Design for Living Complexities: An Experiment in Teaching Critical Thinking about Design

• In Event: STS, Critical Design, Critical Digital Humanities I

Abstract

This paper describes the process of developing, teaching, and responding to evaluations of a post-graduate course on critical thinking about design in general, not in any specific arena. Design is construed as being about intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of material and the steps. Design always involves putting people as well as materials into place, which may happen by working with the known properties of the people and materials, trying out new arrangements, or working around their constraints. Critical thinking involves understanding ideas and practices better when we examine them in relation to alternatives. In a sense, critical thinking is in design from the start, because design cannot proceed without the idea that there are alternatives to the current way of doing things. The course exposes and explores alternative designs through history (showing that things have by no means always been the way they are now), "archeology of the present" (shedding light on what might have taken for granted or left as someone else's responsibility/specialty), comparison (looking at the ways things are arranged in different organizations and cultures), and ill-defined problems (in cases of real-world "living complexity" that invite a range of responses). The paper will reflect on what happened to produce evaluations like the course “has permeated all of the boundaries of my life and enabled me to take real control over the ways I am teaching, living, and processing my experience of the world.”

Author

• Peter J. Taylor, UMass Boston