A blog about design at the OU.
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Design and Culture
This week the Design Museum in London hosted a Design School Summit, “Design School and the Cultural Turn”, reflecting on the relationship between design schools and the cultural sector, and in particular, design museums. The event comprised a series of speakers from Europe and the USA questioning how curatorial practice should be affected and influenced…
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Disruptive Innovation Festival: global and all online
*** Our very own Emma Dewberry live on the Disruptive Innovation Festival at 10:15 on 10/11/17 talking about Design for Longevity: Business as Unusual*** This year’s Disruptive Innovation Festival, ask: What if we could redesign everything for the circular economy? The festival has been an initiative created by THE ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION together with several partners and is…
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Designing Sustainable Higher Education Teaching Models
The Open University takes sustainability seriously! In addition to establishing carbon reduction measures to meet Government targets, the OU is interested in how the design of different higher education (HE) systems impacts on the environment. How do the distance education systems used by the OU, as a leading provider of creative open learning, compare with conventional campus-based…
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The role of design education in addressing world challenges
Over the last months, I have been repeatedly involved in conversations around the relation between design education and the world’s challenges. How does design education contribute to dealing with big challenges such as poverty, hunger, people’s displacement or environmental disasters? Some conversations will approach design education as a space for developing the design capacity of…
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Design and anticipation
Anticipation is the ability to act in response to, or in preparation of, a potential future reality. This is a key ability for people and social groups that are involved in design tasks (see Zamenopoulos and Alexiou, 2007; Zamenopoulos, 2012). There is a very interesting conference on Anticipation coming up next week from the 8th…
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There is more to methods than a good idea
Designers have mixed feelings about methods. Christopher Alexander, the architect and design theoretician said “If you call it, ‘It’s a Good Idea To Do’, I like it very much; if you call it a ‘Method’, I like it but I’m beginning to get turned off; if you call it a ‘Methodology’, I just don`t want…
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The future is here, can you feel, see and smell it?
“Are you going to the ‘Feelies’ tonight Henry?” [1] In Aldous Huxley’s book ‘The Brave New World’ [1], he speaks about going to the ‘feelies’, which transcribes as Huxley’s futuristic vision of cinema audiences being enabled to feel the scenery in the film , as well as view the film simultaneously. Figure 1. ‘The Feelies’ A London based group is already…
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Design as provocation
This week I read an article in The Guardian about a mirror designed to reflect only if the user smiles, aimed at cancer patients to improve their sense of wellbeing. The article was scathing, why should anyone be forced to smile? Clearly this is the invention of a man and the embodiment of patriarchal notions…
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Compendium v2
The Design Group have just finished working on the new version of CompendumDS, the concept mapping software we use to capture and communicate design processes. Over the past 12 months we have been working with colleagues across the OU and with an external consultant to update the platform Compendium runs on and refresh the look…
