Category: Design comment
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Editorial: Ed Tech defining design curriculum
(This is a cross post fromthe #DistanceDesignEd blog: http://distancedesigneducation.com) If you’d asked me ‘What drives your design curriculum?’ a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have said Zoom… I’ll shortly have to add a whole list of other technologies, services and ed-tech that are emerging as “class leaders” (That was a satirical pun, by the way). […]
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Being a designer: Starting in a new product development team.
Research on design practice examines how the role of the designer is shifting, that product design is collaborative, and design is taking on more responsibility in the process. It claims that design is no longer an aesthetic afterthought, but rather involved from inception within a multi/inter/trans- disciplinary project. As we leave University, there is an […]
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Heritage buildings, carbon emissions… and gingerbread!
One day in early October, as I was quietly wandering along, minding my own business, I was accosted by a lady from the graduate school. ‘Ah, the very person I was looking for!’ She said. My heart sank, ever since I foolishly showed up for a number of training sessions during the first year of […]
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Distance and online design education – a (not so) quick introduction
This is a quick post after a few online discussions and question around how to start with distance (and online) design education – thanks to @ZhenpingLiow, @_p_antonio and others). It’s a quick summary of a few key concepts and ideas for any design teachers or tutors needing to think about online and distance education and […]
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Makerversity: the changing face of independent design work
A few weeks ago some OU design academics plus regional and part-time staff signed up for a tour of the “Makerversity” located in the bowels of Somerset House in London. Makerversity is, undoubtedly, the biggest maker-space in the UK. With space for more than 350 members and spread over two basement floors, it offers a […]
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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 […]
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Cities of permanent experiments and atmospheres of reception
We have been thinking quite a bit about the effect that urban experiments may have on cities, particularly when sustainability experiments become business as usual. This was inspired by our recently work on an Innovate UK project, On Street Residential Induction Charging (or OSRIC for short). The project involves the deployment of wireless chargers for […]
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The Design Group at TEDx – Part 2: Imagine what’s next… the future of aircraft manufacturing is additive
On 8th November 2019 I participated in TEDx Open University. When I sent off my audition video last summer, I had no idea how much time and effort it would take to develop a 10 minute talk! I applied to speak at TEDx because I was keen to share my research on sustainable manufacturing with […]
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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 […]
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Digital Twins
‘Digital twins’ are in the headlines this year and I have attended two events focusing on digital twins in the last few weeks. The first was in the context of the built environment and the second in aerospace and it was interesting to compare the approaches. A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical system […]