Matching Items (6)
Description
The development of literacy abilities in young children has been a major concern for authorities and teachers in the USA for the last two decades. Significant effort has been devoted to ensure that preschool settings allow and motivate children to engage in literacy activities before entering kindergarten. Research has found that a rich classroom environment in preschool settings enables teachers to encourage literacy interest in children at a young age. While a large amount of research has concentrated in testing the effect of prescriptive modifications in the classroom environment, few have focused on studying the design process and tools that teachers follow to design their classrooms. Public policy and research studies in the United States, mention the design of the classroom environment among teacher's responsibilities, but they do not include practical or methodological guides for them to use. The purpose of this research was to study the design process and tools that teachers use to design literacy rich classrooms in preschool settings. A case study was conducted at the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Preschool at Arizona State University. This setting provides a unique opportunity for an exploratory study of this nature because it is a private child development laboratory with a flexible curriculum. Participant observation sessions and in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the design process used and experienced by the teachers. Findings revealed an iterative and cyclic design process that is repeated over time adjusting to the influence of numerous factors. Results also suggest that teacher's knowledge and beliefs highly influence the organization of their classrooms. Considering these factors as a standpoint allows for further exploration to determine a design process suitable for teachers when designing their learning environments. The use of a structured yet flexible design process, can be a potential tool for educators to design their classrooms, collaborate, document and transmit their knowledge. Although the findings correspond to a specific site studied, the implications are wide reaching as problems and opportunities expressed by the staff are common to other educational settings with similar characteristics.
ContributorsCortes, Catalina (Author) / Patel, Mookesh (Thesis advisor) / Heywood, William (Committee member) / Christie, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Digital Fabrication has played a pivotal role in providing reality to industrial designers' ideas since its first commercial use in late 80's. Making the final prototype of a design project has been the initial assumed use for these technologies in the design process. However, new technology advances in this area offer further opportunities for designers. In this research these opportunities have been carefully explored. This research will be conceptualized through discussing the findings of a case study and theories in the areas of Industrial Design methodology, digital fabrication, and design pedagogy. Considering the span of digital fabrication capabilities, this research intends to look into the design-fabrication relation from a methodology perspective and attempts to answer the question of how the digital fabrication methods can be integrated into the Industrial Design process to increase the tangibility of the design process in very first steps. It will be argued that the above is achievable in certain design topics - i.e. those with known components but unknown architecture. This will be studied through the development of series of hypothetical design processes emphasizing the role of digital fabrication as an ideation tool rather than a presentation tool. In this case study, two differing processes have been developed and given to Industrial Design students to design specific power tools. One of them is developed based on the precedence of digital fabrication. Then the outcome of the two processes is compared and evaluated. This research will introduce the advantages of using the digital fabrication techniques as a powerful ideation tool, which overcomes the imagination problems in many of complicated design topics. More importantly, this study suggests the criteria of selecting the proposed design methodology. It is hoped that these findings along with the advances in the area of additive and subtractive fabrication will assist industrial designers to create unique methodologies to deal with complicated needs both in practice and design education.
ContributorsValamanesh, Roozbeh (Author) / Shin, Dosun (Thesis advisor) / Velasquez, Joseph (Committee member) / Colins, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Many Indigenous communities in North America develop tribal museums to preserve and control tribal knowledge and heritage and counteract negative effects of colonization. Tribal museums employ many Indigenous strategies related to Indigenous languages, knowledges, and material heritage. I argue that architecture can be an Indigenous strategy, too, by privileging Indigeneity through design processes, accommodating Indigenous activities, and representing Indigenous identities. Yet it is not clear how to design culturally appropriate Indigenous architectures meeting needs of contemporary Indigenous communities. Because few Indigenous people are architects, most tribal communities hire designers from outside of their communities. Fundamental differences challenge both Indigenous clients and their architects. How do Indigenous clients and their designers overcome these challenges? This dissertation is a history of the processes of creating a tribal museum, The Museum At Warm Springs, on the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon. The focus is to understand what critical activities Tribal members, designers, and others did to create a museum whose architecture represents and serves its community. The study also considers how people did things so as to honor Indigenous traditions. Design and construction processes are considered along with strategies that Tribal members and their advocates used to get to where they were prepared to design and build a museum. Interviews with Tribal members, designers, and others were central sources for the research. Other sources include meeting minutes, correspondence, Tribal resolutions, and the Tribal newspaper. Visual sources such as drawings, photographs, and the museum itself were significant sources also. This study revealed several key activities that the Confederated Tribes did to position themselves to build the museum. They built an outstanding collection of Tribal artifacts, created and supported a museum society, and hired an outstanding executive director. The Tribes selected and secured a viable site and persisted in finding an architect who met their needs. Collaboration--within the interdisciplinary design team and between designers and Tribal members and contractors--was key. Tribal members shared cultural knowledge with designers who adapted to Indigenous modes of communication. Designers were sensitive to the landscape and committed to representing the Tribes and their world.
ContributorsMarshall, Anne L. (Anne Lawrason) (Author) / Crewe, Katherine (Thesis advisor) / Jojola, Theodore (Committee member) / Paxson, Lynn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Adaptive expertise is a model of learning that posits two dimensions of development: efficiency and innovation. The mindset of an adaptive expert will serve any engineer by drawing upon diverse experiences to develop novel solutions to problems. Their mindset is based in lifelong learning, characterized by applying past experience to current design challenges. Solution design requires a process, and a breadth of experience is among the adaptive expert's greatest tools in identifying the approach to take in an unfamiliar situation. The fluidity and agility of their mind allows them to work effectively throughout their career in technical design, as the situation of an engineer's design work can vary drastically over the course of time. This paper describes a study on an innovative junior-level electrical and robotic systems project course taught at a large southwestern university that encourages students to develop adaptive expertise in the context of real-world design projects. By fabricating prototypes, students learn strategies for troubleshooting and technical design, and iterations of the part demand reflection on previous design thinking. This study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) How does user-centered design stimulate abstractive design thinking? (2) How does fabrication of prototypes stimulate active design thinking? And (3) How is the classroom culture enabling engineering design in the optimal adaptability corridor? Critical incident interviews were conducted with stakeholders in the course, and a thematic analysis of the transcripts conducted. Results show that this project-based curriculum fosters adaptive expertise by stimulating both abstractive and active design thinking. This provides a framework for practicing adaptive design thinking in classrooms. Disseminating these findings to curriculum designers will encourage more engaging, effective classes that graduate adaptive experts.
ContributorsLarson, James Robert (Author) / Jordan, Shawn (Thesis director) / Lande, Micah (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Community Garden is a board game developed as a creative project for Barrett, The Honors College. The fully-functional board game's design allows relaxed gameplay between players with the zen imagery of a community garden. The written component of this thesis project details the mechanics of the final product, the design process, and the supporting documentation of the playtesting and research that went into developing Community Garden.
ContributorsFitzmaurice, Alannah (Author) / Loebenberg, Abby (Thesis director) / Mack, Robert (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
As the designer is asked to design, create, or simply solve a problem, many factors go into that process. It generally begins with defining the scope or problem that undergoes an iterative process utilizing different tools and techniques to generate the desired outcome. This is often referred to as the design process. Notwithstanding the many factors that influence this process, this study investigates the use of theory for behavior change and its effect on the design process. While social behavioral theories have been extensively discussed in the realm of design, and a well-developed body of literature exists, there is limited knowledge about how designers respond to and incorporate theory into their design process. Fogg’s persuasive design (2003), Lockton’s design with intent (2009) and Tromp’s social implication framework (2011) stand as exemplars of new strategies developed towards design for behavior change that are able to empower designers’ mindsets, providing them with a uniquely insightful perspective to entice change. Instead of focusing on the effectiveness of the design end product, this study focuses on how theory-driven approaches affect the ideation and framing fragment of the design process. A workshop case study with senior design students was utilized with focused observations and post-workshop interviews to answer the research questions. This study contributes by providing a useful method of documenting a behavioral economics theory to the design process in a workshop setting. It also provides insights on how behavioral change theory application can be incorporated in a segment of the design process.
ContributorsAlWazzan, Aysha F. KH. A. A (Author) / Mejia, G. Mauricio (Thesis advisor) / Sanft, Alfred (Committee member) / Fischer, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019