Product and Experience Design for Desirability (at SEAS)

Multi-disciplinary, project-based course for students interested in designing products, services, or ambitious art or educational works that are meaningful, beautiful, useful, as simple as possible, and emotionally desirable (e.g., calming, inspiring, delightful, cool, covetable.). Students learn the fundamentals of design theory, emotional design, user-centered design, and design leadership. The class format consists of a series of project-based design challenges, and each challenge has three parts. The first part is a summary of the scientific literature on an important emotional concept that is relevant to design, such as trust, anxiety reduction, or belonging. The second part includes one or more case studies of past works that were exceptionally well designed for this emotional concept. The third part is a custom design challenge for students to practice applying what they are learning to their own creative ideas. Past project prompts include challenges like designing headphones for anxiety reduction, health literacy campaigns for rapid adoption, and sustainable materials like bamboo to represent the future of luxury. Along with this cycle of theory and application, the course teaches research-based design process and design leadership skills. Weekly critique panels enable students to develop and refine their own design point of view. The final project in the course is a professional design portfolio.
 

Limited enrollment. Instructor permission required for all students. Engineering Sciences 22 is jointly offered with the Graduate School of Design as SCI 6276.

Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)

This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation processes in a hands-on, project/product-focused manner that balances design and engineering concepts with promising, real-world opportunities. Switching back and forth between guided discovery and focused development, between bottom-up and top-down thinking, and market analyses, the course helps students establish generalizable frameworks as researchers and innovators with a focus on new and emerging technologies.

Online teaching: The two-hour meeting time will be split into two periods. One-hour will be dedicated to synchronous lectures. One-hour will be dedicated to flexible-synchronous lab sections. An additional one-hour of asynchronous pre-recorded instruction will be provided on fabrication and testing methods, finite element analysis, and other software. Students will design, fabricate, and test novel material prototypes. However, all fabrication and testing will be completed by the teaching staff at the SEAS lab.

Note: For MDE students, this course can satisfy a GSD course requirement by enrolling in SCI 6477, or a SEAS course requirement by enrolling in ES 291. However, it cannot simultaneously satisfy both requirements. 

Prerequisites: None. 

?Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez. 

Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation

The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers and an expressive, playful supplement to computer-based labor.

This course will master techniques in hand drawing, refining sensitivity to all details of what one sees and developing capacity to articulate it in a visually convincing and evocative form.

The class projects will include work in outdoor and indoor situations and places as well as drawings of live models. In the process of drawing, students will focus on the world of lines, textures, shapes, light, shade, and values. We will use various tools, materials, and artistic techniques including pencils, vine charcoal, markers, ink, and other wet and dry media, later combined with the use of camera, computer renderings, etc.

Throughout the duration of the course, students will complete three larger drawing projects and special short assignments.

In one nonrepresentational drawing project, students will focus on the formal articulation of emotional life experience. In another project, we will explore the performance of the human body in interaction with elements of the architectural environment. In a final project, the drawing exploration of the bodily interaction with the architectural environment as well as the site-specific wall drawing exercise will be conducted in the interior places inspired by and creatively responding to the existential and spatial conditions imposed by the quarantine and the epidemics.

In addition, students will make individual self-guided field trips to sketch and draw in the outdoor environment and then complete their work in the places they live.

Work on projects will be supplemented by presentations and discussions of relevant examples from art history and contemporary art. Guest artists will be invited as reviewers for the presentation and exhibition of final projects.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication

Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to the discourse surrounding contemporary design and architectural practice. The translation from design to realization is mediated by a range of tools and processes whose development is informed over time by material properties, skill, technology, and culture. As a whole, these systems are the vehicle by which design teams, manufacturers, installers, and ultimately users engage the materiality of architecture. Parallel technological developments relating to the way in which things are designed (digital modeling, simulation, generative design, etc.) and the way things are made (automation, computer-controlled equipment including robotics, advanced materials, etc.) have afforded new opportunities and challenges related to the realization of new forms in architecture, part customization, user-centered design, and enhanced building performance. While these technological advancements have radically increased the diversity of achievable material effects in design and architecture, the industrial fabrication technologies at the core of this production method are only just being considered as a venue for design intervention or creative exploration.
 
Within this context, this year’s course positions material systems and the numerically controlled machines which manipulate them as a venue for speculative design research. This semester’s virtual learning environment offers an unprecedented opportunity to reconsider existing paradigms in fabrication-based architectural research. During the first phase of the course, students will construct modular, digitally controlled machines at home from a kit, provided in part by the instructors. A second phase will focus on the development of a novel material process and will leverage the machines fabricated in the first phase to construct a machine designed to generate a specific material effect. 

The course includes weekly lectures (including guests from related industries and practice), discussions, and hands-on workshops. Lectures include a historic overview of material systems, fundamentals of fabrication and manufacturing, strategic customization, digital and physical prototyping, digital simulation, introduction to robotic systems, introduction to product development, production economics, research methods, and other topics. Selected readings of book chapters and papers will supplement topics taught in class. Technical workshops will introduce core concepts in machine design, microelectronics, motion control, kinematics, and material processes. Students will be introduced to a range of digital fabrication and robotic systems, and their related software environments and digital techniques. The course will typically be held synchronously during the Wednesday session and recorded for those in challenging  time zones. The Friday session will be held asynchronously through a combination of pre-recorded content or tutorials and real-time project troubleshooting etc. 

The technical and systems knowledge imparted in the class will be complemented by the teaching of research methods in the technology area, through a combination of readings and writing exercises. Emphasis will be placed on developing sound research methods within areas of design computation, digital fabrication, and related material processes. The course encourages a hands-on, experimental approach to digital making, from the design and fabrication of a custom machine to empirical testing of novel material processes.  There are no prerequisites for this course, only a willingness for open experimentation and critical evaluation of the presented processes and tools.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

 

Product and Experience Design for Desirability

Multi-disciplinary course for students interested in designing products and services that are simple, irresistible, delightful, cool, covetable, viral, and, increasingly these days, much more likely to be successful. Students study real world cases of how organizations (e.g., Apple, Gucci, Swarovski) strategically design for desirability. In weekly design challenges, students use analogical transfer to apply these insights to diverse industries and target markets (e.g., health literacy campaigns, declining technologies, the future of luxury). Weekly critique panels with experts enable students to develop their own design point of view and to finish with a diverse design portfolio.

Permission required for all students.

Jointly Offered Course: SEAS EngSci22.

This class meets in Maxwell Dworkin 119 (SEAS) on Mondays and WEdnesdays from 9:00 to 11:00 am.

Mud Works! Hands-on Workshop on Earthen Structures (Summer 2019)

Contemporary innovations in the design and construction of buildings and environments predominantly follow a specific pattern: industrialized and imported materials are utilized to make high-tech products to exist in the midst of the vernacular world. However, many of these processes do not typically incorporate local traditions, microeconomies, or the potentials of nurturing vernacular know-how. The ethos of this workshop is built on the premise that building with natural materials maximizes the potentials of freely available resources and creates employment opportunities for members of a local community. As a result, investments in the built environment generate returns in both environmental and social capital. This is what we call architecture for development. We envision earthen architecture to be a viable alternative. An inherently sustainable material, earthen construction has a long history of sustaining homes and livelihoods in the most dramatic geographical, climatic, and economic conditions. However, the extant proverbial image of “mud hut” continues to challenge a wider perception of building with earth. Our explorations will explore both technical and aesthetic qualities of earthen construction. 

Our challenge is to evoke the archaic experience of human building and to capture a phenomenological diversity from this resource. Additionally, we will explore design and construction from the perspective of applied craftsmanship in both high-tech and low-tech conditions. The aim is to introduce students to the tremendous elastic range of earthen construction methods and familiarize students with material, technical, and participatory processes that this bottom-up form of design and development engenders. Students will collaborate in the design and construction of earthen building details, as well as learn schematic expressions with clay. Lectures and presentations led by Martin, Anna, and invited guests will complement the hands-on design workshop. The course will include one research and design assignment, which will be due upon arrival in Austria. The assignment will require written research as well as drawings or diagrams to document the speculative use of earthen structure in a specific historical building, to be selected from a predetermined list. Students will have the opportunity to revise the assignment, after the workshop, for final submission. 

Evaluation: Based upon participation and teamwork in the workshop as well as the depth of research and originality of the speculative project. 

This workshop took place during the summer of 2019. Enrollment in this course was preselected via lottery. 

Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)

This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation processes in a hands-on, project/product-focused manner that balances design and engineering concepts with promising, real-world opportunities. Switching back and forth between guided discovery and focused development, between bottom-up and top-down thinking, and market analyses, the course helps students establish generalizable frameworks as researchers and innovators with a focus on new and emerging technologies. Students will conduct part of their work in the Wyss Institute or SEAS science labs on Oxford Street as well as in the GSD FabLab at Gund Hall. 

Note: For MDE students, this course can satisfy a GSD course requirement by enrolling in SCI 6477, or a SEAS course requirement by enrolling in ES 291. However, it cannot simultaneously satisfy both requirements. 

Prerequisites: None. 

 

Design Survivor: Experiential Lessons in Designing for Desirability (at SEAS)

Multi-disciplinary course for students interested in designing products and services that are simple, irresistible, delightful, cool, covetable, viral, and, increasingly these days, much more likely to be successful. Students study real world cases of how organizations (e.g., Apple, Gucci, Swarovski) strategically design for desirability. In weekly design challenges, students use analogical transfer to apply these insights to diverse industries and target markets (e.g., health literacy campaigns, declining technologies, the future of luxury). Weekly critique panels with experts enable students to develop their own design point of view and to finish with a diverse design portfolio.

Permission required for all students.

Jointly Offered Course: SEAS EngSci22.
 

 

Deployable Surfaces: Dynamic Performance Through Multi-Material Architectures

Rapidly deployable structures have been with us since nomadic people used sticks and fabric to create the first tents. Out of these beginnings, deployable structures have evolved, and are now used as shelters for disaster relief, pop-up spaces for retail or entertainment, and for aerospace applications such as solar sails or antennae. The overarching goal is to achieve near instantaneous-opening through processes of unfolding.

In the 60s and 70s, there was an explosion of interest in the idea of instant architecture.  Lightweight fabric structures – sometimes inflated through air pressure – were realized at vast scale for World Fairs and Olympic Games.  The burgeoning space program demanded mechanized structures that could open automatically when released from a compact state within the launch vehicle. These two approaches – fabric and linkage based – were the main design paradigms for deployable structures for decades.

But another approach has arrived from a different direction – the ancient art of origami. With their ground-breaking work researchers such as Erik Demaine and Tomohiro Tachi have established the rules of folding as a universal design medium, now the basis to create new drugs, structures from DNA, and to make myriad devices from pop-up machines to shape-shifting robots.
Inflatable systems have also advanced well beyond simple balloon-like forms. Using a combination of elastomeric, flexible, and inextensible material compositions, devices can be physically programmed to perform multi-stage linear, bending, and twisting motions. Under precise digital control these techniques, are leading to new applications including soft robotics, structural air-beams, and deformable metamaterials.

Taken together, advances in the use of origami and inflatable multi-material devices offer a new design paradigm for rapidly deployable structures. The critical next step is to bring these techniques up to the architectural scale.

Deployable Surfaces is a project-based seminar focused on the creation of next-generation foldable and inflatable structures.  The goal of the course is for student-based teams to develop and deploy full-scale structures utilizing the design and fabrication techniques taught in the seminar.  Classes will take place both at the GSD and at the Autodesk BUILD space, offering access to a wide range of fabrication equipment. Lectures will provide essential design and engineering principles and students will advance their design explorations through a sequence of structured assignments.  In addition to in-class lectures, we will conduct lab sections covering a range of techniques including: Soft robotic actuators; Masking, Sealing, Connecting; Laminate Design; Computational Meshing and Patterning

Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)

In recent years, a wealth of cross-disciplinary research has produced unprecedented growth in the study of “architectured-materials."  At the heart of this growth is a desire to design extraordinary functionality by manipulating matter at the smallest length scale possible—think nano or even atomic.  The science's new approach to material design is radical. This course asks what these new material technologies mean to design, energy, and our everyday occupancy of this planet.

This course brings together scientists, engineers, and designers to think across scales, learn about each other’s' working methods, and address real-world challenges by designing new materials and applying them to new applications, or atmospheres. It is co-taught by faculty from the GSD and SEAS and co-listed between the two schools. There are no prerequisites.

Working closely with laboratories from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and SEAS, the 2018 edition of this course will focus on the potential of these new materials to be translated across scales and application space. To develop bio-inspired adaptive materials capable of responding to thermal, chemical, or other stimuli, students may work with scientists from the Aizenberg Lab. Those interested in the mechanical behavior of meta-materials may work with the Bertoldi Group to understand the effects of cellular aggregation in structural materials. While other students may be excited to explore super-tough and self-actuated soft materials with scientists from the Mooney Lab. Across all of these possible experiences, students will work closely with their scientist counterparts to gain hands-on, practical knowledge of prototyping and experimental methods that provide meaningful insight into the future of material design.

As in previous years, the course will be an intensely interdisciplinary, project-based exploration that challenges students from the sciences and design to re-think the way they approach their craft. Students will be asked to navigate the space between the sciences and design through a collaborative semester-long group project. A sequence of lectures, workshops, and ideation sessions will provide a framework that guides students towards understanding and mastering the innovation process itself. Scientists from the Wyss, SEAS, and industry will provide both material specific guest lectures as well as visionary lectures to help students frame their work. Students will conduct part of their work in the Wyss or SEAS science labs on Oxford Street, as well as at the GSD FabLab.

Note: MDE students, this course can satisfy a GSD course requirement by enrolling in SCI 6477, or a SEAS course requirement by enrolling in ES 291. But it cannot simultaneously satisfy both requirements.

Jointly Offered Course: SEAS ES291