Through practical exercises supported by reading, this course explores tools, techniques and methods as applied to design practice.
By learning and practicing methods, design professionals sharpen their capacity to analyze and systematize projects, attending user needs with greater accuracy and sensibility. This enhances the experience of designing as well as results, while impacting anything from precise project planning to times of creative intuition. Design research and methods can be developed alone or in groups, and often combine simple and more complex techniques.
A key characteristic of contemporary design thinking is the capacity to work simultaneously on multiple registers. Another is its capacity to attend to outliers, “deviance” and extreme exceptionality, which traditional design practices often ignored.
The course begins by reflecting on method and its critique in design practice. Design thinking enables us to analyze the phases and features of a project, often using visualization techniques. The course also explores ways to analyze project briefings, find solutions, order projects sequentially (via Gantt and other charts) and systematize data in groups.
In research, the course introduces techniques such as cognitive mapping, quantitative surveys and analysis of user needs, with research ethics front and centre. This leads to consideration of ethnographic approaches, featured in participant-observer techniques and the ethnographic interview. A key feature of contemporary design practice is the role of designer as mediator, where designers facilitate the knowledge of users and stakeholders, including in the ideation of solutions. Design training means understanding how everyone has a role in design practice.
- Teacher: Jeffrey Swartz