LECTURE 11: SYNTHESIS

Aims

• To provoke you into thinking about design rather than just 'doing it'
• To encourage you to pursue issues in more depth
• To form your own conclusions independently of practitioners and academics
• To experiment with ideas to see if they work in practice

Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge & Understanding
• Cognitive Skills
• Practical & Professional Skills
• Key Transferrable Skills
• Knowledge & Understanding 2 - Synthesis

PEST Analysis

• Political
• Economical
• Social
• Technological

David Hoffman

• Dead End Streets: Photography, Protest and Social Control
• Variety of photographs - was exhibition
• PEST Analysis - the way photography is used as a political took - about how technology is transforming our social relations with each other
• Everyone has the ability to become a documentary photography because they have the tools to do it

Synthesis

• All component parts of the project engaging in one complex, dynamic process
• Informed engagement
• The realisation of theory in, and through, practice
• PRAXIS

The purpose of a theoretical discipline is the pursuit of truth through contemplation; its telos is the attainment of knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of the productive sciences is to make something, their telos is the production of some artefact. The practical disciplines are those scions which deal with ethical and political life; their telos is practical wisdom and knowledge. (Carr & Kemmis 1986:32)

Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory

• Practitioners are right to worry that academic study of what is essentially a hands-on subject removes it from the reality of practice.
• Designers often work intuitively, without knowingly applying theory. This module aims to get you to reflect on that process.