Timothy Wee

Design Being: Towards an embodied perspective of design education

This pedagogical theory is framed by play, employing embodied cognition as a medium to teach the principles of design and design thinking. In this paper, I am proposing that the activity of bouldering can be a tool that develops a deeper understanding of a variety of design principles and can also provide support for students during the design process.

Play is often thought as frivolous, its pedagogical potential often relegated to early childhood education. This study argues that it can be a transformative force for accommodating existing knowledge through novel experiences for students to realise their creative potential. By bridging design practice with bouldering, the body is instrumentalised, translating the movement of the eye on a page to the movement of thebody on the wall.

Bouldering, like design, is based around solving problems. Students merge thoughts with actions, externalising thinking and spatialise information in order to cultivate new modes of conceptualisation. By playing together they also form bonds for better teamwork, develop empathy and practise vital communication skills. This study employs a hybrid of participatory action research and design thinking to first gather information from both design and bouldering communities, which were synthesised to develop an intervention, qualitative data was collected and analysed to gain insights into the experiences of the participants.

This transdisciplinary approach to design education liberates students from the stationary desk/screen bound environment, allowing for a critical review and examination on how they can access new forms of knowledge/ways of learning. Thus, transforming their understanding of themselves and their perspectives in order to reclaim the human value within design practice.