lego serious play
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Graduate Seminar (Spring 2024) is a 45-hour course at the University of Florida that prepares Design and Visual Communications (MXD) graduate students to critically engage with contemporary design research methodologies. The seminar is organized as an expansive learning journey that begins with the barebones of becoming a design researcher and ends with joining a design research community. The […] - Dec 3, 2024 -
Reading the world with Lego Serious Play
Abstract: “Reading the world precedes reading the word,” says Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who revolutionized adult education. Instead of requiring students to read words without understanding their meanings, his educational approach, critical pedagogy, begins with reading the world through generative images that depict everyday scenes. Lego Serious Play can play a similar role in […] - Aug 28, 2024 -
Community Design with Lego Serious Play
Every community practices the design of itself, as Arturo Escobar has pointed out in his book Designs for the Pluriverse. How can this metadesign process be more creative, imaginative, and conscious? Lego Serious Play can support Community Design in a few ways: materialize abstract values that a community wants to express, map community assets, anchor […] - Jul 20, 2024 -
Iguaçú III community center (2022)
Uniperifa collective joined Laboratory of Design against Oppression students to plan community actions in Condomínio Residencial Parque Iguaçú III. This slum-upgrade urban project relocated people near the city center to the city outskirts, leaving people disconnected from the city and having little sense of community. We identified several sustainability issues that required increasing this sense […] - Dec 13, 2022 -
Materiality in Codesign: interaction analysis of a design experiment with building blocks
Paschoalin, Larissa and Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2021). Materialidade no codesign: análise interacional de um experimento com blocos de montar (Codesign Materiality: interactional analysis of a building blocks experiment). Design e Tecnologia, 11(23). https://doi.org/10.23972/det2021iss23pp82-92 - Jan 12, 2022 -
The Industrial Design Academic Department (DADIN) at UTFPR wanted to strengthen faculty collaboration in outreach activities. Then, it organized a workshop facilitated by faculty members Frederick van Amstel, Marco Mazarotto, and Eunice Liu. The workshop mapped current and future outreach activities from faculty members using an adapted version of Lego Serious Play. Each faculty chose […] - Feb 26, 2020 -
Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a set of standard diagrams and notations for creating software. We created at PUPCR a physical version of these diagrams with Lego to enable the participation of designers, clients, and users in software architecture and modeling activities. The concrete representations help the participants understand and make good use of software […] - Nov 1, 2018 -
I’m developing further the Lego Serious Play method to support Expansive Design, in particular, to represent tough contradictions in a humorous style. This is useful when people avoid talking about contradictions openly or deny their existence. The pretext of play enables critical voices and radical alternatives to emerge. References Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2021). The […] - Oct 31, 2018 -
Strategic Planning for Hotmilk (2017)
Hotmilk is the Catholic University of Paraná innovation hub, connecting the university to industry, startups, and the broader innovation ecosystem. In 2017, the hub—then known as PUC Agency—underwent a major transformation through a participatory strategic planning process. Frederick facilitated this process, engaging 66 stakeholders in redefining the hub’s mission, vision, values, and operational model. PUC Agency had experimented with various […] - Oct 31, 2018