To Prototype to Learn Fronting Uncertainties. A Pedagogy Based on Anti-Disciplinarity, Thinkering and Speculation

This paper aims to present and discuss how teaching visual identity and experience design in Communication Design undergraduate education may be developed within an anti-disciplinary approach, adopting a speculative design framework. By adopting this approach, students become familiar with design as a problem-seeking and problem-finding practice, which encourages the development of concepts, scenarios, and results without any predetermined function. Moreover, they assume an open approach to final results and learn more about a design field intended as an open context with blurred borders. The project’s development is based on the principle of learning by doing, which consists of thinkering, making mistakes, repeatedly trying to improve the results, and acquiring competencies and skills. This method pushes the students to experiment with visual expressions and user experiences between two and three dimensions. They could range among many techniques and technologies, from analog to digital ones. Consequently, each design had to be theoretically discussed and physically verified by making prototypes. The prototyping phase has a double goal: on the one hand, to learn to use new tools, coding, and 3D printing environments; on the other, to test the results and effectiveness of design scenarios and concepts. By defining a design process and discussing the implications of an anti-disciplinary approach, the aim is to inquire how such framing may destabilize conservative methods and consolidate new practices into Communication Design learning.