G6 Design: a process of development
On a Wednesday morning, a pack of design students traveled on the river bank carrying bamboo sticks, scout ropes, and bags of soil. What were they up to?
Students were tasked with the challenge of designing a soil carrier apparatus that could carry soil over from our Kuei Shan campus back to the Lanya campus. Students brought knowledge learned in scouts (scout knots) and science class (physics) into practice. Students spent a few weeks developing their ideas, going from drawings to prototypes - at each step putting their assumptions to the test.
When it came time to create and design, students were suddenly confronted with how the knowledge in scouts and science class actually functioned in real life. When digging for soil, students negotiated with the embodied knowledge of forces and motion. When their designs fell apart on the trek back, students had to adapt, rework, and in some cases accept that their design did not work this time around.
Luckily design is an iterative process and a parallel of growth mindset, in which a temporary failure of the design does not determine the value of the designer.
With our bags of soil, we will start planting for our end of semester garden-to-table culinary design. We could’ve easily ordered bags of soil delivered straight to our door, but through this design project students gained a new understanding and appreciation of where things come from, and that something that seems simple is in fact, not simple.