Forschungsprojekte

Creating Knowledge through Design & Conceptual Innovation

Zeitraum
Sep 2011 - Aug 2012
FH Studierende
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The project aims to develop activities addressing the knowledge triangle of education, research and innovation. If scientific research is supposed to go beyond understanding the world in order to solve societal and economic problems and design innovative solutions, it is facing new challenges. Improving people’s lives and stimulating innovation asks for synthesis, creative and divergent thinking, which is different from analysis and analytical skills. Researchers can not deduce design and synthesis from analysis, as the future and its qualities are emerging. Furthermore, ethics and norms play a role in doing design, solving societal problems, and generating innovation. Design is open-ended problem solving, but also a means to explore the problem, which is often complex and ill-structured. If we want to integrate design/innovation, research and education, we must understand how design works and conceptualize design as inquiry. In order to nurture design thinking and creative thinking, higher education must be transformed. Facilitating design processes and thinking, understanding the needs, emotions, practices, and abilities of users, requires specific methods and approaches. The project attempts to create innovation as a form of knowledge work and aims to design, build and foster a lively open community of experts and novices interested in design thinking and design-based inquiry from diverse academic and professional fields (e.g. teacher education, interdisciplinary study programmes, computer sciences). Field trails are about to change and transform educational practice within higher education. The project is funded by the Erasmus Lifelong Learning Programme. Project partners are the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany (project leader) and the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland.