Teaching Problematization of a Design Capstone Project. Presentation of a Pedagogical Tool

Abstract

The research phase preluding a design capstone project is challenging for both students and instructors. In a situation where students are free to work on a topic of their choosing, a preset, generic research design is not suitable. Imposing a rigid framework would endanger the possibility of students truly examining and capturing the complexity of their project problematic. This would also be considered a counterpoint to the learning goal of teaching students how to engage in problematization, a skill highly valued in contemporary design practice. This reality raises the following question: how are instructors supposed to monitor and support students in this process? To address this problem, a teaching assignment called the Newspaper was designed. The Newspaper is an open and flexible framework, based on a digital platform, through which students can organize their research findings and reflections, while ensuring enough flexibility for students to deploy appropriate and relevant research methods. This assignment gives students freedom in terms of their research design, but also has certain constraints to ensure the intelligibility of the research process. This paper presents the Newspaper assignment in detail and discusses its impacts after it is used by three cohorts of industrial design students.