Bring your work in progress – be prepared to discuss your ideas.

Demonstrate your development from the last exhibition.

See you there

Design Studies comprises of 19 courses per academic year, an ongoing lecture series, 26 lecturing positions (pa) and services some 350 students.

From now on design studies will mirror the culture of choice in the upperpool. Tutorial projects will be vertically integrated (first and second years) and also affered as elective courses to anyone from any program in the University.
There are four content areas: History, Theory, Sustainabilty and Practice.
All of which have a central theme of “people, material and critical thinking/ problem solving”, and all cross into eachothers areas to some extent. As is my way – “design” is approached laterally with the course work. The Act of recontexualizing content into material / phenomena that has relevance to “industrial design” is the responsibility of the student (this is my way of training students into looking broadly, infering and making their own connections)
An online resource [this blog] will complement the stream – but will not act as course work in it’s own right, and community lectures will continue, and will feed publication activities. Library “project guides” will sit as cummulative resources for students. And students will continue to be encouraged to keep blogging.
Each semseter [semesters 1,2,3&4 EIGHT Design Studies tutorial / courses are offered (two from each content area). Students ballot for one each semester. Students can choose to do one tutorial from each area or choose to specialize (in sustainability for example). Students have to complete four studies courses in total and can choose them in any sequence that they see fit. The only hard and fast rule is that they cannot repeat a unit.
In semester 6 students have to do "methods in design research and practice", and semesters 7 & 8 there are two "professional Practice" courses.

Course offerings in each semester for students in semestes 1 - 4:

History:
1. “Different histories of design” [focus on the construction of historical narrative / untold histories / womens histories / marginal / ubiquitous design etc]
2. ” History and philosophy of technology” [focus on historical and philosophical development of technological societies / industrialization / trade / exchange etc]
Theory:
1. “Cultural Amplification“[cultural and critical theory / art theory / media studies / gender etc]
2. “Networks, Rhizomes and Communities” [activity & network theory / social construction of ideas / ANT etc]
Sustainability:
1. “Sustainable Consumption and Development” [sus-con / politics of development etc]
2. “Sustainable Futures” [backcasting / futurology / ecology etc]
Practice:
1. “Psychology of Social Systems” [Behavioural / organizational / educational pshychology, relationships to constructed environment / theories of use and misuse etc]
2. “Philosophies of Design Practice” [Philosophical frameworks of design (historically), dealling with change / notions of practice etc]

So whats my rationale?
I enjoy having lots of things happening at once – peviously each content area would be offered by semester – everyone would be teaching  / studing into the same area – I think a diverse spread is good for staff and students.
Design studies does not seek “design outputs” from students – so embedding it as a significant aspect of the program in the eyes of staff and students is difficult. Making it diverse means that there will be a larger number of discussions on “the meanings of design” happening in the student /staff body at any given time: this is intellectually stimulating – and something we should strive for. This is slowly happening – and students who used to loathe “design Studies” are begining to enjoy it – and are seeing it as beneficial to their learning of industrial design.The current stop start nature of course work in “history” for example means that it goes out of focus every other semester – which means that building the area over time is difficult – there is no continuity. For course work to help inform research activities some continuity would be beneficial.

My aim with studies is that it offers a broad enough content mix in sociology, philosophy, cultural theory, activity / network theory, sustainability, economics, behavioural / eduactional /organizational psychology etc - and its relationship to design practice that it will bring intellectually adept students into the upperpool and beyond.
This is something that we all want.

let me know what you think