?, Suleyman Enes Himaki, Ozge Merzali Celikoglu, Elif Sen Himaki

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This study investigates the relationship between verbal and visual modes of thinking among novice design students, focusing on their mutual influences and exchanges. Conducted within an undergraduate course, Design Communication II, the study engaged eleven students in a series of exercises and workshops over a fourteen-week period designed to facilitate transitions between verbal and visual thinking. The research aimed to explore the effects of incorporating verbal exercises into a drawing course, understand how students respond to a curriculum that equally emphasizes verbal and visual activities, and assess the impact of verbal discussions on visual communication methods. Using participant observation as …

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Everyday Interactions With The Tecnosphere: A Critical Educational Path, Annapaola Vacanti, Alessandro Lodovini Sep 2025

Everyday Interactions With The Tecnosphere: A Critical Educational Path, Annapaola Vacanti, Alessandro Lodovini

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Contemporary design risks becoming irrelevant or complicit in a technocratic agenda that prioritizes evidence over values unless future designers are trained to critically understand technology and its impacts on social, economic, political, environmental, and psychological structures. What role does design play in this process? What stance will tomorrow’s designer embrace? These questions form the backbone of the Theories and History of Design course at Università Iuav di Venezia, which focused on the transformation of everyday actions mediated by technology. At the sociological level, two perspectives collide: a critical approach that acknowledges risks to individual freedoms and a techno-optimist view that …

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Designing Scaffolding Cards For Design Challenges In K-12 Settings, Saad Shehab, Jane Pak, Roya Attarian, Michelle Heredia Sep 2025

Designing Scaffolding Cards For Design Challenges In K-12 Settings, Saad Shehab, Jane Pak, Roya Attarian, Michelle Heredia

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This paper explores the development of scaffolding tools, specifically a card template, to support high school teachers and students in human-centered design (HCD) problem-based learning challenges. Drawing on research-supported design principles, we present a versatile template that can be used to create cards that can support students as they work on design challenges. We demonstrate the use of the template to create cards that can facilitate high school students’ engagement in design challenges that apply math and design to address social justice issues. We present our plans for prototyping the design and use of these cards with teachers and students …

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Pluralism In Design Education: Mental Models And Decision-Making, Jennifer Rittner Sep 2025

Pluralism In Design Education: Mental Models And Decision-Making, Jennifer Rittner

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Designers for "social good" and "social impact" must critically examine the assumptions and mental models that shape their understanding of the communities they aim to serve. This essay argues that embracing pluralistic, non-fixed conceptions of identity and positionality is crucial for creating truly inclusive and equitable design practices. Through frameworks that deconstruct the idea of fixed identities, designers can surface their unconscious biases and unlearn harmful originating myths about marginalized groups being culturally, socially, cognitively, or physically "deficient." The essay presents flexible positionality matrices that position aspects of identity along spectrums of fixed, fluid, conditional, and temporal states of being. …

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Permaculture Of Game Development Education: The Intertwined Nature Of Games Research And Game Design Practice, Asli Tece Bayrak, Sofia Piven Sep 2025

Permaculture Of Game Development Education: The Intertwined Nature Of Games Research And Game Design Practice, Asli Tece Bayrak, Sofia Piven

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Game development is an interdisciplinary collaborative process which involves programming, art, and design expertise. A game development education, therefore, builds upon the already unique challenges of learning game programming and game art, while acknowledging that successful video game development relies on designing and producing compelling player experiences. Given this complexity, to date there is not a standardized approach to building game development curriculum. Recent curriculum overviews reflect a large degree of variation in foci - technical degrees focusing on courses such as mathematics, physics, programming, graphics or art degrees focusing on courses such as 2D or 3D art, animation, world …

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Beyond Boundaries: Exploring Design Through Place-Based Learning, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed Sep 2025

Beyond Boundaries: Exploring Design Through Place-Based Learning, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed

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In this paper we examine the transformative potential of place-based design education through a collaborative, cross-cultural project involving first-year design students from the Pakistan Institute of Fashion & Design (PIFD) and Beaconhouse National University (BNU), Lahore, in partnership with the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) in Uganda. Utilizing a critical place-based pedagogical methodology, the project aimed to foster creative problem-solving, and cross-cultural collaboration through experiential and outdoor learning. Over three phases from 2017 to 2019, students participated in multidisciplinary activities that emphasized co-design and participatory practices within real-world contexts. Findings from the project indicate significant enhancement in students' abilities to navigate …

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Futuring Design Education Better: Practice, Experience, And Context, Andrew Whitcomb Sep 2025

Futuring Design Education Better: Practice, Experience, And Context, Andrew Whitcomb

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Design education has a responsibility to continuously reconsider its purpose toward students and society. Yet, despite ongoing discussions about what futures for design education should contain, we have little scholarship on how futuring happens in the present. Without addressing the context of sociotechnical institutions, we run the risk of developing design education futures that perpetuate unsustainable ways of knowing, being, and making. This paper aims to enrich conversations about design education futures by accounting for and critically reflecting on the experience of practicing as a design educator-researcher in a large public research university in the United States. Drawing inspiration from …

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