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 goal is to prepare students to become self-directed researchers who can contribute to an existing or develop a new design research program. Each class offers the opportunity to discuss a mandatory reading assignment and participate in a subject-related design experiment. The first 10 seminars were organized by the instructor, whereas the last 5 were organized by the student teams.
Course outline
Week 1 – 01/11/2024 – Becoming a design researcher
Design experiment: Reading a professor of design’s CV and speculating on your own journey.
Reading assignment for this class: Goldschmidt, G. (2013). How I became a design researcher. In ICoRD’13: Global Product Development (pp. 3-13). Springer India.
Recorded lecture:
Week 2 – 01/18/2024 – Positionality, positioning, and critical consciousness
Design experiment: I am my trash. Bring to class your recyclable trash accumulated in a week.
Reading assignment for this class: Moses, T. and Mercer, L. E. “Examining the Influence of Positionality on the Facilitation of Design Processes.” Dialectic, 3.1 (2021): pgs. 97-122. https://doi.org/10.3998/dialectic.14932326.0003.105
Week 3 – 01/25/2024 – Contemporary expansion of the design object.
Design experiment: Playing The Expansive Hospital (2014) board game.
Reading assignment for this class: Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2015) Expansive design: designing with contradictions. Doctoral thesis, University of Twente. https://fredvanamstel.com/publications/expansive-design-designing-with-contradictions-2 p. 146-166
Lecture:
Week 4 – 02/01/2024 – Who’s Who in design research: mapping an expanding field
Design experiment: Sharing student research interests using Lego Serious Play.
Reading assignment for this class: Engholm, I. (2011). Positions in contemporary design research. Swedish Design Research Journal, 2(11), 48-62.https://svid.ep.liu.se/issue/view/128
Lecture:
Week 5 – 02/08/2024 – Long-term design research programs
Design experiment: Analysing and describing the MXD design research program using Lego Serious Play.
Lecture:
Reading assignment for this class: Redstrom, J. (2017). Chapter 5: Programs. In: Making design theory. MIT Press. p. 83-111
Week 6 – 02/15/2024 – Designing design at different levels of reality
Design experiment: playing Lego Serious Play What the Duck games.
Reading assignment for this class: Stappers, P., and Visser, F. (2014) Meta-levels in design research: Resolving some confusions, in Lim, Y., Niedderer, K., Redström, J., Stolterman, E. and Valtonen, A. (eds.), Design’s Big Debates – DRS International Conference 2014, 16-19 June, Umeå, Sweden.https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2014/researchpapers/63
Week 7 – 02/22/2024 – Design thinking and the empirical studies of design practice
Design experiment: The oppressed designer workshop.
Reading assignment for this class: Saito, Carmem; Van Amstel, Frederick M. C.; Serpa, Bibiana O; Angelon, Rafaela. Wicked rituals of contemporary design thinking. (2023). In: Mehl, Johanna and Höfler, Carolin (Eds). Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. Hamburg: Adocs. p. 150-161. http://doi.org/10.53198/9783943253726
Week 8 – 02/29/2024 – Interaction analysis of collective design bodies
Design experiment: Qualitative data analysis exercise using the previous workshop’ recordings
Reading assignment for this class: Angelon, Rafaela and Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2021) Monster aesthetics as an expression of decolonizing the design body. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 20(1), pp. 83-102(20). https://doi.org/10.1386/adch_00031_1
Week 9 – 03/07/2024 – Research-through design and knowledge creation
Design experiment: Analyzing embodied contradictions behind existential crises using Crisis Deck illustrations and Lego Serious Play.
Reading assignment for this class: Frayling, Christopher, 1994, Printed Publication, Research in Art and Design (Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol 1, No 1, 1993/4) https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/384
Week 10 – 03/14/2024 – Spring break
Week 11 – 03/21/2024 – Making Design Theory
Design experiment: Tearing the book 118 Theories of Designing apart, finding a theory that explains a design researcher’s existential crisis, model with Lego Serious Play, and discuss.
Week 12 – 03/28/2024 – Student-led seminar – Critical Pedagogy
Week 13 – 04/04/2024 – Student-led seminar – Decolonizing Design
Week 14 – 04/11/2024 – Student-led seminar – Design Negotiations
Week 15 – 04/18/2024 – Student-led seminar – Pluriversal Design
Week 16 – 04/25/2024 – Student-led seminar – Sustainable Communication Design
