Design Education: Collaboration and Cross-disciplinarity

This year’s conference theme Design Education: Collaboration and Cross-disciplinarity emphasises the importance of two important aspects in engineering and product design education. The conference aim is to reflect on the challenges of collaboration and cross-disciplinarity that design educators face when designing learning environments which balance supporting students’ learning and simulate complex, cross-disciplinary challenges. Therefore, it is important that design educators explore the external collaboration between industry and academia, and the internal collaboration between students from same or different disciplines. The conference aims to:

  • Provide a platform for a broad variety of participants
  • Explore how engineering and product design education contributes to a balanced development of technological possibilities and the needs of people for future society
  • Discuss how engineering and product design education can enhance meaningful relations with manufacturers, stakeholders and society in general
  • Explore how cross-disciplinary approaches and projects can lead to fruitful insights and valuable results
  • Discuss how design education can best be used in the framing and alignment of needs and expectations of users and stakeholders
  • Seek innovative solutions that open up new horizons for collaborative practice in design
  • Embed the integration of all aspects of engineering and design in our curricula
  • Explore the broadening and deepening of the design profession through collaboration and cross-disciplinarity

These aims will be addressed through the following conference topics:

  • Design education in practice
  • Collaboration in design education
  • Creativity and ethics in design education
  • Assessment methods in design education
  • Research related to design education
  • New design education paradigms
  • Framing and alignment of projects in design education
  • Preparing students for cross-disciplinarity
  • Form and aesthetics in collaborative design

In keeping with the inclusive ethos of the E&PDE conference and to broaden the opportunities to link design and business by creativity and innovation other stream proposals are welcomed. We invite you to send your proposals for other relevant topics to ied@ied.org.uk.