Multiscale design curation: Supporting computer science students' iterative and reflective creative processes

Abstract

We investigate new media to improve how teams of students create and organize artifacts as they perform design. Some design artifacts are readymade-e.g., prior work, reference images, code framework repositories-while others are self-made-e.g., storyboards, mock ups, prototypes, and user study reports. We studied how computer science students use the medium of free-form web curation to collect, assemble, and report on their team-based design projects. From our mixed qualitative methods analysis, we found that the use of space and scale was central to their engagement in creative processes of communication and contextualization. Multiscale design curation involves collecting readymade and creating self-made design artifacts, and assembling them-as elements, in a continuous space, using levels of visual scale-for thinking about, ideation, communicating, exhibiting (presenting), and archiving design process. Multiscale design curation instantiates a constructivist approach, elevating the role of design process representation. Student curations are open and unstructured, which helps avoid premature formalism and supported reflection in iterative design processes. Multiscale design curation takes advantage of human spatial cognition, through visual chunking, to support creative processes and collaborative articulation work, in integrated space.