Learning through designing, designing through doing

This paper presents an initial reflection on the construction of spaces of knowledge dialogues in the academic training of multimedia engineering students who are going to design human-computer interactions. Concepts associated with embodiment, phenomenology, constructive design research and learning through doing are addressed, questioning how those spaces of dialogue may have a transformative power in the way students and teachers think, teach and learn the design of interactions. We defend the idea that design is in itself a way to learn how to design Human-Computer Interactions (Learning through Designing), and that the design is carried out through an embodied participation of the designer, with the subjects and objects that surround the context where the interaction will take place (Designing through Doing). We present and preliminary analyze a particular experience, called Minga Digital, where a space for dialogue and experimentation was convened among students and experts from different disciplines and doings (textile design, multimedia engineering, and human and social sciences) to think about and make together the design of a textile-digital interaction about testimonies of peace and war in memory sewers circles in Colombia.