Position and Roles of Designers

This is a theme course of DfI theme 2: Design for Societal Innovation.

In designing for societal challenges, designers can play various roles. This course dives into the position designers can take and how to articulate designers' unique expertise when designing for societal innovation.

Some designers become experts at designing artefacts, others in guiding others moving through stagnation (stakeholders, citizens, actors in support systems). Some provoke existing world views, others help others envision better futures. The design landscape is diverse, and designers will benefit from being able to articulate their specific agency and delivery for their design projects in relation to others involved in the project and beyond.

In this course, students will learn about theories on design leadership and designer roles and reflect on the influence of their own agency and delivery to influence the intended outcomes.

Through analysis of real-life cases, students will identify their roles and related attitudes, skills and knowledge to add value to the various stages of the projects and how the roles of designers co-evolve to respond to the needs for each stage.

Through critical reflections on their personal experiences with positions and roles in design projects, students start shaping the roles they envision for themselves in the future and the potential impact of this on project outcomes.

The study goals of this course will be assessed by:

- A presententation of 70% of the final deliverable (unedited video fragments with live explanation), in week 7.

- Peer review and teacher feedback (formative).

Course assessment is based on group work and graded as pass/fail.

At the end of the course, for summative evaluation students submit a (video) deliverable. Students can choose a topic of investigation for their deliverable. Relating to their chosen topic, the video will cover aspects such as:

1. Overview of design positions and roles from theory.

2. Take standpoints by comparing opposing views.

3. Explain these standpoints by reviewing design projects (reviews conducted in individual and group work through course assignments).

4. Suggestions for next generation of designers.