Learn X Design 2025
The School of Design will have multiple participants at the Learn X Design 2025 at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, on September 22-24.
Peter Scupelli & Paulo Carvalho will present their co-authored paper titled “Design Futures Pedagogy: Does the type of exercise, year of study, order, and number of exercises matter?”
From the abstract:
Teaching design for long-term, societal-level sustainability requires design students to learn new design methods that combine Futures Thinking with Design Thinking. This paper explores three questions: (a) how to teach Futures Thinking methods; (b) when to incorporate Futures Thinking into the undergraduate curriculum; and (c) how many exercises to assign to teach a futures method. In this paper, we focus on the Futures Thinking method called Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). Previous research has shown that a “Studio Project CLA” exercise is three times more effective than a “Personal Futures CLA” in helping students apply CLA to their design work. In this paper, undergraduate students in their first and third years did both exercises. We report on three studies. In Study 1, we replicated prior research using a larger dataset. Our results confirm that when performing a single exercise, the “Studio Project CLA” exercise is significantly more effective than the “Personal Futures CLA” exercise. In Study 2, we compared the performance of first-year and third-year design students on both exercises. We found that first-year students had more design insights on how they might apply CLA to design processes. In study 3, regarding the order and quantity of exercises, contrary to the maxim “more practice is better,” we found that “what one practices matters.” In other words, for first-year students, a single “Studio Project CLA” exercise provides more benefit than an additional “Personal Futures CLA” exercise. We posit that the observed transfer from “Futures Thinking” to “Design Thinking” may be explained by three theories from Learning Science literature: (a) concreteness and abstraction of the CLA exercises, (b) the layered aspects of CLA helped to emphasize structural similarities across contexts, (c) concreteness fading in the Design Studio exercise. This study examined the number of design insights; our future work will explore the types and quality of design insights.
PhD Researcher Luis Garcia will be presenting his paper "Examining the Impact of Design Studies: Systems and Persuasion Courses on Undergraduate Students at Carnegie Mellon University," which was co-authored by Audrey Riley and Albert Zhang.
From the abstract:
This study examines the impact of two courses, Systems and Persuasion, within Carnegie Mellon University's Design Studies curriculum. Through qualitative analysis of a substantial number of reflective responses collected via weekly exit tickets, the research identifies key themes that highlight the influence of these courses on second-year undergraduate design students. Students gained a nuanced understanding of design as a systemic, ethical, and collaborative practice, emphasizing systems thinking, empathy, and the implications of behavioral change across multiple scale levels.
The findings suggest that students developed a heightened awareness of the interconnectedness of design interventions, recognizing the broader societal and environmental consequences of their work. They also demonstrated increased confidence in applying research and contextual understanding to address complex challenges. While the courses fostered essential skills and mindsets for navigating the complexities of contemporary design practice, the study underscores the need for further exploration, particularly through longitudinal research and community-based projects, to deepen these insights and validate their applicability in diverse contexts. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions on advancing design education to prepare responsible and reflective practitioners equipped to create meaningful and sustainable change.