DESIGN VISION: FACULTY Design 760 | Spring 2010

THE PROJECT

•Dreams / Fears group exercise

•Design practice and education make tools

• Groups determined initially by discipline, later combined

• Significant time reserved for activity

• Recordings of presentations and discussion afterwards

CREATION

POSTERS

PAST/PRESENT

DESIGN @ ACCAD

• Individual contributor

• Linear way of thinking

• Simple solutions to complex problems

• Consumption, Consumerism are driving forces

INTERIOR SPACE DESIGN• Linear

• Lower left - area of interest

•Discipline based

• Patriarchal, profit-driven, and overconsumption

• Talking at each other

•Want to encourage feeling

PRODUCT DESIGN• Linear

• Positive and negative

• Lower left - area of interest

• Trying to be interdisciplinary, but are we?

• Risk can be positive or negative

•Discipline-based

VISUAL COMM. DESIGN

• Linear

•Male-dominated, hierarchical

•Moving from graphic design to visual communication

• Everything is moving faster

• Corporate/masculine making way for diversity/collaboration

PAST / PRESENT

• Past and present boards were done within departments

•Not much disagreement within groups

•No video of process - would have been helpful

• Central themes: dictatorship or expert approach to problem solving exists but it is not the ideal (patriarchal)

• Looking for the ideal of co-creation and collaboration

PAST / PRESENT

• Connection between digital world and world of handskills - one should not exist without the other

• Economic changes are leading the way into some design knowledge - problems of consumption and consumerism

• Faculty feels students do not share same experience of the past which affects their view of the future

FUTURE

RESPECT FOR THE PAST• Past recalled as lead-in

• Future in center - unknown

• Possibilities feed into center

• Fears in lower left

• Can get caught in spiral or use it to build toward a goal

•Design as umbrella concept - not individual disciplines

DREAMS & FEARS

•Dreams central/fears outside

• Proactive

• Teacher as facilitator/motivator

• “Through collaboration we can make a more harmonious solution”

COMPONENTS OF AN UNKNOWN FUTURE

• Future in center - unknown

• Future categorized

• Possibilities feed into center

• Areas of the future - Technology, Social/Cultural Sustainability, Collaboration, Connectivity

THE NUMBERSCommon Images

6 5

THE NUMBERSCommon Words

5 4

All future posters:

culturally responsivestorytelling

collaboration

co-creationenvironmentally conscious

mass productionsuperficial

FUTURE

• Future is big and blurry

•Many fears of the future including that we will rely too much on technology and the digital world - losing touch with the world of hand skills and brain power needed to design well

•Dream of design education as being proactive, and leading the field, instead of reactive to the demands of professional practice

• Future is much more unknown for them than for students

CONCLUSIONS

• Body language and interaction tells a more complicated tale than what is presented in these posters. Interdisciplinary collaboration is still a challenge this group of faculty is facing.

• Generally, the faculty have a blurrier vision of the future than the students, but they have a longer relationship with the past. This may influence both groups’ interpretation of where the future is going.

• Collaboration, connectivity and environmentalism are all viewed as important and positive, but when technology is introduced, the faculty view this more as an unknown. Students are more likely to view it as a positive in our future.

“...all the answers are not wrapped up in technology, especially with how quickly it’s changing. Socially responsible... collaborative spirit... harmonious... which are all things independent of technology.” - Brian Stone

THANK YOUCandy McDowall

Emily StrouseWill Taylor