Learning from the source — designers applying design thinking
Context
Last Friday, I found myself at a presentation from the industrial and product design students at the university for design and art in Basel, Switzerland. For some context, I was visiting a long-term friend who is part of the bachelor’s program. Through that, I had access to the university space all week, where I co-worked alongside his cohort. I’ve visited him a couple times and I have always enjoyed the switch in environment because I feel like it helps my creativity as I rarely find myself working in such spaces. See for yourself!
During the week, outside designers with different foci held workshops with the students, ending in an exhibition and presentation at the university space at the end of the week.
For this reflection, I want to focus on my personal favourite out of the workshops, that was held by Yael Mer, co-founder of the London-based Raw-Edges Design Studio. What’s particularly interesting about their approach is their prototyping with paper. Yes, just simple plain paper. Sounds boring but is actually very fascinating. Her goal for the workshop was to bring students closer to this technique and let them discover where it leads them.
Process
In terms of process, the students started by experimenting with paper for the first 24h of the week. Afterwards, they shared their creations with their peers. From then, they could either pick their own creation or someone else’s as well as decide whether they wanted to proceed on their own or in a team. From there, they extended the exploration of their chosen idea throughout the week to end with a final product/project.
Below you can see the vast number of ideas they created on the first day, and there were many more.
For the final exhibition and presentation, all external designers and the student cohort listened to the background of each project and the process. There were many interesting ideas utilising laser cutting, creating sculptures based on circles and more, as you can see below.
My focus project
My personal favourite end result was this ring lamp. Reason for that is the prototyping process, through which the team discovered that depending on the wave size of the paper they could influence the angle and even form it into a perfect circle.
Analysis
Initially the team aimed to make a rounded bench (first picture, fourth prototype from the left). When attempting to “close” the paper on both ends, they discovered that they could increase the wave height. Finally, they came up with the idea to create a ring lamp utilising the strength of the paper (because of the waves) to hold itself up. I was fascinated and inspired by this product, because it showed me potential of prototyping and the possibilities it could unlock.
Connection to class
- Personally, immersing myself in this space and learning first hand from prospective designers and their process over the week made me really excited for the prototyping phase of our current project in class.
- On top of that, I loved to get the chance to observe designers applying design thinking in their daily working process and listen to their thought process. Through discussing the advantages of observation and listening in our class, I feel that I have become more attentive to these “techniques” and the insights they can provide.
- Lastly, regarding the exhibition, I enjoyed the discussions about the process the most, as it also gave insights into the roadblock along the way.
Turns out, many of the final outputs were “just” happy coincidences. But maybe there are no coincidences if you just keep iterating long enough :)
Finally, here are some insights into the other exhibitions
