HACKING A CAR: RE-EMBODYING THE DESIGN CLASSROOM

Abstract

Traditionally, design has been an embodied practice. However, with recent changes, design has become an intellectualist discipline dependent on analytic and representational techniques borrowed from other fields of learning. This article describes a design class in which industrial design students created and prototyped a concept for an embedded system. In pedagogical terms, the class adamantly pushed the students to use their bodies to understand insights from user research, to develop and understand design concepts, and to construct functioning prototypes.