Forming Design Awareness Questions

Introduction

In “Forming Design Awareness Questions” students learn about design awareness and practice it by creating design awareness questions. These questions encourage students to be curious about their design process, what happens in it, and what choices they make.

A designer who demonstrates design awareness can answer their own design awareness question!

Why do this activity?

The purpose of this activity is to help students understand and practice design awareness by questioning their own process.

This activity can help students:

understand the design process in general,
stay aware of where they are in a design process,
engage in reflection-in-action to compare their current process with their goal process,
intentionally determine their next design activity,
enact those choices, and then
continue the cycle…

Materials needed

If you’d like this activity done in-person:

1 sheet or half-sheet of paper per student
1 sheet or half-sheet of paper per group
Something to write with

If you’d like this activity done virtually:

A copy of our Miro board template: Forming Design Awareness Questions Template
Student personal laptops

Setting up the activity

Explain the concept of design awareness to students. You can describe this as the idea of being aware of where you are at in the design process, what you just finished doing, and what you intend to do next. The following quote may help: some text
1. “[Design awareness is] Staying cognizant of your design process in order to make more [intentional] decisions about what to do next, ultimately leading to a more enhanced/ efficient design process. Practicing process documentation and thorough reflection can lead to increased awareness of a design process.” — Khadijah Jordan
Introduce the idea that design awareness can be raised by asking questions about your process. What would your students want to examine in their design process? The following are some examples: some text
1. Design actions
2. Emotions
3. The complexity of the task, or the cognition required
4. Number of times communicated / collaborated with someone
5. Number of interruptions
6. How much information do I gather, and when do I gather it?
(In-person preparation) Pass out the blank sheets (or half-sheets) to each student, and make sure they each have something to write with.
(Virtual preparation) Copy this template: Forming Design Awareness Questions Template into your Miro account. The template has enough spaces for 20 students and 6 groups; feel free to edit the template to create spaces for more students/groups. Then, inside the Miro board, click the “Share” button and in the popup adjust the settings so anyone with the link may edit the board. Send this link to your students.

Doing the activity

Give students 10 minutes to individually come up with a list of 5 to 6 questions about a future design process. As they make their lists, they can star or highlight their top three.
In small group discussions of 3 or 4 students, give students 15 minutes to think back on a previous design activity or project. Are they able to answer their current design awareness questions for that project? Groups should write down or type up their thoughts.
For the questions that they aren’t able to answer, what could they change about their process to help answer their questions? some text
1. What could they change about their design activity?
2. What kind of data could they capture to answer the question?
Have each group come up with some final insights on what they want to change in order to answer their design awareness question. Hold a 10 minute class discussion where each group shares some of their insights.

Student Responses and Takeaways

Student Responses

Student Takeaways

What struck you as interesting?

“How different aspects of our design process (ambiguity, reflections, emotions) can be tapped into for efficiently executing a design process.”
“Self reflection is important to understand what is needed to be improved.”

Were there any “aha” moments?

“I’d like to think about what I’m hoping to take away from an activity or process (both professionally and personally) before I start it.”
“Choosing what design awareness question you want to answer BEFORE designing is a great way to learn more about your process.”
“I really should be asking myself questions throughout the design process, not just at the end!”

Instructor Tips and Advice

Embrace the complexity: Design awareness is a big and complicated idea, and it takes ongoing effort and reflection. Remind your students that it’s okay to ask questions they think they can’t answer! That’s all part of the process of design awareness.

‍Connect this to Capturing Design Signatures: The next step after forming design awareness questions is to think about how you might notice and answer these questions during your next design process. The Capturing Design Signatures resource gives you a great set of tools to teach students how to record and visualize their design processes. To enhance “Forming Design Awareness Questions”, have your students focus on what data they might need to record in order to answer their questions.