Teaching Data-Enabled Design: Student-led Data Collection in Design Education

Abstract

As design practice becomes increasingly connected, designers are increasingly engaging with data practices in their day-To-day work. To facilitate this practice, design education needs to embrace data design. In this paper, we introduce a Master-level elective course around the Data-enabled Design methodology. This challenge-based learning activity aims to teach how to use data as a creative material while addressing real-life design challenges from selected industrial partners. In this article, we demonstrate how our master students learn how to prototype, conduct data-enabled interviews, adapt their prototypes, and introduce design interventions via a multi-step approach, leveraging their growing knowledge and skills around contextual data. We share how we use a strong collaboration with our industrial partners and a predefined data infrastructure to help our students use data for sharing valid research findings and presenting experiential interventions.