You may remember that some time ago I mentioned that @Susa and I had dreamt up a new product design course format product design students at UDK, one of the better design and art universities in Germany. It’s called Hacking Utopia- #OpenCare for social and demographic change and was born out of our shared experiences as designers. More specifically the frustration with outdated design education that ill prepares students to be able to do meaningful work with their skills and talents. We feel that this should start already during their education so by the time they have graduated they are already up and running their own exciting projects that really contribute towards tackling some of the bigger challenges which affect us all. After a lot of work over the past couple of months, especially by Susa, the partnership agreement between Edgeryders and UDK was finalised and today we launched the first ever edition of this new course format.
Over the next six months each student will be working on design research and product development process that departs from the OpenCare topic and methodologies…and they will be doing it in synch with the phases of the larger OpenCare research project. The course participants’ documentation and individual reflections from each day are uploaded in the Op3nCare Community Homebase where you are very welcome to leave comments helping them develop their thinking and projects.
Why do this? You get to see the OpenCare topic and challenges from many different perspectives and help shape the students research and product development work so they really are contributing to the Opencare research project. For the students getting feedback from you is an unparalleled way to discover new knowledge and broaden their horisons about what is happening in the fields relevant to all our work.
Reflections from day 1 are slowly being posted here: https://edgeryders.eu/en/share-your-reflections-from-day-1-of-the-hacking-utopia-opencare-lab
Image credit: Susanne Stauch, OpenCare Lab #1 - Hacking Utopia