Design technology:
The student as Designer:
Having worked in the design industry, I am very aware of the power of design to bring about social good. However, I am also very conscious of the mystery that surrounds the design process in many quarters. With this in mind, I strive in my teaching to try to demystify the design process and give students the routines and processes that will enable them to do useful design research, effectively develop their ideas and present them in ways that can be clearly understood by others.
I believe the MYP design cycle is an important tool in this endeavor because it provides a structure that mirrors many aspects of the processes used in the "real" world of design.
Units are developed partly to help open the eyes of learners to the power and social responsibility of the designer, as an individual standing at the nexus of Art, Science and Engineering, to develop products that are not only pleasing to use, but also beneficial to the community and kind to the environment.
Within units, learning experiences are incorporated that help develop a number of essential skills which enable learners to more meaningfully engage in the creative process. These activities are aimed at developing the following skills:
- Design research skills:
- Creativity skills:
- Visual communication skills:
- Manufacturing skills:
Over and above these skills, it is essential for student to understand how they interact and overlap - for example, students need to understand that there is a strong connection between research conclusions and specifications and, in turn, that how a potential solution meets that specification needs to be visible and clearly explained within the student's design sketches.
Design Research Skills:
Useful design research can be problematic for many students. The root of useful research is in asking the right question in the first place. This is something many students have problems with. As a result, I have worked on some specific classroom routines to enable students to ask the right questions before embarking on their research. This is particularly useful when working with students for whom English is not their first language.
So how do we get students to develop research questions that will bring them genuinely useful knowledge that will inform their design process.
1. Group discussion:
I often find it useful for students to get into groups and brainstorm on the question "what do I need to know in order to make a successful product?". This will typically bring up broad "category" questions such as "how will I make it?"
Once broad category questions have been brainstormed, students can then be asked to focus on one question and drill down deeper into more specific questions such as "what materials are available?", "what methods are available to join wood to aluminum?" etc.
Once groups have brainstormed genuinely useful research questions, they can then usually proceed on an individual basis to prioritize and choose the questions that are most relevant to their own particular set of circumstances.
It important in the later stages of this process that students are encouraged not only to define what they need to know but also begin to clarify the methods they will use to gather the data they need.
2. Categorization of research types:
I have also found that it proves useful for students to categorize their research into four different categories which cover almost all types of design research. This enables them to develop research topics that cover the most common aspects of how a product is manufactured, chosen, used and enjoyed by the end user.
Inter-product compatibility research:
The analysis of how the product the student is about to design will interact with other products. Students will need to think about what pre-existing components will need to go inside of or work together with the product they are about to design as well as where their product will be placed or used. Examples of useful research could be gathering dimensions of parts that will fit inside the product or investigating the characteristics of a surface a product may be placed on in order to make decisions about finishing or non-slip solutions.
User Interface research:
The analysis of how the user will use the product and the resultant demand on the student as the designer to make a product that is easy, safe and pleasurable to use. An example of this kind of research could be a simple experiment to work out the most convenient angle to place a screen of an iPod or other music device to enable a user to interact with it when used in conjunction with a set of speakers.
User taste research:
This type of research looks into how the designer makes decisions about how a product should look. This is important since many students make aesthetic decisions based on the "because I like it" justification. This becomes less and less acceptable as a student moves through the MYP and needs to design products with a specific market in mind who may not share their tastes.
Different methods are looked at with the major theme being that the way a product looks is never an accident, with the designer needing to justify his aesthetic decisions in quantifiable terms. This kind of research also enables students to develop the “language of design”. This is essential in enabling them to unpack and verbalize complex visual information and then inject essential aspects of that information into their own work.
Manufacturing methods research:
This type of research looks into the characteristics, qualities and limitations of available resources both in terms of materials and processes with the goal of enabling students to make informed decisions about materials while designing their product.
Student work from the G8 project "Speakers outside the box". The project centers on creative thinking processes and students are required to make speakers that not only are forbidden to be boxes (hence the project name). They must also, as a way of stimulating creative thought, physically represent an idea of an opposite. In this case, the student chose right and wrong.
Students are not bound to specific manufacturing techniques during projects. Rather they are encouraged to consider the full range of different material types as possibilities and, if they develop ideas that require material combinations that lie outside of the usual norms for a specific product type, are required to research the specific required knowledge to enable them to use that specific material. This enables students to remain open-minded about material choices while knowing that all choices when designing have consequences that one would do well to try and predict.
Creativity skills:
Creativity routines are explicitly taught to enable students to develop ideas in safe and non-judgmental environments with the aim of enabling students to surprise themselves with their own creativity and develop product ideas they didn’t realize they could come up with. This instills a can-do spirit within the students and a belief in their own creative powers. This works well in individual, group and hybrid learning situations.
Visual Communication skills:
Although students do not need to be top notch illustrators to be good designers, a basic level of drawing skill is essential to being able to effectively communicate ideas. To this end, I teach specific drawing skills where the goal is to equip students with a basic set of design specific visual communication skills with which they can communicate their ideas in a way that can be interpreted by others.
