“Reading” and “Writing” Design | Dustin Jessen and Sven Quadflieg

To open the 2024 Engage with Ideas series, organised by the International Design Literacy Network, Dustin Jessen’s and Sven Quadflieg’s talk titled “Reading” and “Writing” Design which is based on their 2023 journal article titled Towards Contingency: How Design Literacy Empowers Pluralistic Worldviews and Enhances Transitional Design will introduce their Cyclical Cognitive Process Model for Developing Design Literacy abilities (see Figure 1).

They used metaphors of reading and writing to illustrate how abilities of “reading” and “writing” a design can facilitate development of Design Literacy abilities. They envisaged the following two cognitive processes associated with the reading a design abilities:

• (a) recognising that something is design
• (b) how it is designed

and these two cognitive processes to facilitate the writing a design abilities:

• (c) imagining that something can be design
• (d) designing it

Jessen and Quadflieg stressed that both reading and writing the design abilities are prerequisite to support development of Design Literacy abilities.

Jessen and Quadflieg (2023), argued that the cognitive cyclical model can provide an “awareness of a contingency as well as the awareness of the negative consequences of (one’s) design actions, formulates a narrow ethical framework that can influence future projects” (p. 102).

The proposed Cyclical Cognitive Process Model for Developing Design Literacy abilities through writing and reading a design has skilfully connected the Design Literacy to more common recognised education concerns related to reading and wring literacy.

3.5Mb PDF Jessen and Quadflieg Reading and Writing Design Presentation Slides 2024-03-12

Dustin Jessen studied design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and at the Design Academy Eindhoven and completed his master’s degree at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London in 2014. He has been a research assistant at the Folkwang University of the Arts since 2014, where he began his PhD project in 2018, which is funded and accompanied by the Resources Commission of the German Federal Environment Agency.

Sven Quadflieg studied design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and the Zurich University of the Arts and earned his doctorate at the HFBK Hamburg. After teaching positions at Bergische Universität Wuppertal and FH Münster, among others, he has been a professor at Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences since 2017. He is a member of the German Society for Design Theory and Research, the International Gender Design Network, and the Design & Posthumanism Network.

Reference

Jessen, D., & Quadflieg, S. (2023). Towards Contingency: How Design Literacy Empowers Pluralistic Worldviews and Enhances Transitional Design. Temes de disseny(39), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.46467/TdD39.2023.92-113