Abstract:

Due to the pandemic, the last year has proven the limits to traditional teaching models, requiring universities and didactic staff to experiment with new ways to deliver educational content. These experimentations often pushed reflections on design education while accelerating processes already underway but with many unexplored areas. Such as the increased use of digital media to deliver the formative experience. In this paper, we want to discuss a format to visit companies digitally and open a dialogue with their staff; the “tour” highlights how different contexts apply what students learn during their university careers. The aim is to identify how this initiative adds to the current academic discussion on design education and helps us understand how to integrate innovative solutions for didactics into current traditional education systems.
The academic debate on design education is certainly not new, as it has accompanied the development of the discipline. This article focuses on the elements that have recently emerged as crucial to rethinking design education and reflects on how recent didactic format experiments can inform them.
The main elements concern: on one side the last publications on the topic, especially the two numbers of She Ji, a design journal, on the subject of design education; on the other, the implication that the pandemic is having and will have in rethinking the new model of design education.
To reflect on these issues and thematics, the authors analyze the outcome produced by the Product Service System Design Tour (PSSD Tour). In February 2020, the Politecnico di Milano in Italy started developing the initiative through a series of co-design sessions with industry members and students, when the consequences of the pandemic were still not clear. Following these activities, the authors adapted the initiative to a virtual setting and tested it by carrying tours with three different companies. Here, direct observation of participant interactions during the experiences and feedback collection resulted in further insights, leading to a final tour format, tested with four new companies.
The PSSD Tour highlighted the potential for a paradigm shift in how students approach the learning experience. Envisioning a switch from reactive to proactive students helps visualize more flexible learning scenarios. Spaces for the course and its students to experiment, iterate, and co-create the learning enhancements they require. Furthermore, the flexible initiative development could inform the design of new didactical experiences to renovate educational format. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on this initiative to understand which best practices can be taken into consideration while developing and adapting didactics in the curricular courses. The context of experimentation is related to the Service Design disciplines and aims to explore how extracurricular activities in Service Design can inform the course curriculum.
This paper will comprise four sections. The first will detail its structure while introducing the topic and research questions. The second will provide the theoretical background that drives the experimentation and problematizes the area of research. The third will briefly introduce experimentation development, detailing inquiry methods and illustrating results. Finally, the last section will report the insights and reflect on how the experience contributes to the knowledge while outlining recommendations for future research.

Keywords:

Service Design, remote learning, Design Education, Didactic innovation.