Selected publications
IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design
De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.)
October 2023
The challenge of hyperdistraction for design education
Hyperdistraction is a cognitive state where a person constantly changes focus from one digital task to another and has a consistently low tolerance to boredom. The paper presents several studies that show that hyperdistraction is prevalent among younger generations, resulting in increased anxiety, poor mental health, and academic decline. Next, I highlight the challenges that design educators face to help students learn how to design in the face of a constant stream of information arriving at a rate the brain cannot process. The paper argues that managing attention is crucial for creative disciplines like design, which require a sophisticated balance of mind-wandering and concentrated focus at different moments of the creative process. The paper proposes that the design studio offers a blueprint for a humanistic way of learning. Design educators can help students learn how to manage their attention by encouraging reflective practice, even in the face of relentless digital distractions. The paper concludes by arguing that to nurture future designers and tackle the pressing problems of our time, the design community must challenge the culture of hyperdistraction and recover a sense of time that recognises the limitations and abilities of the human mind.
She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2022
Exhausted and Not Doing Enough? The Productivity Paradox of Contemporary Academia
Professors are exhausted, stressed, and overworked. There are increasing reports of burnout and frustration with the profession among academics. The reasons for this situation are not fully understood. In this article, I argue that professors struggle with unreasonable workloads that compromise the quality of their research and lectures. Above all, the most precious asset of academia–attention–is being squandered on shallow, bureaucratic, and often pointless work.
The Design Journal: An International Journal for All Aspects of Design
Volume 23, 2020 - Issue 5
Writing Is Seeing – towards a Designerly Way of Writing
Academic prose is poor. It’s poor because it fails to fulfil its purpose: to communicate complex ideas clearly. Like other visual thinkers, designers struggle even more with academic writing. But the low quality of academic prose creates an opportunity for design to stand out. In this article, I review a style of writing (classic prose) that fits with how designers think. Design needs a voice, a tone that matches the discipline’s disposition to consider things not as they are but as they could be.
Design as Learning: A School of Schools Reader
Sacchetti, Vera (Ed.)
Valiz with The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, 2019
A School of Studios
The design studio is an educational treasure hidden in plain sight. Designers don't notice it because the studio is a given, like water to a fish. From the outside, the studio is discredited; its unruly nature at odds with metrics-obsessed academia. Also, in a hurry to be perceived as a serious academic discipline, design is vulnerable to replacing the design studio with an educational format based on science, lectures, and exams. This is a mistake.
Design Conversations: An exploratory study of teacher and student interaction in the design studio
Christiaans, Henri; Hekkert, Paul; Almendra, Rita (Supervisors)
Doctoral Thesis, Delft University of Technology, 2018
Design Conversations
This thesis describes the process of teaching and learning how to design. Design students learn by doing; their learning experience is supported by the ongoing dialogue with the teacher in the design studio. So, the educational format of Design is a conversation. A conversation that expresses the design process as it unfolds in real-time. This was a fascinating phenomenon to investigate since I could observe tacit knowledge become clear and visible. The dissertation runs through a series of teacher-student conversations, each highlighting a different aspect of learning how to design.
Almendra, Rita; Ferreira, João (Editors)
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Research and Education in Design (REDES 2019)
London, UK: CRC Press
Research & Education in Design:
People & Processes & Products & Philosophy
Design is about the creation of meaningful connections to solve problems and advance human wellbeing; the discipline has always explored the beneficial links between form and function, technology and meaning, beauty and utility, people and artefacts and problems and solutions, among others. This book focuses on the crucial connection between design research and design education.