Industrial Design Education as Innovation Broker through Making, Pivot Thinking, Autopoiesis and Expansive Learning

Abstract

This article elaborates on design research in a final capstone industrial design studio unit and on the application of outcomes over eight years within a School of Engineering and its recent incarnation as School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. Research and curriculum innovation linked students to the new global design-driven innovation agenda as knowledge workers leading by creativity and intellectual capital. An international design studio project with a professional design agency style was embedded in the first instalment of the research. Students worked as junior designers with industry experts who couched them with a work integrated learning approach. A second instalment expanded to learning concurrent and agile development. An open program recognised students’ backgrounds and experiences to create a community of learning curriculum through critical making, pivot thinking, autopoiesis and expansive learning. These contributed to also establish CDIO (conceiving, designing, implementing, operating) and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) initiatives as ways to procure evidence and facilitate production. Technology effects on design knowledge flows were addressed with participatory action research, information and communication technologies, human-computer interaction, e-manufacturing, fabrication and rapid prototyping tools. Findings indicated the need to update design education to achieve modern design artefact and knowledge construction. The greatest challenge was behavioural rather than technological. Institutional preconditioning assumed students as consumers and education as transmission skill transfer. A shift to transformative learning was possible by empowering participants to work within modern industry integrated benchmarks and achieve unique value propositions and minimum viable products that were ready to market outcomes.