Abstract:

The research project presents a didactic experience conducted within the course in Digital Design. Interaction and Communication Design at the Bachelor in Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano during the winter semester of the academic year 2022-23. The didactic activity was aimed at teaching the design of digital interactive artefacts and complex communication eco-systems through awareness of the presence and contribution of female figures.

Protagonists present but often ignored or only marginally mentioned, in the development of the disciplines of digital design, user experience research and information communication technologies. Both the cultural and design learning process -– following a practice-based research and a learning-by-doing approach – were divided into 3 phases:
1) An initial participatory workshop on women in digital design to raise awareness of the lack of inclusivity by showing, sharing and discussing the topic within the class. Aim of this warm up phase is to produce data to be used during the following sessions.
2) In a second phase the students developed projects on the theme - a responsive web site to present the story of women in digital design to different personas-spectrum and in different contexts of use - illustrated and discussed here as case studies. The data produced in the previous activity were presented through info-graphic and interactive data visualisations such as clusters, timelines and so on.
3) A final workshop with a wider non-academic audience was organised on the occasion of the end-of-semester GOG - Guests, Guests, Gäste - project exhibition to compare the projects implemented (the prototypes created were accessible via a QR-Code and navigable by the public via their personal smartphones) with the visible and shared results of the two workshops.

The paper presents, illustrates and discusses, in cultural, methodological and didactic experience terms, the results of this pathway as a possible paradigm and teaching model. Furthermore, it reflects and discusses the specific results and outcomes of the two workshops at a more social and awareness level about an inclusive and diverse approach to design history, on the one hand, it makes the social bias with respect to the (under)representation of women in STEAM disciplines evident. The experience will be repeated in the second semester of the 2023-24 academic year and compared with the previous one to assess whether patterns and possible guidelines emerge to make the approach reproducible as a teaching method in other contexts.

Keywords:

Teaching digital design, women design history, women of digital design, gender studies, inclusive design history.