Download - End Of Year One PhD Presentation
Matthew Watkins
Appropriate Teaching Methods For: Effective Sustainable Product Design
Education
Matthew Watkins
Email: [email protected]
Matthew Watkins
Aim
To identify the requirements for effective delivery of sustainable product design education.
To discover the requirements for facilitating a deep understanding of sustainable product design amongst product and industrial design students.
Matthew Watkins
Objectives
To investigate how sustainable product design is taught in other universities.
To investigate the use of existing educational resources in sustainable product design education.
Matthew Watkins
Objectives (continued)
To investigate what issues need to be considered in a sustainable design tool for industrial design students
To understand the learning preferences of design students.
Matthew Watkins
Scope
To consider the most effective method for teaching sustainable product design on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the UK.
To facilitate a fundamental understanding of sustainable design in students that can guide their thinking process.
Matthew Watkins
Scope (continued)
The focus upon British universities will enable the tool to be specifically developed to the culture of the British university setting and allow the research findings to support similar course structures in the UK.
Matthew Watkins
Focus of presentation
Outline the findings of the literature review Considering the following key areas:
– Sustainable design in higher education
– How designers learn and apply knowledge
– The use of existing resources in design education
– The impact of collaboration and teamwork in design education
Indentify further work required
Matthew Watkins
Product & Industrial design
No fundamental differences between the terms Product Design and Industrial Design.
The definition given by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) will be applied to both in the context of this study.
Matthew Watkins
Definition of product & industrial design
“Industrial design (ID) is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer.” (IDSA)
Matthew Watkins
BA/BSc ?
The review of course structures revealed slight differences in course structure between the BA and BSc routes.
Typically BSc courses following a more technical route with higher emphasis on the underlying technology, whilst BA routes were biased towards user centred design.
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University Provision
The UCAS website was used to identify universities offering undergraduate courses in product or industrial design.
A total of 108 courses were offered for 2009 entry
98 in product design, 8 in industrial design and 2 in industrial product design.
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Course Content
The course details were then examined for references to sustainability or the environment.
A total 25 undergraduate courses were offered at 20 institutions.
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Universities
Anglia Ruskin Aston Bangor Bournemouth Brighton Brunel Derby Goldsmiths Hertfordshire Huddersfield
Kingston Liverpool John Moores London South Bank Loughborough Northumbria Nottingham Teeside Creative Arts (UCA) West of England (UWE) UWIC Wales Cardiff
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Course Content
6 of these courses explicitly mentioned sustainable design in the course title.
A further 12 postgraduate courses were offered between these 20 universities.
5 of which, specifically included sustainable design in their course titles.
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Sustainable Design
Sustainable Design
Okala (IDSA, 2005)
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Sustainable Product Design
Many of the 20 universities focussed solely or predominantly on the environmental issues.
This study will consider, how the additional social and equitable considerations can be incorporated into product design.
Matthew Watkins
Sustainable Product Design
Considering both user and societal design, through the inclusion of design specialism's such as:– Design for the aged
– Design against crime
– Inclusive design
Matthew Watkins
Designers learning preferences
A literature survey was conducted to determine the specific needs of industrial and product designers.
Focussing on how such designers think and use knowledge in a general design context.
Matthew Watkins
Communication
Designers naturally communicate through visual methods.– Designers prefer non verbal forms of
communication (Cross 2007)
The importance of visual stimuli is also important to a designers cognitive process.
Matthew Watkins
Visual Thinking
– Designers are predominately visual thinkers (Skaggs 2002, Sherwin and Evans, 2000)
– Visual imagery is important to the thinking process of designers (Glegg 1969, Ferguson 1977)
– The act of sketching is often fundamental to a designers thinking process (Lawson 2006)
Matthew Watkins
Thinking
Designers are divergent thinkers (Durling et al., 1996)
Designers thinking is directed towards an end product (Lawson 2006)
Both reasoning and imagination are important types of thinking to the designer (Lawson 2006)
Matthew Watkins
Creativity
Creativity is central to a designers thinking (Durling et al., 1996)
Designers perceive the need of a problem as fundamental to initiating creativity (Lawson 2006)
Importance of an incubation period to clarify ideas (Glegg 1969, Lawson 2006)
Matthew Watkins
Acquisition and use of Knowledge
Designers work from a reservoir of stored knowledge, that they subconsciously use like a library to solve problems (Laxton 1969, Hertzberger 2001)
Designers rely heavily on intuition (Durling 1999) Asserting the importance of the design
education informing a consideration of a wide variety of design issues.
Matthew Watkins
IntegrationIntegration
Designers solve problems by synthesis (Cross 2007)
Designers are divergent thinkers (Durling 1996)
Designers need to consider an ever increasing complexity of design requirements (Alexander 1964).
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Integration
Designers describe sustainable design as an attribute of good design rather than a separate specialism (Richardson et al., 2005).
Sustainable design is the first step to integration.
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Existing design tools
A range of tools that are either currently used in university education were investigated including:– tools available in the ‘Sustainable design toolbox’
– tools made available on Delft universities wiki (Delft 2008) for industrial design students.
Also tools that are freely or readily accessible available to students were investigated.
Matthew Watkins
Ecodesign tools
Many of the tools available were specifically ecodesign tools including:– Ecodesign web (template)
– MET Matrix (template)
– Information Inspiration (website)
– Ten Golden Rules (checklist)
– Sima Pro (detailed LCA package)
– Greenfly (online streamlined LCA package)
Matthew Watkins
Sustainable design tools
Those tools that could be considered to include environmental, social and ethical issues were:– Design abacus (template)
– Flowmaker (card game/resource)
– Play rethink (board game)
Two of the above resources are game based rather than specific tools.
Matthew Watkins
Educational games
Literature suggests that educational games are beneficial to learning:– highly motivating for the user (Pohl et al., 2008,
Ehiyazaryan, 2006)
– Allow for autonomous learning enabling students to develop their own perspective (Pohl et al., 2008).
Matthew Watkins
Educational games
Educational games enable difficult abstract concepts to be taught in a way that enables learners to comprehend them easily (Ehiyazaryan, 2006)
Educational games also require formal learning to enable students to access, apply and make sense of game based learning (Hammer and Black, 2009, Ehiyazaryan, 2006).
Matthew Watkins
Teamwork in design education
Literature revealed the following benefits of teamwork in design education:
– Meets the wider needs of industry (Denton, 1997)
– Cultivates critical thinking skills through the clarification and evaluation of others ideas (Gokhale, 1995)
Matthew Watkins
Teamwork in design education
– Builds skills necessary within the social process of design for interacting with clients and colleagues (Cross and Clayburn Cross, 1995, Crabtree et al., 1993)
– Leads to a better clarification of the task and a more intensive analysis of solutions presented (Ehrlenspiel 1997)
Matthew Watkins
Further work
The following areas have been identified as the subsequent stages in my work.– Design requirements for sustainable product
design.
– Experiential learning
– Further research into existing practice in sustainable design education.
Matthew Watkins
Design requirements
A review of the various design requirements that could be incorporated under the social aspect of sustainable design.– Considering the correlation between design
requirements
– Considering the potential for inclusion in an integrated design resource.
Matthew Watkins
Experiential Learning
The literature on educational games highlighted the need to consider experiential learning in the literature review.
The benefits of experiential learning The opportunities for experiential learning
through the teaching of sustainable product design.
Matthew Watkins
Universities
Further research is required into the teaching of sustainable design.
A review of literature will consider best practice in sustainable product design education globally.
The 20 UK universities identified will then be contacted and initially asked to participate in an online questionnaire.
Matthew Watkins
Universities
Selected universities will be chosen and representatives identified for interviews.
Structured interviews will be used to ascertain detail on the specific course content, teaching methods, use of tools and the experiences from teaching.
Matthew Watkins
The End
Thank you
Any questions please…..
Updates on my research can be found on my webpage:
http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~cdmaw/index.htm
