Design in Context

Unit Code: HDG627

Credit Points: 12.5 Credit Points

> Related Course/s
> Teaching Methods
> Assessment
> Aims & Objectives
> Content
> Reading Materials

Related Course/s:

Aims & Objectives:

• To propose a comprehensive design strategy and design at an advanced level for a specific audience.
• To demonstrate a critical understanding of the role of design in complex circumstances, including environments with interactive media and continuously updated information.
• To develop a personal project from thematic group research.
• To extend the traditional role of the designer.
• To challenge participants to refine design deliverables to an advanced level.
• To guide participants to present and document design proposals in a creative, professional, and visually meaningful way.

Teaching Methods:

Projects are conducted in a studio environment, on location, through lectures, individual student consultations, class discussions, demonstrations and critiques.  Participants will work individually and in groups, developing clearly documented working methods, developing concepts through lateral thinking and carefully chosen applied methodologies.

Assessment:

100% project work. Project briefs clearly define submission requirements and due dates but participants are responsible for actively participating in this process to develop a clear understanding of assessment requirements. Formative feedback is given throughout the semester to allow participants to develop their work for final submission. Assessment occurs at the end of the semester.

Content:

Each of us has issues that we care about and are passionately interested in. These things often relate to social or technological change and design might play a very interesting role in influencing the direction of this change. This subject allows participants to propose their own project scenario based on group and/or individual thematic research. The focus of the subject is on innovation for the future and for successful design outcomes. The participant may have a business venture or proposition to make or may wish to contribute to society with a socially or culturally engaged design proposal. This project will allow flexibility in the project choice within a group theme. Participants will investigate audience engagement and discuss experience design in the context of contemporary design projects. User-centred design solutions will be paramount.

For Multimedia and Interior Design students, project work explores the different multimedia design applications in public spaces, whether they are entertainment contexts, corporate venues, retail spaces, interpretation centres, heritage and natural history sites, zoos, art galleries or museums. Participants consider the social, cultural and technological challenges when designing for digitally mediated spaces, especially the experiential potential of the visual, audio, temporal, and kinaesthetic elements of multimedia design.

Reading Materials:

Harmon, K, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2003.
Helfand, J, Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2001.
Jacobson, R (ed.), Information Design, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.
Kunkel, P, Digital Dreams: the work of the Sony Design Centre, Laurence King, London, 1999.
Papanek, V, Design for the Real World, Granada, St Albans, 1974.
Shedroff, N, Experience Design 1: A manifesto for the creation of experiences, New Riders, New York, 2001.
Shaw, J & Weibel, P, Future Cinema, The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, Cambridge and Karlsruhe, ZKM Center for Art and Media & The MIT Press, 2003.
Toy, M, 'Hypersurface Architecture', Architecture Design Magazine, No 133, 1998.
Tucker, J, 'Retail Desire: Design', Display and the Art of the Visual, RotoVision, London, 2004.
Von Naredi-Rainer, P, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhauser, New York, 2004.
Weibel, P & Druckrey, T (ed.), net_condition: art and global media, Cambridge, The MIT, 2001.