Motivation and the learningscape of design

Designers, engineers, architects and artists are trained to deal with conflicting requirements and opportunities; in fact, their ways of investigating problems and prototyping ideas are frequently aimed at exposing hidden but influential conflict, bringing conflict out into the open. To achieve this requires a familiarity with a multidimensional landscape of design and designing. It’s a landscape that has similarities with the environment of some digital games in that it is not one landscape but many. One of these landscapes can be characterized as an arena for conflicting forces that drive design. Another concerns the skills and knowledge with which designers undertake design activity. But there is a third and neglected landscape concerning the understanding and development of motivation in design. This chapter is about learning across this three-dimensional landscape or ‘learningscape’ and particularly the importance of motivation.