Updating Values: The future of design education.

The workshop is a moment of collective reflection among student, teacher and expert, which aims to collect and summarize the indications emerged during the Future of Design Education symposium.  

The workshop, oriented towards the drafting of the Manifesto for Future Design Education, develops according to the model of the world café. Participants express their thoughts and reflections through verbal, textual and visual forms on three round-tables.

Workshop structure

Participants, divided by three groups, are invited to join and discuss the issues that emerged during the symposium in one of the three round-tables.  Led by an expert together with a facilitator, each round-table involves a participant-group and discuss a single topic. On big paper-tablecloths spread over the tables, participants take note of all the meaningful thoughts that emerge during the discussion.  After a defined time of 20 minutes circa, each group change the round-table and consequently, topic. Three rounds later, once all the groups discussed on all the tables, the experts and the facilitators publicly expose what emerged in the three rounds of discussions, supported by their tablecloth on which are reported all the thoughts emerged in the discussion. The contents are so shared with the participants and discussed collectively, photographed and documented. They will inform the subsequent drafting of the Manifesto for Future Design Education which, shared in digital format, will be published after the event.

Program

People and topics

Coordinator: 

Matteo Moretti 

Tables and topic

Table 1 

First design dilemma: Mono vs Interdisciplinary_methods for the future

Riccardo Varini with Alessio Abdolahian 

The discussion on Mono vs Interdisciplinary will be fueled by the issues emerged during the symposium, and by the findings collected through the participatory data physicalizations installed nearby the conference room.

The table focuses on the design methodologies  which starts from the questions:

• Universities will have a mean only if the design education will be even more specialized?
• Hyper, Super, Mono Tech! Educating to the future means specializing? 
• We will focus more on the social sciences than on projects?
• Do exists a post booming, post growing, post-consumption for designers?

Table 2

Second design dilemma: Human vs Post-human. Seeking scenarios for the future

Michele Zannoni with Roberto Paci Dalò

The table aims to shape possible Future Design Education scenario. The issues emerged during the symposium will fuel the discussion on the scenarios for the future, as well as by the findings collected through the participadtory data physicalizations installed nearby the conference room.

The table intends to envision future scenario relying on the contrast between human vs post-human in the learning/teaching environment, and in general the role that technologies will cover in the design process.

Table 3

Third design dilemma: Future Design Education Crossroads. A three forks map

Gianni Sinni and Ilaria Ruggeri

The future cannot be predicted, but we know that it will be influenced by our actions in the present. The table will focus on the shaping of the topics and the challenges that the next designer generations will face in the possible farther or closer futures. Relying on the “What if” speculative analysis approach, the table will envision the possible choices and the decisions that need to be taken, toward the future scenarios. The result will be a map of probable, plausible, and possible developments for the next decades of the design education in the frame of the future cone.