A blog about design at the OU.
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The role of design education in addressing world challenges
Over the last months, I have been repeatedly involved in conversations around the relation between design education and the world’s challenges. How does design education contribute to dealing with big challenges such as poverty, hunger, people’s displacement or environmental disasters? Some conversations will approach design education as a space for developing the design capacity of […]
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Design and anticipation
Anticipation is the ability to act in response to, or in preparation of, a potential future reality. This is a key ability for people and social groups that are involved in design tasks (see Zamenopoulos and Alexiou, 2007; Zamenopoulos, 2012). There is a very interesting conference on Anticipation coming up next week from the 8th […]
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There is more to methods than a good idea
Designers have mixed feelings about methods. Christopher Alexander, the architect and design theoretician said “If you call it, ‘It’s a Good Idea To Do’, I like it very much; if you call it a ‘Method’, I like it but I’m beginning to get turned off; if you call it a ‘Methodology’, I just don`t want […]
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The future is here, can you feel, see and smell it?
“Are you going to the ‘Feelies’ tonight Henry?” [1] In Aldous Huxley’s book ‘The Brave New World’ [1], he speaks about going to the ‘feelies’, which transcribes as Huxley’s futuristic vision of cinema audiences being enabled to feel the scenery in the film , as well as view the film simultaneously. Figure 1. ‘The Feelies’ A London based group is already […]
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Design as provocation
This week I read an article in The Guardian about a mirror designed to reflect only if the user smiles, aimed at cancer patients to improve their sense of wellbeing. The article was scathing, why should anyone be forced to smile? Clearly this is the invention of a man and the embodiment of patriarchal notions […]
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Compendium v2
The Design Group have just finished working on the new version of CompendumDS, the concept mapping software we use to capture and communicate design processes. Over the past 12 months we have been working with colleagues across the OU and with an external consultant to update the platform Compendium runs on and refresh the look […]
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In praise of the curation of joy
I’ve been thinking a lot about how infectious the spirit of joyousness can be. In particular the joy that comes from collecting things – anything – thoughts, ideas, images, words, whatever. Yes, at one level it’s intensely personal – the seeing is everything. But at another the seeing of the seeing in itself can be […]
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Reimagining design and manufacturing
These visions for future manufacturing emerged from a 2-day event, ‘RECODE International Symposium – Future Visions of Manufacturing: Customisation, Redistribution and Technology’, held in May this year at IMechE, London. You can find details about the RECODE project here RECODE is an EPSRC funded network made up of a number of projects. Our project explored the impact of […]
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Managing creative processes
Found an interesting article by Steven A. Lowe, Project management: A surefire way to kill your software product, which discusses management practices applied to software development. Although Lowe’s focus is software, the discussion can easily be applied to management processes in any creative industry. Much of the narrative will be familiar to anyone who has tried to be creative in […]
