About this Workshop
Design research is a discipline that’s widely misunderstood, yet crucial to every designers ideation process. The course will focus on ideation, inspiration, thinking process, problem solving, design theory, initial market positioning, human centered designs, and understanding human behaviour.
The purpose of this course is to “unlearn” imitation and copying, and learn an effective process of design research, beginning with the identification of the goal or issue that the design process will target. Attendees will learn how to investigate the contexts of such driving forces for innovation in design. They will explore the diverse scales of projections from everyday object to world design, which will help them reflect on the formats and mediums which crucially helped enforce the social implementation and effectiveness of ideas and projects. They will also learn the study of the processes which design research utilises, such as experimentation, historicization or visualization. Participants will be asked to generate design solutions that are more market-inspired and human-centric.
About Doreen Toutikian
Doreen Toutikian is a cultural entrepreneur, interdisciplinary designer, consultant to UN agencies, and university lecturer on design theory and design research at ALBA (alba.edu.lb). In the past 10 years she has founded Beirut Design Week (beirutdesignweek.org), MENA Design Research Center (menadrc.org), and LOOP (looporg.eu). She is an advisor and board member of ‘International Gender Design Network’ and 'Board of International Research in Design’, a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and Mophradat, and a Young Cultural Innovator of the British Council. She speaks six languages (English, Arabic, French, German, Greek and Armenian) and lives in between Beirut and Athens.