Design Studies

Catalog description

Every aspect of our everyday lives is mediated by technologies and media; designed tools and infrastructures. In this context, students will be challeneged to ask “What is design?”. What differentiates it from, and connects it to craft, art, or engineering? This course uses design texts, supplemented by texts from the humanities and social sciences, as a lens with which to think and understand design practices and technology infrastructures. Over the course of the semester, students will learn both how to articulate and structure critical and analytical arguments, technological artifacts, as well as put their new ways of understanding technology to use, through lectures, workshops, and assignments. Restricted to first year IDM MS students.