Dear everyone;
So I am responsible for a study program this fall, where parts of the work includes taking international students to peri urban areas in India to understand the implications of urban (planning) decision making on the 'bottom of the pyramid'.
According to the schedule made earlier by someone else, the students are to reflect every Friday during the time in India. However, the reflection programme has not had any decided approach or direction and has according to my predecessors not been to successful. In general, it is a difficult task to 'make' people reflect.
Being a designer, I seek to use 'design tools' and explore how to create deeper insights. Regarding reflection, I am interested in your opinion on
What is reflection? Reflection is important in design, but is spoken about in different ways. One can reflect while/by doing, but it is hard to grasp what makes one reflect. From personal experience, I know that reflection has to do not only with introspectiveness but also with dialogue, maturity, timing and sometimes coincidence or meetings. I often see that students reach a different level of reflection only six months or so following a design project.
Are there tools that may trigger reflection? Insight generation is one thing, but how about gaining deeper understanding, I am so far going for 'people near' approaches such as storytelling and drawing. The latter is not so easy for non-designers. Photo ethnography perhaps.
What is 'good reflection'? Often people who say others should reflect more, may think that only their view on what 'reflection' means is satisfactory. But what are the frames here, are there any?
How do I best guide non-design students into regular reflection during a fall course on designing urban interventions? What can I pick from design?
So far I am thinking storytelling, photo ethnography, participatory observation, sketching...
I look forward to your thoughts on the above, and advice for good reads on reflection in design.
Kind regards from very sunny Norway,
Brita Fladvad Nielsen
Ph.D. in Design Methods / MA of Tech Industrial Design
Post.doc. researcher at PI-SEC (Planning Instruments for Smart Energy Communities)
& lecturer in Urban Ecological Planning
Dept. of Architecture and Planning, NTNU
Tel: 954 24 055
https://www.ntnu.edu/smartcities/pi-sec
www.designforselfreliance.wordpress.com<http://www.designforselfreliance.wordpress.com/>
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