Aesthetics of Design Processes

The “traditional” values of design: morphology, aesthetics, semiotics and sensorial qualities, inhaling in products their emotional relation to the user, distinguish the discipline from other engineering disciplines. The question this paper wants to investigate is the way of how these values still dominate the design process in an always more immaterial world, and how educational models can drive the required change of knowledge for a new generation of designers. The illustrated case refers to the innovative approach of the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDIdidi), a new established Design University in Dubai, United Emirates, as a structure, but also through the specific experience of a workshop-like Course that guides the students between analogue and digital explorations in a seamless and non-linear way, as a narration tool, a constructive method of storytelling inside the product development and a methodology to exploit different technologies beyond their superficial raison d’etre. The theoretical contributions related to define a form in design underlies different methods, rules and proportional studies, as well as material characteristics and surface treatment. The maxim “Form Follows Function” is a principle associated with 20th-century modernist has been influencing for decades the form giving decisions. But the processes which guide our all lives have changed: the world has become timelessly digital; everything is at the same time everywhere available. Design has become a process rather than a definition of a form, has become a service rather than a function. Consequently, this influences the way of how designer will need to be able to narrate the process, the immaterial service, the augmented reality of physical objects.