Abstract
As designers; practitioners, design students or design educators we often succumb to the design world we know, using familiar design processes and comfortable ways of design thinking. It is understood that design learning can be encouraged through experiential teaching approaches by developing our visual vocabulary whilst engaging with haptic design experiences. It is proposed that this experiential teaching approach can however aim higher, by challenging our habitual design moves and creative processes, to achieve more sensitive, inclusive and holistic design solutions as a result of plural design processes. This study explores methodologies that make explicit our awareness of our individual sensorial environment to support our design decision-making and expand our design thinking. An experiential approach for teaching lighting design for interiors was developed to bring to the fore our often-underused sensorial sensibilities as a designer by making explicit our tacit knowledge of our environment. It seeks to highlight how we are influenced by our learned cultural values, evolving sensorial sensitivities and previous experiences and the impact this can have in how lighting in a space is perceived. Over two years, groups of interior design students followed this pedagogical approach through workshop learning. Students’ design journeys gathered through project documentation, blogs and questionnaires revealed a transformation of perspective in their approach to lighting design. Visual and video data from the study highlights key findings, challenging us as designers to broaden our design thinking using plural modes of designing as we tap into our valuable sensorial sensibilities.
Presenters
Gillian TreacyLecturer, Interior Design, ESALA, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh., The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, City of, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Thinking, Learning, Doing: Plural Ways of Design
KEYWORDS
Design Education, Pedagogy, Design Thinking, Experiential, Spatial Environment, Design Methodologies
