Design Studio

Catalog description

Design Studios form the backbone of design thinking at JWU, enabling JWU students from any discipline to join diverse teams and solve open-ended design problems. Project teams are assembled by faculty around the skills and experience of the students, intermingling design majors and their expertise with the diverse skills and experience found among students from across Johnson & Wales. Students have the opportunity to enroll in the class up to five times, honing their problem-solving through scaffolded experiences of increasing complexity and responsibility. Experience 1: Iterating, testing and creating. Experience 2: Research, reporting and assessing. Experience 3: Drawing conclusions and making decisions. Experience 4–5: Defining the problem, planning and leading. Students work across teams on skills in iteration, user-centered design, ethics, computational design/form finding, and designing in collaboration and context. Design Studio projects vary each semester, arising out of ongoing research agendas within the department, inter-departmental collaborations, external sponsors, and student capstone projects.