Master of Design
The Master of Design degree of Carnegie Mellon culminates in a thesis project and paper.
My paper comes out of an interest in the methods and practice of teaching design. As for my project, I find surprising similarities between designing and playing.
My research has given me a deeper understanding about the profession of design as well as guided me towards realizing my own role as a designer.
Thesis Paper
Claims of Knowledge in Design
Advisor / Dr. Suguru Ishizaki
The discipline of design, while a relatively young field in terms of academic scholarship, has gained a surprising amount of traction in many professional and academic communities. This growing attention to a design-oriented approach parallels the emergence of new fields of interest such as Experience Design, Service Design, and even Organizational Design. Pushing the bounds of their arts and craft training, designers now profess the ability to address a broader set of design problems beyond their disciplinary tradition.
Underlying—and contributing to—this transformation of design practice is the recognition and promise of Design Thinking. This popular notion is hailed as the integrative “design sensibility” that not only permeates all of design, but allows designers to approach a wide range of challenges. Yet at the same time, the discourse around Design Thinking not only belies its complexity and history, but also overlooks many questions that concern the traditional disciplines of design. This primary discussion revolves around what Design Thinking is rather than on how Design Thinking develops. If indeed designers have the sensibility to address complex challenges that lie outside of their traditional domains, what knowledge should designers possess?
To understand what it means to think like a designer, we must first understand what it is that a designer knows. Reaching back to the methods movement and into contemporary models of design research, my paper investigates the claims of knowledge in design and suggests a classification to demystify the notion of Design Thinking.
Documentation
Thesis Project
Enabling Play for Parents and Children in Public
Advisor / John Zimmerman
Children often engage in non-competitive and make-believe play. However, parent-and-child play in the public context are often restricted by social and contextual pressures. Instead of fun and cooperation, social and contextual pressure turn play towards instruction and monitoring.
With my thesis project, I plan to design supports for play that engage self-organizing participation between parents and children in social environments. Furthermore, I hope to contribute to the Interaction Design community by creating an artifact that reinforces existing frameworks on designing for play as well as contribute to new insights on emergent interactions.
Definitions of Play
But what exactly is play? As my literature review revealed, definitions and categories of play tend to slip and blend. Roger Caillos provides a working specture between games (Ludis) and play (Paida). But more comprehensively, Brian Sutton-Smith identifies 7 rhetorics that emerge with changing philosophical view of play.
Design Principles
I have been working with the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh as part of my project. After expert interview and observational research, I arrived at four principles to carry forward in the design of a final solution.
1. Monitoring to Scaffolding / Allow for non-instructional play.
2. Necessary Cooperation / Utilize physical conditions
3. Appropriate Cooperation / Create a context through spontaneity.
4. Scalable Skills / Accommodate a sliding-scale for many participants.
Documentation
Thesis Poster Presentation [pdf]