Tool connectivity

Before the modernist movement of the 1920s, the creative process was firmly held in the designers' hands as they were the ones to translate ideas into drawings and gave them the formal expression.Then, as modernism progressed in the post-war years, and the complexity of society increased and made new demands, many other considerations beyond the formal, which also constitute the design process, were recognised resulting in a shift towards user-centred design and multidisciplinary design teams. In addition, the advancement of computer and telecommunication technologies, which brought the the micro computer into the design studios in the 1990s saw digital tools, and notably CAD becoming part and parcel of the design process, from first thoughts to final outcomes. But equally important for the ways designers work has been the expansion of the internet and social media broadening as well as speeding up the design process, including ideation. In contemporary technology and media-driven societies, where ideas, images and texts constantly interact with each other, the new digital tools, including computer modelling and 3D printing have enabled connectivity between designers and end-users on an unprecedented scale facilitating collaborative and participatory design. The new tools, moreover, help designers to expand creative boundaries, both conceptually and practically.

Workshop context

While the aim of the ideation workshop is to raise awareness of ideation tools in generating and communicating ideas, equally important is the cultural context of the workshop, that is, how the workshop relates to the concerns of design in contemporary societies. To get started, each workshop has an ideation theme agreed beforehand, themes that can relate to, say a function, object, place or narrative. But also how the individual workshop theme reflects the complexity, diversity and ambiguity of an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. But whereas design in recent decades have followed the path of playful postmodernism or been strongly influenced by economic neoliberalism and privatisation of the public sphere, the financial crisis of 2008, and the virus pandemic of 2020 suggest a renewed awareness of and interest in the greater role of design in society. That is, a role that embraces social inclusivity, sustainability issues and care for the environment as well as the possibility of a political re-engagement of design so absent from the design discourse since the 1980s. In short, the workshop addresses through its themes not just narrow personal interests in design but concerns that are affecting us all: What is design, what does it mean, what does it do?