Metadesign & Trend Research as Overlapping and Crossing Layers. A Didactic Experimentation in the Field of Design

Design, as a practice and discipline, has always been oriented towards innovation and its transfer in a wider economic, social and political scenario. For this reason the innovation, or better, the search for innovation, is not exclusive result of intuitive and creative processes but is flanked by a solid observation of the context and the research of trends - intended as signals, opportunity and innovation trajectories. In this changing and fast-moving economic and social scenario, Trend Research also evolves and absorbs the modalities and tools of the digital universe: qualitative and quantitative research supported by anthropology, sociology and ethnography are combined with tools for aggregating and reinterpreting data in an almost exclusively digital and “social” environment. The basic research TrendHub is part of this contemporary context and had the aim of investigating the role and the potential of Trend Research within the design process in different disciplinary fields: interior, product and fashion design. Within this framework the paper presents the results of an educational experimentation born from the collaboration between the TrendHub research team and NextAtlas, a data-driven digital platform specialized in aggregating and signifying data from a trend analysis perspective. The didactic experimentation has been launched within the Metadesign Studio in Product, Fashion and Interior Design undergraduate programs at Design School at Politecnico di Milano and presents itself as a blended learning experience. The paper aims to describe how to integrate this digital tool into the educational structure and the mutual enrichment between the Trend Research practice and the Metadesign Methodology.