Overview

Fields of study progress not by understanding more about what already exists, although that is a useful step, but by making guesses about possible better futures. The guesses consist of small forays into those futures, using strategies that are variously called learning through making, research through design, or more simply: prototyping. While traditionally associated primarily with industrial design, and more recently with software development, prototyping is now used as an important tool in areas ranging from materials engineering to landscape architecture to the digital humanities. This book collects current theories and methods of prototyping across a dozen disciplines and illustrates them through case studies of actual projects, whether in industry or the classroom.  Prototyping Across the Disciplines provides context, a theoretical framework, and a set of methodologies for interdisciplinary collaboration in design. Each chapter offers a different disciplinary perspective on prototyping and provides a case study as a point of comparison for identifying commonalities and divergences in current practices. In examining the central role of prototyping in design research, this edited collection demonstrates theoretical and methodological transferability across disciplines not typically thought to be related, including post-human design, theatre, tabletop game design, landscape architecture, and arts entrepreneurship.

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9781789381801

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Stan Ruecker, a scholar in information and communication design, is the Anthony J. Petullo professor of design at the University of Illinois. He has been tenured at three different universities: the University of Alberta in the MA in Humanities Computing programme; Illinois Tech in the School of Design (aka the New Bauhaus); University of Illinois School of Design. From 2013–16, he was visiting professor at UNISINOS in Brazil; since 2018, he is visiting professor at the Dalian University of Technology. Since joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, he has been appointed as affiliate professor in the Informatics Program of the iSchool and the Carle College of Medicine. Milena Radzikowska, since 2005, has collaborated on over 30 design research projects that extended anywhere from two to seven years; four of those with budgets in the millions. Her research work is transdisciplinary, marked by a passion to benefit others and informed by fifteen years on teams with researchers from over 30 different fields. She’s worked on large, medium and small, national and international projects, with undergraduate and graduate researchers, industry partners, not-for-profit agencies and scholars. Her work has been iterative and experimental – meant to challenge existing design conventions and explore unique alternatives to complex problems. Jennifer Roberts-Smith (University of Waterloo, co-applicant) is a woman-identified, cis-gendered settler scholar whose interdisciplinary research and creative practice focus on performance and digital media, with particular emphases on design, theatre, history and pedagogy. She has been instrumental in securing the place of performance-informed scholarship in the digital humanities, including in pedagogical game design and the design of justice-oriented digital pedagogical environments. As principal investigator or co-applicant on fourteen funded research projects with budgets totalling $850,000 in the last ten years (in addition to roles as collaborator), Dr Roberts-Smith has been evolving, with her collaborators, a critical feminist approach to research project management. Currently, she directs the qcollaborative and leads the Virtual Reality Development Cluster of the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project. Her work has been supported by SSHRC, MITACS and the Canada Council for the Arts, and recognized with an Ontario Early Researcher Award and a UW Faculty of Arts Outstanding Performance Award.

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