Orienting students in anticipating the impact of their technology projects
Workshop Session
Abstract
According to the UN, we need to: “design for resource efficiency, creating more with fewer resources, design for circularity, encouraging multiple uses of high-quality items, and design for social change and equality, encouraging consumption that is eco-intelligent, fair and moderate. Only by combining all three strategies will we achieve success – the realisation of the SDGs”. Accessible digital technologies can play a pivotal role here in supporting humans achieving the SDGs or part of them. The Impact Plan (Lelis, 2022) will be adapted to introduce lecturers to a framework that helps students in better aligning their desired repertoire of skills and their career ambitions (their personal WHYs) with the SDGs and the three main sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic and social. This would be a half-day workshop, delivered exclusively face-to-face. The main expected outcome is to provide participants with an underpinning structure for orienting design activities that rely mostly on project or challenge-based learning.
Keywords: WHY; anticipation of impact; education; challenge-based learning; UN’s SDGs; design and technology innovation
Workshop Organiser
Catarina Lelis
Senior Lecturer at the University of Aveiro, Department of Communication and Art, in Portugal
Catarina Lelis holds an UG degree in Design, an MA in Innovation and Knowledge Management, and a PhD in Sciences and Technologies of Communication. She began her professional experience in 1997 as a graphic designer. Whilst in industry, she co-founded a technology-based company, a publishing start-up, and the Portuguese Association for Innovation and Creativity in Organisations. With her PhD project she won the first edition of the IdeaPuzzle Award and two entrepreneurship contests. As an academic, she spent six years in London during which time she was “Associate Professor in Brand Design and Innovation” and where she was awarded a teaching fellowship with her project The Impact Plan (www.impact-plan.com), developed to support research students in deciding toward the most impactful projects. Currently, Catarina is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Aveiro, Department of Communication and Art, in Portugal. Her research interests include Brand Design, Design and Media Literacy, and Anticipation of Impact.
Background
Design education assessment is often aligned to Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), but it is urgent that future-led approaches are also taken into consideration, such as the one of the IIT Institute of Design (ID), grounded on three unique competencies explored in the context of its postgraduate provision: Embracing complexity, Cultivating possibilities and Driving impactful change (Weil & Mayfield, 2020).
Promoting change seems to be a key expression in the sense that most of us are currently aware of the “supremely ambitious and transformational vision” for the world in 2030, which has been set top by the UN with the SDGs — which aim to channel our collective awareness towards the development of a future that is more sustainable. In fairness, Designers have a particular responsibility in delivering the SDGs because they turn people’s visions and attitudes into tangible products and services. One might actually say that designing for a better world is the translation of the SDGs into a world of sustainable products, infrastructures and services – that put humans at the centre. According to the UN, we need to: “design for resource efficiency, creating more with fewer resources, design for circularity, encouraging multiple uses of high-quality items, and design for social change and equality, encouraging consumption that is eco-intelligent, fair and moderate. Only by combining all three strategies will we achieve success – the realisation of the SDGs”.
Aim of the Workshop
In this workshop The Impact Plan (Lelis, 2022) will be adapted to introduce lecturers to a framework that helps students in better aligning their desired repertoire of skills and their career ambitions (their personal WHYs) with the SDGs and the three main sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic and social. It aims at working as a system for reflecting on how the possible challenges/projects a design student may come to engage with can involve more pleasurable, meaningful and impactful actions.
The tool involves a canvas and a deck of 20 cards, aiming at matching the projects’ anticipated impact with the motivations, capacities, ambitions, and perceptions of value of those involved in its execution, making them realise that they can (by choosing a certain project rather than another), to some extent, contribute to a better world. The Impact Plan operates as a Determine heuristic, prior to stage Discover of the Double Diamond framework. It is expected to support a rapid anticipation of the impact of projects, grounded on surfacing desired identities, ambitions and purposes.
Planned Activities
This would be a half-day workshop, delivered exclusively face-to-face. Within the workshop the main concepts and problematic would be initially shared with participants. Teams would be set up, where all participants would be role-playing as design students, whether they are (or not) design students, lecturers or practitioners. The teams would then be given three broad design challenges, followed by some time to foresight and assess the anticipated humanity-led impact (in dimensions Economic, Environmental and Social) that resolving each challenge might have. After that, via card sorting, participants will be asked to individually:
1) prioritise the skills and motivations (the WHYs) that may drive design students toward the challenges whilst, simultaneously,
2) categorise them using the IIT Institute of Design’s three building blocks. Then, back as a team, they will pick the five main WHYs making sure these allow students to have a good sense of how they can contribute to the SDGs. A final reflection on any experienced tensions during the workshop will follow to wrap it up.
Expected Outcome
The main expected outcome is to provide participants with an underpinning structure for orienting design activities that rely mostly on project or challenge-based learning.
Intended Audience
Primarily, lecturers, since these will be the ones who will potentially most benefit from this workshop. Design students and design & innovation practitioners are very welcome too, as they may be able to get some insights to ongoing or future activities. Finally, anyone with interest in identifying the potential impact of a project or the most impactful project from a pool of many. Basically, those that frequently face a pool of different possible projects/briefs to engage with and from which they need to choose only one, either by discarding the others or postponing them. The maximum number of participants would be 30, the minimum would be 6. Around 20 people would be ideal.