"Design laboratories system as a tool to enable interdisciplinary design learning: analysis of common approaches and new perspectives."

Design Laboratories Systems (DLS) have become a crucial component of design schools and institutions, allowing students to learn actively design concepts and techniques through prototyping. The fast-paced changes in today's technological paradigm have led to new ways of learning and prototyping support services and open-access resources, highlighting the need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of existing lab models and explore fresh opportunities for interdisciplinary innovation and advancement. The study underlines the impact of (i) the diffusion of new prototyping technologies, (ii) the proliferation of Fab labs, (iii) the growth of open-access digital libraries and online communities, and (iv) the emergence of new learning models - such as through the opportunistic approach – on how learning design in prototyping practice. By adopting a secondary research approach and gathering data from leading universities' websites, the study describes the different DLS models implemented by higher learning institutions worldwide, and it identifies a coherent re-design approach for Politecnico di Milano's instrumental laboratories to better respond to the changing technological landscape and evolving societal needs, such as fostering interdisciplinarity. This study may help other institutions' DLS managers who wish to implement prototyping support services for designers and design students.