Author: Nicole Lotz

  • Art History and Design in Dialogue: Abutments and Confluences

    Art History and Design in Dialogue: Abutments and Confluences

    Design at the Open University has always bridged knowledge systems and approaches from the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. The Design Group connects to other schools within STEM but also to other faculties and schools at the Open University. The new Special Issue in the Open Arts Journal ART HISTORY AND DESIGN IN DIALOGUE: […]

  • Design @Open YouTube channel

    Design @Open YouTube channel

    We have curated a collection of videos authored by OU Design staff and students on our newly opened YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5dwgQTcTO0bCgA1Oiu-TBQ/playlists The collection introduces research projects, qualification engagement events and seminars. We seek to grow the collection, and each month we will introduce a Design academic in a video interview. In October, I interviewed Prof […]

  • Necessity is the mother of invention

    Necessity is the mother of invention

    In the Socratic dialogue ‘Republic’, Plato famously wrote: “our need will be the real creator” (Wikipedia.org, 2020) which was moulded over time into the English proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. Having read multiple articles of inventions and innovations in medicine, technology, or supply chains over the last 6 months, more than once a […]

  • Designing in partnership

    Designing in partnership

    This blog was co-authored by Abbie Jackson, Anna Ward-Stancheva, Georgy Holden, Leo Rees-Evans, Mar Reyes, Nicole Lotz and Rebekah Manston, all Design and Innovation students at the Open University. On June 25th 2020, the third annual exhibition of work of OU design students was launched. Every year, we invite students to design the exhibition together […]

  • About the privilege of learning through mistakes

    About the privilege of learning through mistakes

    This blog post is about how I learn from making mistakes. We tell our first-year design students that it is essential not to dismay when they make mistakes. In fact, making a mistake and reflecting on why this mistake happened (and possibly how to avoid it next time) is the best that can happen to […]

  • The design opportunities in a crisis

    The design opportunities in a crisis

    It seems to be a little inappropriate to talk about ‘opportunity’ when you think about the current health crisis. The first association between these two words might be that of profiteering. But having had a good look at design and technology related news over the last weeks, I could mainly see other, more altruistic, design […]

  • Moving to Mars

    Moving to Mars

    We had our first family-oriented qualification event on Sunday, 23rd of February in London. We went to the Design Museum and made some puppets with our families and visited the ‘Moving to Mars’ exhibition. My daughter loves hedgehogs. So, this is what we aimed for as a puppet. My daughter commented in the video demonstration […]

  • FabLab Yucatan – prototyping the future together

    FabLab Yucatan – prototyping the future together

    Ileana (President of the Fab City Yucatán Association), Oscar, and Carlos gave us a tour of Fablab Yucatan when we visited Merida, Mexico in November 2019. You can watch the video of the tour on https://www.facebook.com/728801612/videos/10157850699341613/ (approx. 1h 15min) The Lab first opened as HUBlab in 2015. The vision was to form a creative ecosystem of […]

  • Museum of Brands

    Museum of Brands

    We followed a recommendation from an OU tutor, Richard Coles (T317), who has been working as a packaging designer for a long while. Under his guidance, a group of students from the Design and Innovation qualification and other qualifications visited the Museum of Brands in London. We were delighted that Robert Opie, the Founder of […]

  • Children’s design capacity

    Children’s design capacity

    Every year, our first-year students develop a board game for one of their design projects. I love looking at the responses to the brief because the assignment gives scope to show systemic as well as detail thinking. The students’ board game proposals curate an elaborate ensemble of the game track, action cards and playing pieces […]