Ariachne’s Threads is the pet name for a graduate design course complementary to conventional design studio teaching, entailing workshops rather than studios and no projects. It aims to have students better comprehend their own designing practices and design thinking to be able to improve them.
This paper concerns the course assessment tasks and the rethinking required subsequent to a new understanding of varieties of reflective thinking in designing.
The model of metacognitive thinking hitherto employed was too glib a gloss on Schön’s three level account of thinking-in-action. Deliberative thinking (informed by a remark of Tom Kvan’s), was recently stressed. Confusion was implicit and common. The new 3 x 3 model of thinking in designing to be employed (level x temporal focus) is more complex yet probably much easier to comprehend and apply.
Fortuitously, the Analyses of Past Projects and Decision Diaries, previously found most useful, map readily onto and clearly address distinct and different regions of the new model. Reflective Journals can cover all regions, but the assessment task apposite to the remaining region of the model – what could properly itself be called design thinking, arises and is discussed. Initial comments from student Journals support the discussion.
8th International Conference on Design Principles and Practices
This paper concerns the course assessment tasks and the rethinking required subsequent to a new understanding of varieties of reflective thinking in designing.
The model of metacognitive thinking hitherto employed was too glib a gloss on Schön’s three level account of thinking-in-action. Deliberative thinking (informed by a remark of Tom Kvan’s), was recently stressed. Confusion was implicit and common. The new 3 x 3 model of thinking in designing to be employed (level x temporal focus) is more complex yet probably much easier to comprehend and apply.
Fortuitously, the Analyses of Past Projects and Decision Diaries, previously found most useful, map readily onto and clearly address distinct and different regions of the new model. Reflective Journals can cover all regions, but the assessment task apposite to the remaining region of the model – what could properly itself be called design thinking, arises and is discussed. Initial comments from student Journals support the discussion.
8th International Conference on Design Principles and Practices
