DART - New teaching methods for organizing intuition

Abstract

DART (Driver Analysis – Reading Trends) is a new approach developed by the author to organizing and developing intuition in the research and development phase of a creative process within the field of fashion and design. At its current stage, the model has been targeted teaching at design schools. The method is based on the author’s Ph.D. dissertation (“On the Nature of Trends: A Study of Trend Mechanisms in Contemporary Fashion”, 2010), teaching experience at design schools and methods from fashion forecasting. DART is intended to support design students on two levels: 1. To qualify the students’ sensibility or hunch when preparing a collection or other design projects. 2. To prepare them for working on the still more unpredictable fashion and design markets. The DART model suggests that the task of identifying and organizing trends often outsourced to trend forecasting agencies may be better placed within each individual designer or brand. The model has so far been tested on fashion and design students at all the major design schools in Denmark: The Danish Design School, Designskolen Kolding, TEKO Design and Management College, and The Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (KEA).