Open Communication Design. A Teaching Experience based on Anti-disciplinarity, Thinkering and Speculation

This paper aims to present and discuss how the teaching of visual identity and experience design in Communication Design education may be developed within a speculative design framework. By adopting this approach, students can experience the ethics of design practice and explore alternative design values, forms, and representations. They 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. Assuming an open approach to final results and learning more about a design field to be intended as an open context with blurred borders. They base the project’s development on the principle of learning by doing, which consists of thinkering, making mistakes, and 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. By defining a design process and discussing the implications of an antidisciplinary approach, the aim is to inquire how such framing may destabilise conservative methods and consolidate new practices into Communication Design learning.