A blog about design at the OU.
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Designing for the future of mobility: A Day at Coventry Museum of Transport
In an era dominated by remote work, the significance of in-person collaborative design events cannot be overstated. While our students study design at a distance, the occasional face-to-face gathering remains crucial for boosting morale and fostering a sense of community that can be challenging to achieve remotely. Amidst the constraints imposed by the pandemic, opportunities […]
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The BAD Conference
I recently had the opportunity to attend The Bad Conference, part of Product Design Week #PDW23, organised by Tech Circus in London. The turnout for the in-person event was impressive, with 250 individuals joining in person. Networking, an essential part of such gatherings, felt notably different post-Covid. Rather than the fluid mingling of the past, […]
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Our Design Internship Sisterhood
By Ida Rodrigues and Cindy Darbandi (OU Design Curriculum Interns and Consultants) In 2022, the Open University developed a virtual internship opportunity to support the diversification of the new design curriculum. We applied separately for the two intern roles that were available while studying different courses towards our design degrees. We both were curious about […]
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Anxiety and Optimism: Designs on Barbenheimer.
As an 11 year old in the early 70s, I was fascinated by the idea that the tiniest components of everything in the world, (including ourselves), had within them the power to obliterate the planet. I read avidly about the structure of atoms, and what they had the potential to unleash. The Cold War fuelled […]
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Decolonising Curriculum: A Search for the Middle Path in Design Education
In the last five centuries, curriculum theorisation has been drawn from platforms laid by Western Eurocentric ontologies and epistemologies, resulting in the duality of knowledge structures (epistemic privilege and epistemic inferiority) known as Cartesian logic. Hence, the central approach to decolonising curriculum involves a critical analysis of how Cartesian duality has shaped what we know, […]
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Designing the ‘Fry Equation’
Harmonising purpose: exploring the ‘Fry Equation’ and bridging the gap between reform and service design by Rachel A.Wood. Whilst undertaking some literature searches for my design research project, I started to look at significant figures who have worked tirelessly to design, reform, and transform the criminal justice system for mothers in the UK. I […]
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Excavating smart city knowledge politics
Since its inception over a decade ago, the smart discourse and its promoters have been incredibly successful to the extent that now many cities identify themselves as smart cities. While there is no single definition of a smart city, in broad terms such developments are based on digital infrastructures comprising sensors and data hubs which […]
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WIDE Women in Innovation, Design and Engineering
Women in Innovation, Design and Engineering Conference at Walton Hall By Claudia Eckert and Fiona Gleed The School of Engineering and Innovation at the Open University has been organising Women in Engineering conferences, targeted at female students, since 2016. After a three-year break enforced by Covid, we have finally been able to go back […]
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School buildings and politics: a very brief history, and what this tells us about RAAC
The Elementary Education Act of 1870 accepted that education of children in England and Wales, up to 13 , was the responsibility of the state. Social historians have suggested that school buildings since then have been a response to regional and national political influences, both in design and social intent (Maclure,1984; Saint,1987; Lowe, 1997; Dudek, […]
