Research and didactical for design

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Average

The subunit of Research and education for design aims at exploring the operating methods in design, the activities of cooperation, the role of didactics, the potentialities of information technology instruments, to undestand how to generate and codify knowledge resulting from the professional practice and that professionals do not know how to describe. The unit dedicates wide attention to the reflection about educational themes, about the relation between technologies and knowledge building, about the relation between the nature of knowedge and cognitive styles, about the visualization of complex knowledge systems, as well as the interpretation of innovative processes as learning processes. Design and learning The study of cognitive dynamics undeneath the processes of growth and transfer of knowledge occurring in the design processes has rarely influenced Design education systems (Oxman, 1999). In the last decade a considerable part of research was interested and oriented towards the comprehension of cognitive properties connected with design producing new theoretical hints, offering new directions to the development of a design educational science, and borrowing the complex learning dynamics from the innovation processes. The cognitive characteristics of the project thought and its learning would identify with the content of education to design in a metacognitive, recursive approach consisting in learning to learn. If the economic system is actually read as “cognitive system” since its main source of productivity is the action of knowledge acts on the same knowledge (Castells), the designer performs a fundamental role in the production of knowledge and fully belongs to the group of knowledge workers who demostrate, more and more, to possess competences and cognitive capacities acquired during an informal experience-based pathway. The working performance acquires more and more elements of immateriality: the relational, communication and cerebral acivities become more and more present and important and require training, competences and attention. Innovation and learning The nature of industrial products is progressively assuming a new form: more and more often goods are replaced by services. The tertiary activities in the company are supported by an intense diffusion of productive immaterial activities such as research &development, logistics, marketing, quality function, that is strong-cognitive-value activities.The immaterial nature of values of the new paradigm renews the emphasis on human resources which become the only, real “cognitive capital” of the organizations; knowledge workers are the keepers of the specific “know how” of the company, but also responsible of the continuous learning process which is at the base of its competitivity ans success. To answer to these solicitations, a new relation is developing among the various actors involved in the process of design, production and fruition of the product systems where the user- with a unique role- becomes protagonist together with the traditional partners (companies). A process of “mutual learning” triggers among all the actors taking part in the process, which confer a bidirectional dimension, enriches the knowledge by both sides and add a new cognitive dimension to the traditional and monodirectional relation production/consumption, by shaping a real connective net (not only instrumental) where the different actors participate with “active” roles as proposers and not only as “passive” users (Palmieri). The design processes, to meet such needs, are going to shape a more and more integrated system of participations among more actors in the system of value of the company. The in-progress evolution and the overcoming of limits indicated acknowledge the consumers a new dimension, not a given reality , but the complexity of systemic dimension: that is consumers are considered as “autonomous” systems and source of knowledge, as said before, immersed in their environment of reference where they interact with the offer systems (Palmieri). Naturally, the creation of such connections is connected with the development of information technology which make it possibile a continuing and iterative relation. Technologies as instrument for knowledge management. Peer Review - Department of Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion (INDACO) 80 The real force ascribed to new technologies, which are the object of study by both economists and sociologists or information scientists, consists in the possibility of accumulation, in the capacity to memorize, manage and interpret data and information. The intellectual technologies have the prerogative to code and decode information, to transfer knowledge, to make the process of knowledge building fluid. If the productive systems have transformed themselves in information, knowledge and competences collectors, where new forms of acquisition, coding, knowledge transfer are experimented, University as privileged ambit for research has to refer to them in order to study the modalities used in the process of capitalization and reproduction of know how; in the organization the continuing education and knowledge development; in the act of converging towards a sole objective knowledge distributed among single individuals.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Industrial Design, Arti, Comunicazione e Moda (INDACO)

Docenti afferenti

Full Professors
Antonella Penati
Assistant Professors
Stefania Palmieri
Manuela Celi