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Teaching

Interdisciplinary Design Theories: Real World Problems
 

Media Design School

Postgraduate Design

 

This 8 week studio component introduces students to texts, conversations and viewpoints drawn from diverse disciplinary contexts that are of relevance to design, including philosophy, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, history, literature and film. It highlights the richness of understanding that can arise when texts intersect disciplinary boundaries and populate other disciplinary spaces. In this component students engage with texts that are or have been influential in shaping ways in which designers think about the worlds that designed things enter into and redefine. Different kinds of text, including theoretical, literary and designed texts, and texts utilising multiple media, are introduced.

 

2023 - Brief from Piritahi Marae, Waiheke Island

Design and Economies

 

Media Design School

Postgraduate Design

 

The practice of design has always been profoundly shaped by the particular economies in which it has been embedded. Increasing acknowledgement of ecological stress upon the planet, in tandem with the economic instability of the first decades of the 21st century, have given impetus to a rethinking of our assumptions about the economy. Over the past decades, a number of critical thinkers have proposed new approaches to the economy.

 

In this 8-week course students explore what are the implications of these potential economies for design? How might more sustainable approaches to the economy open up new possibilities for design? What might be the role of design in the transition to a different economy?

 

Design Research: Connecting Texts, Deciphering Contexts

 

Media Design School

Postgraduate Design

 

This component introduces students to texts, conversations and viewpoints drawn from diverse disciplinary contexts that are of relevance to design, including philosophy, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, history, literature and film. It highlights the richness of understanding that can arise when texts intersect disciplinary boundaries and populate other disciplinary spaces. 

 

In this 8-week course, students use systems thinking to explore a wicked problem.

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Contemporary Design Issue: Creative Futures

 

Media Design School

Postgraduate Design

 

 

This 8-week studio component investigates the ways that material objects shape what it is to be human, whether they are gadgets, equipment, interfaces or environments. Drawing upon contemporary philosophies of technology and theories of practice, the studio provides critical tools to support design methods that engage with the complexity of human experience and culture.

 

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Experimental Design Ideas

 

Victoria University of Wellington

Bachelor of Design Innovation



Our engagement with design is multi-sensory, we experience the world through what we see, touch, taste, hear and smell. The emotions triggered by multi-sensory experience affect how we act and impact upon our collective sense of wellbeing. The study of these processes is increasingly central to both critical and affirmative design thinking. Experimental Design Ideas creatively explores how sensory experience and emotion affect, and are affected by, design research and practice. 

 

This course aims to integrate design theory and practice by focusing on sensory and emotional experience. Students are introduced to ideas of affect and feeling, as well as ethnographic methods that explore these processes. The course situates individual objects and experiences within wider social and cultural contexts. Experimental Design Ideas requires students to explore the role of the senses/emotions through their own design projects and to innovate through observation, analysis and experimentation.



 

Live Theory

Victoria University of Wellington

Bachelor of Design Innovation


Theories of everyday life are a creative resource for designers, and design is a rich source of inspiration for theorists. This course focuses on the value and significance of theory in design. By examining a number of the characters and contexts that appear in cultural and social theory, Live Theory explores how design objectifies certain ways of seeing the world.

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This course aims to enable students to understand the constructive nature of theory. Students are introduced to a number of theorisations of people, contexts and their things. Critical engagement with this material will inform the development of design manifestos. Live Theory requires students to develop their own theoretical perspectives and reflect on their own cultural, social, ethical and political positions.

 

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