8,241 research outputs found
A new approach to empower the basics of representation skills for product design students
No full textWe assume that representation techniques play a fundamental role in the Product Designer's activity because of the needs to describe in the most efficient way the different phases of an industrial design project: the creative one, the development step and the documentation step. We prefer to use the word “representation” rather than “drawing” because we believe that today the project representation is no more only drawing, but it’s still, also drawing. Because of this starting assumption, we are trying to improve the effectiveness of project representation courses by an innovation in the structure of the teaching activities in which we are involved at Politecnico di Milano Design School. The paper will describe at first the main topics treated and the standard organization used for several years, and later the goals, the contents and the results of a course, Drawing Studio, that has been deeply renewed from the A.Y. 2017/2018. The framework and the results highlighted in this paper are part of a still ongoing basic research project, funded by the Politecnico di Milano Design Department. The experimental course described in this work is a practical evolution of the activities described in a previous paper (F. Brevi, M. Celi and F. Gaetani, 2018). The main objectives of this course are to train a quite large group of freshmen students to the representation techniques for product design and, at the same time, to assist them in the change of their mental approach to studying, from high school to university. The organization of this course has been setup on a mix of different skills and tools, based either on lectures and on practical exercises, along three paths: an analog one focused on descriptive geometry and on hand sketching, a digital one focused on technical drawing and a third one based on the building of physical models by hands. The results of this experimentation appeared promising, but at the same time we faced also few problems that we will describe as well as the changes we will try to implement to fix them. The final goal is to define a precise and detailed syllabus to be submitted for adoption by all the people involved in teaching this course at Politecnico di Milano
Scritture brevi in tedesco: forme e usi
No full textDopo aver sottolineato la frequenza di fenomeni di ‘scritture brevi’ in tedesco, è stata delineata una tipologia delle possibilità di abbreviazione, sia per le Abkürzungen, sia per le Kurzwörter. Segue una panoramica sulle possibilità di un quadro diacronico delle ‘forme brevi’, che prende in esame sia attestazioni di Otto Behaghel (1900) sulla diffusione di forme brevi dallo scritto al parlato, sia alcune specifiche ‘forme brevi’ attestate sicuramente come Kurzwörter fin dall’alto medioevo, vale a dire forme abbreviate e spesso ipocoristiche di antroponimi. Alla luce di tali esempi si è infine posto l’accento sulle possibilità di ampliamenti degli ambiti d’uso di ‘forme brevi’ e sulle interrelazioni tra ‘scritto’ e ‘parlato’ (intesi in senso concettuale)
Creating moodboards with digital tools: a new educational approach
No full textThe paper presents methodologies and first results of an educational experimentation (Brevi, Celi, & Gaetani, 2018) held at the Bachelor of Science in Product Design programme of Politecnico di Milano. In order to build a body of knowledge for Design freshmen, the experience had the aim of matching basic skills developed at the first year with the need of an autonomous approach required at the second year from Metadesign Studio throughout the tools for creating moodboards: a collection of images, colors and texture with the aim of representing emotions, feelings or ‘moods’, suggested by the design research. Moodboards have an important function in developing students’ ability to articulate their thinking. The enacted experimentation had the aim to present and test some practical tool for moodboards development. During the Methods and Instruments for Design course these skills have been developed through targeted exercises of awareness and techniques of photographic processing. To enable students to act in a more conscious way the educational approach has provided lessons with practical visual examples, a selection of on-line materials and step by step guide with suggestions
Mobility and the Smart City. Innovative Solutions for Responsive Urban Spaces.
No full textIn the late years the expression ‘smart city’ is being used to define sentient urban contexts, capable to connect citizens and provide innovative solutions to their everyday needs. Cities are redefining themselves as stages for innovation and pervasive technologies are gaining a growing relevance in our everyday lives. Municipalities and researchers tend to underline the crucial role of collaborative patterns, involving citizens as active stakeholders in the value-generation process, towards solutions capable to improve the quality of their urban experience. As people are called to share the same urban spaces, possible conflicts may take place between personal interests and collective requirements; social life becomes therefore a sort of peace-treaty in which the tendency towards social equality and the individual tendency to stand out ought to find a balance. This is particularly evident in the field of urban transport, since the individual is called to recast his identity in terms of flexibility, adaptability and instant transformation, in order to adjust his own interests to the social requirement for a more sustainable mobility. The following dissertation intends to introduce a transdisciplinary overview of current urban trends, and of their possible evolution towards innovative solutions for the mobility needs of our tomorrow’s cities
Informatività e scritture brevi del web
No full textIl contributo si propone di mostrare l’applicazione della tradizionale prospettiva funzionalista alle forme tipiche delle scritture brevi del web, tra storia della linguistica (Martinet) e teoria matematica dell’informazione (Shannon).
La concezione del lavoro è unitaria, frutto della collaborazione fra gli autori; solo ai fini di attribuzione formale, Francesca Chiusaroli è autrice del paragrafo 1 e Fabio Massimo Zanzotto è autore del paragrafo 2.
https://sites.google.com/site/scritturebrevi
Scritture brevi oggi. Tra convenzione e sistema
No full textL’espressione “scritture brevi oggi” è intesa a definire forme grafiche sintetiche introdotte negli ultimi decenni nella scrittura della cosiddetta comunicazione mediata dal computer (CMC). Abbreviazioni e acronimi, segni e simboli, ricorrenti in email, sms, chat, instant messaging, sono solitamente considerati una singolarità delle giovani generazioni, o spesso ritenuti errori grafici illogici ed incongruenti; tuttavia una loro analisi funzionale nella catena e nel sistema, insieme a un
confronto fra sistemi grafici in sincronia e in diacronia, mostrano la coesistenza di tipi universali e un equilibrio permanente tra forme gergali o idioletti e norma ideale, agli scopi della pragmatica della comunicazione nel dominio della ret
The experience of drawing courses in higher education large classes during the covid-19 pandemic scenario
No full textRepresentation techniques -in particular freehand drawing- in the Product Designer’s activity play a fundamental role in describing the different phases of the project development: the “ideational” phase, the “intermediate” phase, and the “technical - documental” one.
Because of this role, at Politecnico di Milano Design School we are trying to improve the effectiveness of representation courses by innovation in teaching activities used with relatively large classes. The process started during the academic year 2017/2018 with the revision of two foundational courses of the first year of BSc in Product Design: “Drawing Studio” and “Methods and Instruments for Design”. In March 2020, the covid-19 pandemic forced us to change the methodologies and tools quickly. Some methods and tools used in the emergency have performed above expectations. This work aims to describe methods and tools used in a fully online teaching environment having to teach a “hands-on” subject such as freehand drawing in large classes
STICKY NOTES AS A DESIGN MATERIAL FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGN SKETCHING
No full textStarting from the central properties of sticky notes (paper-based, small, colorful and sticky) the present work analyzes how these simple properties can be used to enhance the product sketching in the design process during the educational path of BSc in Product Design.
The most conventional approach in sketching is using sticky notes as a sketchbook itself, keeping doodles within the paper boundaries and using it as a starting point of the product shape.
This work aims to describe a different point of view, an unusual way of using sticky notes in design practice, starting by the exploration of their main features: paper-based as sketch support (with any type of tool, from pencils to markers to watercolours); small as portable (it can be carried in your pocket, along with a sketchbook); colorful as emphasizer (emphasize some parts or to semantically distinguish different concepts); sticky as versatile (remount ability together with its “independence” -no need of glue or clips- allows extreme flexibility in the creative process). In addition to these features, the semi-transparency enables students to work on overlapping drawings.
So in this work will be described two innovative ways of using sticky notes during the educational path of BSc in Product Design: Highlights and Choices.
In the Highlights function the color properties are mainly used to highlight parts of the drawing, to color the drawing itself or to make it emerge from the background.
The Choices function highlights the possibility of being able to stack several sheets to give formal alternatives, while maintaining the possibility of exploring them all at the same time. Alternatively, the use of sticky notes as a Choices function can illustrate a transformation (movement, opening...) of the product, without altering the main drawing.
The new technique described was investigated within some courses of the BSc in Product Design at the Politecnico di Milano University. The research was carried out by providing specific exercises according to the sketching uses within the design process.
Therefore in this work we suggest a slightly different but disruptive way to use the well known characteristics of sticky notes, going beyond and throughout the paper boundaries, so that sticky notes will be at the same time media and tool in the sketching phase of the design process
The future of the car between dream and reality
No full textIn occasione della mostra Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture la Norman Foster Foundation e il Guggenheim Museum di Bilbao hanno invitato sedici scuole di design e di architettura di quattro continenti a presentare la loro visione sul futuro della mobilità. La Scuola del Design del Politecnico di Milano accetta la sfida e propone, in collaborazione con CamerAnebbia, Autofficina Futuro: un’installazione multimediale che induce il visitatore a guardare il mondo come potrebbe essere. Il volume, ricco di scatti fotografici di Niccolò Biddau e delle illustrazioni preparate per l’occasione da Francesca Gastone, presenta numerosi contributi che approfondiscono la genesi e gli aspetti salienti del progetto. Quest’ultimo richiama l’idea dell’autofficina, il luogo del made in Italy, dello scambio conoscitivo e innovativo, e lo trasforma, in una sequenza interattiva di storie plurali sul futuro della mobilità. Grazie al movimento del visitatore, emergono 12 progetti degli studenti della Scuola del Design del Politecnico di Milano. Dopo l’introduzione di Norman Foster e del curatore del Guggenheim Museum, Luisa Collina sottolinea l’importanza della sfida progettuale e il ruolo della Scuola del Design in questa occasione. Ilaria Bollati e Umberto Tolino raccontano l’idea, l’esperienza offerta al visitatore e propongono un’intervista inedita a CamerAnebbia; Giulio Ceppi mette in luce i protagonisti di ieri e i fruitori dell’auto del domani; Fausto Brevi e Flora Gaetani indagano l’evoluzione della mobilità domandandosi quale sia il ruolo delle scuole nel processo di immaginazione di futuri possibili. Il volume, prima di chiudersi con un carosello di scatti fotografici, propone un approfondimento sui progetti selezionati, presentandoli attraverso schede cross-mediali. I QRcode, presenti all’interno di queste ultime, consentono agli studenti del Politecnico di Milano di prendere parola e raccontare a voce gli aspetti salienti delle proprie scommesse progettuali
Dalla Giulia alla Giulia
No full textAbout 50 years separate the marketing of two Alfa Romeo brand cars with the same name, Giulia: the first has been produced from 1962 to 1977; the second one is in production since 2016. They are just over 50 years, a space of time in which many things have obviously changed, not only in products made by car manufacturers, but also in the processes and tools of the project. Giulia came up in 1962 to replace Giulietta, from which it resumed the main mechanical scheme, summarized in the front engine with 4 cylinders of 1570 cm3 capable of delivering 92 HP and rear-wheel drive, typical for the sedan cars of that period. Giulia is back in 2016 to revive the tradition of the Alfa Romeo brand and is back once again with a 4-cylinder engine and rear-wheel drive. However, it's back, daughter of its time, 50 cm longer, 30 cm wider and with 110 HP more than its ancestor. Curiously, the two cars have the same height (4 mm only the difference).
However, this contribution does not intend to further deepen the technical, aesthetic and performance characteristics of the two cars, but rather to investigate, through the analysis of the project drawings, the different approach to the representation of the project in a field, that of car design, which is part of the tradition of industrial product design, but that has always run in an autonomous way, often anticipating the industrial innovations.
Looking at the drawings there are several evident differences in the used instruments, in the way of colouring, in the point of view choosen, but I believe the main difference is in the aim why the drawings have been produced, at the times of early sixties and just yesterday. The research started from this idea and looked back at the role of hand made drawings in the car design process and how it has changed in the last decades
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