DMDN371

Since late 60s onwards we see a shift from hierarchies to network throughout all different contexts and society. In particular the field of design is a good representation of the networked society. As designers design for the networked society but also are part of the networked society. This is applicable to both their field of application and the field of discipline. One of the main characteristics of the creative industries is that it’s an informal network; which is in contrast other established fields such as science.

Download the sheets here

Reflection is not about putting your work in front of a mirror it’s about finding the aspects that have no expiry date…

What I mean with that is that by doing critical reflection on a design form, its existence and even its influence will be sustained. Critical reflection is away of learning from practice, theory and objects. The aspects that are being learned from it create new knowledge according to Weick (1993) and Thomassen (2001).

Critical Reflection of Design Practice:
Elements we will discuss in the lectures are:
- What is reflection?
- How to set up critical reflection?
- How to write a critical reflection?

Can you really GENERATE new products, ideas or ways of viewing things ?
Critical reflection enables a designer to crucially navigate through the designing process and to consider how it relates to the theoretical imbedding. In order to understand the dynamic aspects of design forms and their potential for use and language for the future, one needs to critically reflect. This phase focusses on how to reflect in both a practical and theoretical level.

Download the sheets here

Check paper on knowledge management

Check paper on projective techniques

Hereby the briefs of:

- assignment 3

- assignment 4

Also assignment 3 requires uploading to the Rdrive in oder to be printed: here are the guidelines

Hand in 3
- A1 Poster
- hand in on Friday 26th BEFORE 9.00 AM
-> upload on R drive: Folder
hand-in\DMDN&IDDN371\Printing
- Pay $19.80 to Arthur Mahon

- Posters can be collected from Arthur later that day
- Monday morning put your poster on the panels in the hall way
- Week long exhibition
- Friday 3rd of October Tutors will evaluate posters
- then Exhibition closes
- keep your posters

Ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture. (Dr. David M. Fetterman of Stanford University)

In particular design ethnography is of crucial importance for design research and design thinking. Imagine stepping into the culture of your users; experience the world through their senses. Understand their routnines, their dreams, opinions and even their fantasies. As a designer you need to be on top of your design, the intended experience and the proposed audience: ethnography is your guide for being successful. It’s a diffiult guide, it might be a bumpy ride but it supports, helps and inspires.

Check the sources for help.

download the sheets here

download paper on design ethnography here

check the REMINI project here

Here you can find the schedule of the remaining course period. Be aware that this can change!!

“Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such realm is art…” Heidegger (1977, p. 35)

First introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1764 in “Neues Organon” as ‘Science of Appearance’, since then picked up by Kant, Husselr, Heidegger, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty. It’s a descriptive study of understanding the world through senses

(1) A description of the givens of immediate experience.
(2) An attempt to capture experience in process as lived, through descriptive analysis.
(3) A method of knowing that “begins with the things themselves, that tries to find a ‘first opening’ on the world free of our perceptions and interpretations, together with a methodology for reducing the interference of our preconceptions.
(4) A method of learning about another person by listening to their descriptions of what their subjective world is like for them, together with an attempt to understand this in their own terms as fully as possible, free of our preconceptions and interferences.

Husserl

- basics of phenomenology is the intention
- the object is intentional object
- the relationship is the study
- distinction between ‘noetic’ and ‘noematic’

Merleau-Ponty

- there is NO division between the subject and the object
- understanding this relationship through observing phenomena from a first-person perspective
-  intercorporeality: “empty heads turned towards the world”
- our bodies turn to other bodies
- mastery of phenomenology and design is achieved when the action is “purposeful but without purpose”

Heidegger

Makes connection to design and phenomenology by understanding “interplay”, interplay = person and the object in use. He also claims it’s hifting from “being present-at-hand” to “being ready-to hand”.

Sheets of lecture here

suggest to read “introduction to phenomenology” Dermot Moran (2000)

Other links:
Stanford programme on Phenomenology
Fullerton programme on Phenomenology