Evolving Paths: Undergraduate Design Education through Graduate and Generative Research with a Particular Focus on Sustainability

Abstract

Design considerations that take into account the diverse issues of sustainability have become a central source of inspiration for third-year design students in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University. These considerations include the development of products that can evolve in line with local needs, product maintenance, repair and upgrade, and the effective use of resources and have been integrated into various design projects relating to diverse product sectors (e.g. small household appliances, bathroom tiles and accessories). While engaged in these projects, the graduate students focused on and developed a generative design research method and an innovative idea generation tool that helped the design students better understand and incorporate these considerations into the idea generation phase of the design process. This paper presents suggestions for and insights into the means of bringing together undergraduate education and graduate research by providing examples from design education cases.

Keywords:

• undergraduate industrial design education
• graduate research
• sustainability considerations
• idea generation phase
• generative design research

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the third-year industrial design studio teams of instructors including Fatma Korkut, Harun Kaygan, Mustafa Hasdoğan, Selim Gençoğlu, Funda Özkan, Tuğba Ülker, Koray Benli, M. Erdi Özgürlük, Sedef Süner, and the third-year design students of the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Çağla Doğan

Çağla Doğan is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design, and founder and projects coordinator of the Sustain Design Research Lab in the Industrial Design Department at METU, Ankara. She holds a PhD in product design for sustainability from the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, and MSc and BID degrees in industrial design from the Department of Industrial Design, METU. Her design-based research focuses on product design, design research, and design education for sustainability, particularly integrated scales of design and production, localization and personalization, and generative research for sustainability and research through design.

Senem Turhan

Senem Turhan is both a design researcher and an educator. Her study areas are human-centred research (generative research, participatory approaches), design thinking, and futures thinking. She pursued her post-doctoral studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She previously worked as a post-doc researcher at Sustain Design Research Lab and research assistant at METU. She got her MSc and PhD degrees at the same university. Her master’s thesis is about the state of sustainable design education in the undergraduate industrial design programmes in Turkey. Her doctoral study focuses on generative research for the idea generation phase of the product design and development process.

Yekta Bakırlıoğlu

Yekta Bakırlıoğlu is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Department of Industrial Design, METU and a part-time researcher in Sustain Design Research Lab in Ankara. His MSc thesis focused on the use of a biomimicry approach in design education, through developing the idea generation tool of BSA. His current research interests include product design for sustainability, transitioning towards sustainable product design, sustainable production and consumption, the open paradigm in product design, and design education for sustainable product design.