The ReflecTable: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in Design Education

The ReflecTable is a digital learning environment that explores how design games and video-led reflection might be combined to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical components of design education. The concept seeks to leverage the qualities of exploratory design games and video to inspire design students to critically reflect upon the relationship between their evolving design practices and the theories and techniques they are taught in lectures, by allowing them to capture, review and reflect upon short videos of a design game. In this paper, we present the ReflecTable design and nine studies conducted during the course of its development. The studies suggest that the ReflecTable has the potential to support design students in understanding how theoretical concepts and methods relate to different design situations and their own evolving design practices.

[1]  Jacob Buur,et al.  User Centred Design Through the Keyhole: Video Design Cases , 2003 .

[2]  Bettina Törpel,et al.  The design game in participatory design and design education: chances, risks and side effects , 2006, PDC '06.

[3]  Jacob Buur,et al.  User Centred Design through the Keyhole: Video Design Case , 2003, INTERACT.

[4]  Abigail Sellen,et al.  Putting the physical into the digital: issues in designing hybrid interactive surfaces , 2009 .

[5]  Tomas Sokoler,et al.  Physically embodied video snippets supporting collaborative exploration of video material during design sessions , 2002, NordiCHI '02.

[6]  D. Schon.  Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. The Jossey-Bass Higher Education Series. , 1987 .

[7]  Jonas Löwgren,et al.  Thoughtful interaction design , 2004 .

[8]  Lloyd P. Rieber,et al.  The Value of Serious Play , 1998 .

[9]  Marco Winckler,et al.  Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2011 - 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011, Proceedings, Part III , 2011, INTERACT.

[10]  Scott R. Klemmer,et al.  Two worlds apart: bridging the gap between physical and virtual media for distributed design collaboration , 2003, CHI '03.

[11]  Eli Blevis,et al.  Designing interactivity for the specific context of designerly collaborations , 2005, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[12]  Jacob Buur,et al.  Design is a Game: Developing Design Competence in a Game Setting , 2002 .

[13]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[14]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI , 2007, CHI.

[15]  D. Schoen.  The Reflective Practitioner , 1983 .

[16]  Jacob Buur,et al.  Video card game: an augmented environment for user centred design discussions , 2000, DARE '00.

[17]  Mark W. Newman,et al.  The designers' outpost: a tangible interface for collaborative web site , 2001, UIST '01.

[18]  Peter Brandl,et al.  Shared Design Space: Sketching Ideas Using Digital Pens and a Large Augmented Tabletop Setup , 2006, ICAT.

[19]  Tomas Sokoler,et al.  VideoTable: a tangible interface for collaborative exploration of video material during design sessions , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[20]  Jörn Messeter,et al.  Facilitating collaboration through design games , 2004, PDC 04.

[21]  Pelle Ehn,et al.  Work-oriented design of computer artifacts , 1989 .

[22]  Muthu Kumar,et al.  Educational Technology , 1968, Lean in the Classroom.

[23]  Jennifer Turns.  Enhancing design education for engineering students: supporting planning, tracking, and reflection , 1996 .

[24]  Harald Reiterer,et al.  Experiences from Employing Evernote as a Tool for Documenting Collaborative Design Processes , 2012, DIS 2012.

[25]  Mark D. Gross,et al.  Concept design games , 1988 .

[26]  Ian Alexander,et al.  An introduction to qualitative research , 2000, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[27]  Kim Halskov,et al.  Reflective design documentation , 2012, DIS '12.

[28]  Björn Hartmann,et al.  Pictionaire: supporting collaborative design work by integrating physical and digital artifacts , 2010, CSCW '10.

[29]  Alex S. Taylor,et al.  Design's processional character , 2010, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[30]  Erik Stolterman,et al.  The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World , 2002 .

[31]  Joep W. Frens,et al.  Freed: a system for creating multiple views of a digital collection during the design process , 2011, CHI.

[32]  Donald A. Schön.  Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions , 1987 .

[33]  Giorgio De Michelis,et al.  Supporting configurability in a mixed-media environment for design students , 2004, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[34]  Donald A. Schön.  Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation , 1992, Knowl. Based Syst..

[35]  Harald Reiterer,et al.  AffinityTable - A Hybrid Surface for Supporting Affinity Diagramming , 2011, INTERACT.

[36]  Shingo Takada,et al.  Two-dimensional spatial positioning as a means for reflection in design , 2000, DIS '00.

[37]  Yasuhiro Yamamoto,et al.  Toward Unweaving Streams of Thought for Reflection in Professional Software Design , 2012, IEEE Software.

[38]  Dirk Heylen,et al.  Remarkable objects: supporting collaboration in a creative environment , 2010, UbiComp.

[39]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[40]  Kim Halskov,et al.  Inspiration card workshops , 2006, DIS '06.

[41]  Daniel Fallman,et al.  Design-oriented human-computer interaction , 2003, CHI '03.

[42]  Eva Brandt,et al.  Designing exploratory design games: a framework for participation in Participatory Design? , 2006, PDC '06.

[43]  Rynson W. H. Lau,et al.  Advances in Artificial Reality and Tele-Existence, 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence, ICAT 2006, Hangzhou, China, November 29 - December 1, 2006, Proceedings , 2006, ICAT.