MAPD4210 Design and Culture Course description

Issues concerning design and culture require designers to adopt a broad, humanistic point of view. In this course, students will enhance their knowledge and awareness of cultural values and meanings, and their impact on design. Design is widely acknowledged as an increasingly multifaceted field, involving communication and interaction between people and material culture. Communication is complex, and language is key to creating meaning.

Design comprises several forms of articulation, and in this course, students are challenged to use and interweave visual, material, and verbal articulation to create new meaning. The course introduces strategies for integrating research methods to foster aesthetic awareness, empathy, criticality, and reflexivity, which can be activated in the development of products or services for chosen cultural contexts.

Admission to the Master's programme.

After completing the course, the student is expected to have achieved an advanced level in the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge

The student has:

• knowledge about how design culture can have an impact on developing products and cultural values
• knowledge about how design culture works as a bridge between design history and modern society
• attained knowledge of methods that involve documentation of relational matters e.g., (i) between products (things) and people, (ii) products and environment
• a good understanding of how aesthetic awareness works as a crucial factor in informed design practices
• a good understanding of how reflexivity and criticality work as crucial factors to challenge established perspectives and norms in the field

Skills

The student can:

• use aesthetic practice-based methods to enhance exploratory and analytical processes and to communicate the design process and the results
• use methods for documentation, e.g., auto-ethnographic method, to uncover and describe materialized processes and fieldwork
• interweave different forms of knowledge from practice and theory by using various forms of articulation (materialized, visual, and text)
• use methods to communicate the design process, and the results, the product(s) in a cultural context

General competence

The student has a developed understanding for:

• the relevance of knowledge of cultural values and meanings and their impact on design
• responsibility for the development of design in a culturally sustainable context

• Design in a cultural context. Discuss the overall ideas of product design and culture in relation to the chosen focus area and expected value creation.
• Activate aesthetic practice-based methods for creative and analytical processes.
• Combine design skills with theoretical knowledge to enhance the development of the design project.
• Activate various forms of articulation (material, visual, text) to explore and communicate your research fields.
• Use critical reflection (or its equivalent) to give depth and to problematize issues and your choices in the project.

Lectures, excursion, workshop, various platforms for presentations, discussion and reflection, self-study.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

• Project description with a defined research field, aim(s), research question, and theoretical and methodological approach (500-700 words and visualizations integrated in the text).
• Participation in an oral presentation and dialogue; (i) communication of the project, (ii) constructive feedback of the projects to fellow students.

Individual or group portfolio examination. The portfolio consists of:

• Product in optional/relevant media.
• Research-based design project/proposal (2500-3000 words and visualizations integrated in the text).

The examination result can be appealed

No restrictions.

Grade scale A-F.

Two internal examiners. External examiner is used periodically.