Integrating architectural approaches in communication design education to improve awareness in affordance design

Abstract

The expansion of the range for the design of products in the field of Communication Design (CoD) calls for new teaching strategies to be sought by educational scholars due to the intense experience of digital natives with the digital tools and technology. In order to equip CoD students with better understanding of the importance affordance design for developing new tools and applications, this paper proposes an educational model that is based on the concepts of the discipline of architecture. By making use of analogical thinking, the formbased aspects of architectural design are adapted to the virtual aspects of communication design and have been applied in the studio design course that focuses on spatial communication between the years of 2009-2012 with 3 different versions of the design brief. Having based the research on a real-life problem, the outcomes reflected the benefits of making use of specialized knowledge of different disciplines in order to solve problems, whose solutions are beyond the scope of one discipline. © by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.