Introduction
Introduction to Design Thinking & Maker Culture
This course introduces the theories, tools, and methods behind Design Thinking and Maker Culture. It provides an overview of the history of Design Thinking, exploring its various schools of thought and practice, as well as providing an introduction to the more recently theorised space of Maker Culture. This course also explores how those in the arts, humanities, and creative and cultural industries can use the twin pillars of Design Thinking and Maker Culture in their everyday practice. The course is divided into four units:
Unit I: Design Thinking and Maker Culture: an OverviewDeveloped by Susan Schreibman with the assistance of Esther Kamara and Stephanie Ochiel.
This unit provides a historical introduction to both of these concepts, with a particular focus on exploring how to approach problems by by taking a user-centred approach, as well as using these perspectives in designing humanities and heritage content for social justice.
Unit II: Challenging the Humanities
Developed by Marianne Ping Huang with the assistance of Esther Kamara and Stephanie Ochiel.
This unit explores how those in the fields of humanities and heritage can contribute to human-centred design and humanities-focussed innovation.
Unit III: Design Thinking Lifecycle Developed by Marianne Ping Huang with the assistance of Stephanie Ochiel.
This unit takes the reader through the various stages typically used in Design Thinking, with a focus on the Double Diamond Model, which this course has adopted as its lifecycle framework
Unit IV: Timeline: Design Thinking & Maker CultureDeveloped by Susan Schreibman and Marianne Ping Huang with the assistance of Esther Kamara and Stephanie Ochiel.
This unit contains an interactive timeline with key events, initiatives, and individuals in the domains of design thinking and maker culture
Unit V: Design Sprint ExerciseDeveloped by Susan Schreibman and Costas Papadopoulos.
This unit takes you through a Design Sprint, a common Design Thinking approach to help teams come up with more creative solutions to solve problems. The Sprint has been designed to work within a team setting or as an individual.
This course is designed for reflective learning through participatory and explorative methods and formats and active understanding as opposed to the passive consumption of facts. The combination of the communal and experimental practices of maker culture with the processual learning of design thinking is a pathway for the co-creational problem-based learning, which is at the core of this course, as well as the IGNITE learning philosophy.
Course Developers
Costas Papadopoulos, Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities and Culture Studies, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Costas is an archaeologist by training, specialising in the application of digital methods, including 3D modelling and computational imaging, to archaeological datasets as a way to analyse and interpret societies of the past. Much of his more recent scholarship in digital humanities explores digital pedagogy and interactive modalities of teaching and learning. His work also involves new ways of engagement across different contexts and age groups, and how technology can be leveraged to empower non-academic audiences.
Marianne Ping Huang, Associate Professor at School for Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. Marianne serves as an academic officer for cultural creative collaborations, creative industry partnerships and digital cultures. Marianne has worked on the 20th Century Avantgardes as artistic, social, and political movements, her research interests are creative ecosystems, open innovation, multiple helix collaboration and how artistic interventions and humanistic competences create openings for community based innovation and engagement in democratic, digital transitions.
Stephanie Ochiel is a MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures student at Maastricht University. Her background is politics and international relations after obtaining her BA degree in European studies at the same university. Despite having a different educational background, she has a strong affinity for digital media and its affect on society and is also working towards becoming a professional photographer. Thus, her position as an editor and interactive content creator for this platform has become a vital stepping stone and transition for her into this new field.
Esther Aminata Kamara is a Dutch-Sierra Leonean writer and researcher and alumnus of the MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures at the University of Maastricht. Esther likes to explore the bridges and boundaries between West-African and western culture. Her dual nationality allows her to delve deeper into cross-cultural issues, including the impact and development of technology and access to cultural texts, digital tools and creative skills. She aims to use her writing and critical thinking skills to enrich the IGNITE curriculum even further.”
Susan Schreibman is Professor of Digital Arts and Culture at Maastricht University. Professor Schreibman works at the intersections of computationally-based teaching and research in the interplay of the digital archive, cultural innovation, and participatory engagement design, processes and projects. A focus of her research is in the design, critical, and interpretative analysis of systems that remediate publication modalities and manuscript culture from the analogue world, while developing new born-digital paradigms. She has published and lectured widely in digital humanities and Irish poetic modernism. Her research includes Letter 1916-1923, Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, The Thomas MacGreevy Archive. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative and #dariahTeach.
Marianne Ping Huang, Associate Professor at School for Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. Marianne serves as an academic officer for cultural creative collaborations, creative industry partnerships and digital cultures. Marianne has worked on the 20th Century Avantgardes as artistic, social, and political movements, her research interests are creative ecosystems, open innovation, multiple helix collaboration and how artistic interventions and humanistic competences create openings for community based innovation and engagement in democratic, digital transitions.
Stephanie Ochiel is a MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures student at Maastricht University. Her background is politics and international relations after obtaining her BA degree in European studies at the same university. Despite having a different educational background, she has a strong affinity for digital media and its affect on society and is also working towards becoming a professional photographer. Thus, her position as an editor and interactive content creator for this platform has become a vital stepping stone and transition for her into this new field.
Esther Aminata Kamara is a Dutch-Sierra Leonean writer and researcher and alumnus of the MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures at the University of Maastricht. Esther likes to explore the bridges and boundaries between West-African and western culture. Her dual nationality allows her to delve deeper into cross-cultural issues, including the impact and development of technology and access to cultural texts, digital tools and creative skills. She aims to use her writing and critical thinking skills to enrich the IGNITE curriculum even further.”
Susan Schreibman is Professor of Digital Arts and Culture at Maastricht University. Professor Schreibman works at the intersections of computationally-based teaching and research in the interplay of the digital archive, cultural innovation, and participatory engagement design, processes and projects. A focus of her research is in the design, critical, and interpretative analysis of systems that remediate publication modalities and manuscript culture from the analogue world, while developing new born-digital paradigms. She has published and lectured widely in digital humanities and Irish poetic modernism. Her research includes Letter 1916-1923, Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, The Thomas MacGreevy Archive. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative and #dariahTeach.