design process

Architectural artisanship skills development strategies implemented through architectural design studio projects focused on process

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Discipline: 

Architecture & Built Environment

Design education is an integral part of the architectural student’s journey. Traditionally, in the undergraduate course, emphasis is placed on the skills development of conceptual sketching, model making, storytelling, and various communications of the concept and design processes. However, these skills are often seen as separate parts and taught as such without always utilising the opportunities to integrate these various aspects and parts into a holistic process. Architectural artisanship is a vital part of design acumen and must be seen as a skill that facilitates the design process rather than a separate entity.

Design and construction: Intersections of linear and circular design

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Discipline: 

Architecture & Built Environment

The multifaceted structure of higher education often limits the full integration of design and construction teaching in schools of architecture, but the potential for a greater intersection of these knowledge bases does exist. Design education in the architecture studio is typically taught through a linear process, where students are required to produce a concept design, followed by a series of design iterations and lastly, technification of the design. Similarly, in practice, this process is linear, starting with a design phase followed by a construction phase. In both scenarios, this process leads to a predictable design outcome. Contrastingly, a circular design process has the potential to allow for a more open-ended negotiation with material, technology, process, and making.

The ethics review of visual communication design research proposals: is a 'dual mandate' approach justifiable?

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Discipline: 

Media & Communications Design

The majority of institutional ethics committees at South African tertiary institutions state in their standard operating procedures that the role of the ethics committee includes screening proposed research with regard to the core principles of ethics (dignity and autonomy, justice, non-maleficence and beneficence), as well as the scientific validity of the envisaged study.  

The first part of this paper debates to what extent such an approach is justified, as the notion of validity is primarily located in the philosophy of science and not in the field of moral philosophy.  

The second part of the paper illustrates some of the main points of the discussion with selected examples from the field of visual communication design research.

The examples are drawn from

Idealisation as a design approach in enamelled contemporary jewellery

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Discipline: 

Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

The Platonic notion of idealism, specifically used in the botanical imagery represented inRenaissance paintings is investigated in this paper and compared to the botanical motifs used in Renaissance enamelled jewellery. The same process of idealisation used in Renaissance painting and enamel jewels is applied to South African botanical motifs, which creates a stylistic departure from the botanical images used during the Renaissance.

Design process of novice fashion design students: an educator’s reflective analysis

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Discipline: 

Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

This paper centres around a creative design project for first-­‐year fashion design students. This project was informed by (1) the theoretical underpinnings of design thinking, (2) a human-­‐centred approach to design and (3) protocol studies of novice engineering and industrial design students’ approaches to the design process. The design project assumed a design process method that focused on human beings – and their needs – as the driver for fashion design. The aim of adopting such a human-­‐centred method for creative design was three-­‐ fold. Firstly, the design project aimed to create a culture and awareness of human beings and their needs as a driver for fashion design.

The Problem with Plagiarism

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Discipline: 

Graphic Design & Visual Art

This study examines the concept of visual plagiarism within a contemporary cultural context shaped by postmodern design theory and the digital information age, as a challenging concern for tertiary level graphic design education.

This paper does not condone plagiarism, however it asks design lecturers to reconsider taken-for-granted assumptions that students operate in an unambiguous environment of 'wrong' and 'right' when it comes to the concept of visual plagiarism. It seems that graphic design students find it increasingly difficult to navigating the grey areas between plagiarism, appropriation, homage, inspiration, 'referencing, coincidence and 'accident'.

Designing from Behind the Camera: Creative interdisciplinarity in film, architecture and interior design

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Discipline: 

Architecture & Built Environment

Architectural and Interior design are disciplines that are by nature interdisciplinary. Whether in dialogue with engineers, builders, lighting designers or furniture makers, the architect and interior designer is forced to think in more than one register. The same applies in the creative sphere. In their own creative endeavours, architects and interior designers have always drawn on the ideas, concepts, theories and practices of other disciplines. Both the practice and conceptualisation of architecture and interior design then are interdisciplinary.

Creating a Community of Assessment Practice for Graphic Design through the use of E-portfolios

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Discipline: 

Graphic Design & Visual Art

An area that currently challenges and will continue to challenge design education in the future is that of assessment. Current research in design assessment has identified approaches such as a holistic assessment, designed to evaluate product, person and process (de le Harpe et al., 2009) and authentic assessment both of which move towards a more learner-centered and process concentrated approach. With these changes come new challenges for design educators to substantiate and validate what they do when it comes to the assessment of student work.

A role for information architecture in design education: indeterminate problems in design thinking

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Discipline: 

Design Education Strategy

When faced with complex problems that are situated in social reality many design students struggle to formulate meaningful and articulate responses to these problems. The cognitive skills required to solve complex problems are often learned only experientially. This paper argues for these latent, yet critical abilities, to be taught explicitly as part of a tertiary design education.

This paper initially reviews the theoretical underpinnings of design thinking with a specific focus on the reciprocal relationship of the design problem and the subsequent solution. A range of the formative cognitive requirements needed to solve complex problems situated in broader society and within disciplinary practice are described in reference to the theoretical framework.

Nurturing The Personal And The Intuitive In The Design Studio

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Discipline: 

Graphic Design & Visual Art

The design process, like all creative activities, involves both rational aspects and other less easily-explicable non-rational aspects, such as the roles of intuition, imagination and personal insight. There are therefore different ways of knowing and learning involved in teaching design.

Negating the Serif: Postcolonial Approaches toTypeface Design

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Discipline: 

Graphic Design & Visual Art

The practice and the teaching of Typography in South Africa has yet to undergo radical or substantive changes in light of the multiple shifts and developments in critical thinking that has taken place in Academia and contemporary visual practice in recent years. While contemporaneous thinking has “ forced a change “ in many disciplines in light of the Postmodern, Post Colonial and other “Post” posturing that challenge the dominance of Europe and the West as the centre, very little of the core imperatives of these schools of thought has found its way into the development and thinking around Typography in South Africa save a few seminal books and teachers.

Time, quality and strategic adequacy dimensions of product design processes

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Discipline: 

Product & Industrial Design

Full Title: The enhancement of the time, quality and strategic adequacy dimensions of product design processes: a doctoral study in its first stage

In Portugal the Product Design Processes display several inefficiencies that result on the bad performance of the products in general. Therefore I have initiated an investigation about design processes that hopefully will conduct to the development of a design methodology that will match design education practices with industrial ones.

Architectural Knowledge and Iterative Mediating Artifacts

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Discipline: 

Architecture & Built Environment

This paper seeks to extend Donald Schön’s often-referenced and widely-accepted observations that design, specifically architectural design, is a reflective “conversation with materials” consisting of a cyclical process of “reflection-in-action”. Specifically, the paper argues for the extended applicability of these observations to the question of analysis of existing architecture.

The role of assessment in the design process

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Discipline: 

Design Education Strategy

Assessment in education is often seen as only the grading or final evaluation of a completed task performed by the student. Assessment and feedback opportunities can easily be overlooked as design and process are inseparable. How can it be monitored other than with assessment? This paper aims to outline the importance of integration between assessment and the design process, as assessment has various possibilities and varieties, just as the design process consists of a complex sequence of investigations.

DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).