Exposing and improving the metacognition of designing through practical structured workshops

This paper is a result of two one week workshops, delivered at the Departement van ProductOntwikkeling (Product Development) de Hogeschool, Antwerp, Belgium. The workshops were delivered to first year undergraduates, on the 5 year degree Product Development course. They consisted of 4 one day design projects around the context of 'children and food' in the first week and 'children and play' in the second. Each project was different in focus and complexity, and the students' means of operating was deliberately constrained in different ways by each of the projects. The pattern of each day was designed so as to both 'fast forward' the students' working and to focus their attention onto different aspects of their designing. Details of the students' reactions at the start and end of the week were collected as a record of the change in their understanding of their designing. The work confirms that it was possible to increase a group of design students' awareness of their own way of working first in terms of their means of expression using words, pictures and 3 dimensional modelling, and second of the process of their designing, using a structured project work approach.