Transformative Teaching

Abstract

Thinking through making is a mode of active enquiry in which the designer makes artefacts, used to understand the possibilities of materials, processes and the designer’s own capabilities (Jukes, 2020). With access to making facilities restricted or non-existent during much of the pandemic, design educators had to rethink our approach to thinking through making. This presentation will discuss how pandemic constraints were used to positively encourage playful, low-stakes and low-fidelity prototyping as a way of generating and developing ideas. Both at home and in hybrid learning, final-year design students were guided through early rapid prototyping exercises using found materials. Despite often dealing with serious project subjects, students were instructed to make these prototypes ‘ridiculous’, and given a limited time period. These constraints reduced pressure to make something ‘good’ or ‘right’, encouraging play and taking action without overthinking to explore radical possibilities. The use of found materials was useful in disrupting creative ruts, forcing students to respond instinctively and creatively to whatever happened to be around their homes or studios. Despite the shortness and seeming frivolity of the exercises, their influence was apparent in many projects as they developed; many concepts, interactions and product forms created in these exercises developed into final concepts. And for many the approach itself, of making quick and low-stakes prototypes requiring minimal facilities to explore and develop ideas, became central to their continuing process. Even with facilities reopening, this approach has value in hybrid and in-person design education.