Education guide 'Eindhoven designs' - Technische Universiteit ...

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The importance of
processes for ID
Being a student and developing through a
competency-centred learning approach, puts
an emphasis on processes. So becoming
a designer is inextricably bound up with
delivering qualitative excellent intelligent
systems, products and related services, the
process and competency of accomplishing this
excellent design, i.e. the process of designing,
and the process of becoming a competent
designer. These two aspects are especially
addressed in the meta-competency areas ‘Self-
Directed and Continuous Learning’ and ‘Design
and Research Processes’.
Because we consider these processes
extremely important, we have developed
a specific process that is based on the
department’s educational foundations:
the reflective, transformative process (RT
process). This process can be used for both
settings: the act of designing as well as the
course of becoming a designer. Moreover,
due to this importance, we have decided to
emphasise these processes deliberately in the
ID competence framework in addition to the
competency areas. This way we can stress the
importance of specific aspects of the process.
Moreover, the meta-competencies also address
other aspects that are not included in the RT
process.
The learning activity perspective focuses
predominantly on the process of designing.
Therefore we will provide an in-depth
explanation of the reflective, transformative
design process (Hummels and Frens, 2008).
Before doing so, we will first reflect on the
necessity to develop such a process.
Design processes
Both in literature and practice, one can find
many design processes, all emphasising
different aspects of the design process. Dorst
(1997), for example, compares two influential
paradigms of design methodology, namely one
in which design is seen as a rational problemsolving
process (Simon, 1970; Roozenburg
and Eekels, 1991), and one in which design is
seen as an activity involving reflective practice
(Schön, 1983).
The rational problem-solving process, which
was introduced by Simon (1969), can be
described as ‘… the search for a solution
through the vast maze of possibilities (within
the problem space) … Successful problem
solving involves searching the maze selectively
and reducing it to manageable solutions.’
(Simon, 1969 in Dorst, 1997). In order to find
these solutions, the designer goes through
basic design cycles which use four design
activities:
analyse
synthesise
simulate
evaluate