Human-Centered Design since the Degree Kickoff: from Alumni Experience to Designer and User Experience

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the new paradigms of digital form and their application to the design process as a way to integrate service design from the very beginning of the process. It addresses a review of the generation of design in the key of "activity of conformation of open strategies". The aim is to open a deep reflection that allows an evolution of the understanding of the discipline of design linked to the outdated definition of "task of formalization of finished objects", which is widespread and still widely assumed. It is undeniable that engineering, urban planning, architecture, graphic design, product design, experience design and fashion design all share a common objective: all of them, in the end, can be considered as "service design".Indeed, each of the modalities of contemporary design and creation involves providing conceptual and oper-ational responses to needs (functional, aesthetic, symbolic, structural, social, individual). In short, creative activity consists of interpreting requirements and constraints in the most creative and efficient way possible. Design is not so much concerned with the need to produce "finished" objects, whether tangible or intangible. Contemporary design aims to create "formal laws", flexible and open, that can be applied according to the changing scenarios posed by today's users. To design digitally today is to create logical structures of data, algorithms and open results. This article rais-es the possibility of designing -from the genesis of the design- by integrating data referring to users and their algo-rithms as the basis of the formal, diagrammatic or structural law of the design solution. From clear mathematical rules and their parameterization, we propose the generation of the base structure of the "digital contemporary design"; from the exposition of data to the generation of “empty form”. In order to that, a preliminary reflection on the Technical drawing / CAD / BIM is proposed as well as describing the languages of the contemporary Design project (data and algorithms necessary for the construction of the form by topological transformations on simple forms). This is a con-temporary way of understanding the generation of the “empty form”. A "prepared" and "structured" format for the subsequent acquisition of successive layers of information (user data) that would trigger the "virtual twin" of the de-sign. Designing by means of topological transformations is an essential exercise in the foundations of digital culture: working with this type of algorithm is the main work of CAD programs. The conception of contemporary design must increasingly take into account the digital era, which constitutes the paradigm of our culture. The ideation and formalization of the actions that define design, architecture, urbanism and the physical environment, go through the management of formal operations within information systems that com-bine identity, visuality, materiality, measurement, financing, parameterization, industrialization, construction mainte-nance and, of course, interaction with users and systems. This phenomenon once again highlights the importance of geometry and drawing as fundamental disciplines that sustain the solid foundations of design education in the Univer-sity.Finally, the article addresses the urgency of defining new methodologies for the design process to ensure that design does not remain a mere "cultural response" to the technical advances produced by science, nor is it a purely intuitive process that proposes images but dispenses with the technical language of its time. We defend the activity of design as a purely contemporary task, which must be generated with the languages and methodologies of our current (and future) time, and for which it must have the possibility of integrating data and adapting to them with flexibility. In this way, any kind of design can be considered "service design" because it will "serve" effectively, avoiding the unnecessary iterations pursued by the LEAN system, which make human actions on reality inefficient and unsustaina-ble. Such a design would prevent the industry from having to generate an overabundance of designs and then discard the inadequate ones (by natural selection, through trial and error, dictated by the market and by user needs).Keywords: Design Training · Design Methodologies · Human-centered Design · Alumni experience · Designer experience ·User Experience · Service Design · Form · Contemporary Design process