The theme of this year is:

New Design

Today organizations and companies are living in an increasingly complex environment. Information technology adds to this complexity by offering new and never thought of opportunities. But how are we supposed to handle this complexity? Should we adopt the tradition of science, or art, or religion or technology? In this course we will examine design as one possible tradition. Design can be understood as the first tradition and as the tradition that is very natural to us when we have to decide and act in a situation where we are overwhelmed by information.

Internet in all of its magnitude seems to challenge our traditional ways to do design. Some of the questions we will work with in this course are: How do modern IT design companies work? What kind of design approach do they use? What are the basic ideas on design governing their work? Is it possible to describe and analyze these new approaches and make them intelligible? How can more developed design theories help us to do this?

In this course we will try to add to our understanding of design as a tradition of the same magnitude as science and art. The idea is to challenge a too simplified understanding of design and to come up with new ideas and concepts possible to use in our attempt to be both more theoretically sound and to be more prepared for action as designers and leaders.

The diagram below shows some of the core concepts that we will explore within the class. This particular understanding of design has been developed by me (Erik Stolterman) in very close co-operation with prof. Harold Nelson, Antioch University, Seattle.

Most of the theoretical work underlying these ideas will be presented in the book:

It can also be useful to visit the web site of Advanced Design Institute.