Making design representations as catalysts for reflective making in a collaborative design research process.

Abstract

The role of making may seem self-evident in a design context. However, in developing an educational design research course at the [institute name], we experienced that when design and research are intertwined, students tend to lose their focus on making. Therefore, this paper reflects on a research trajectory that explores how to support students in intertwining making and reflecting throughout the design research process. During this trajectory, we redeveloped design research methods making use of design representations – representations of design, i.e. field studies, insights, experiments, prototypes, and so on – as a means to connect making and reflecting throughout the design process. Design representations have informing and inspiring qualities and are made by designers to open up their design process and to enable communication, collaboration and reflection with others, throughout the making process. We will argue that combining design representations with structuring rules of play in a design research method and using them throughout the whole design process can improve collaborative reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983), or reflection-in-making, since it allows students to work in a more iterative manner. We describe how we – in eight case studies - recreated and evaluated a design research method, making use of design representations and structuring rules of play.

Supporting and understanding students’ collaborative reflection-in-action during design-based learning

“…This is the extension of the current prompt technique. Especially for younger students who are engaged in design-based learning, the new technique improves the interaction between thinking and making when children externalized their reflection, since supporting the interplay between thinking and making is one of the supporting goals in the design-based learning (de Vries, 2006;Schoffelen et al, 2013). Our design addressed and materialized the spirit of this scaffolding goal for fostering reflective thinking in a design-based setting.…”

“…This reflection practice can be defined as collaborative reflection-in-action or reflection-in-making (Chu, Garcia, & Nam, 2019;P. Gourlet et al, 2016a,;b Hook et al, 2013;Schoffelen et al, 2013). In those studies, the reflection practice happens during the collaborative learning process.…”

“…Students' thoughts are embodied in the outcome of design representations. Students are taught to intertwine their reflecting and making during the design process (Schoffelen et al, 2013). Few studies were found on how to give appropriate technological guidance for enhancing the externalization of interaction between reflecting and making (reflection-in-action).…”