The course aims to provide students with the ability to understand and analyse the evolutions of the design profession within an international context with particular focus on the product dimension and the future design challenges the profession will be asked to address.

The course therefore intends to provide the tools (theoretical, conceptual, and methodological) to explore the different roles a designer may have when acting in different contexts. This will also include a self-exploration in terms of design identity and maturity, attitude and personal awareness of the international arena/community of integrated product design.

Students will be guided in the development of skills useful to develop a compass to design practice and a personal design narrativethrough both a work of introspection and confrontation with the on-going evolutions in different fields (technology, society, politics, economy, ecology).

The skills acquired during the course will allow students to build their own method to understand contemporary evolutions in design, making this a personal instrument for their future job to constantly feed a deeper understanding of how their professional practice can fit in the international design community.

Students will acquire the following competences:

- knowledge and understanding – ability to observe the world through a design lens and critically observe the main phenomena that are characterising the developments of the design practice;

- making judgements – ability to position themselves in the complex arena of integrated product design, understanding the different roles the profession has today, and self-positioning their skills and abilities in the wider international community;

- communication skills – autonomously students develop the ability to present and discuss their design identity and the attitude to critically observe others through the constructive tool of the crit.

The course provides students with the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological tools useful for a personal observation of the contemporary world of design and for a critical understanding of it. 

The semester will be organised as a group exploration of integrated product design, following four main types of challenges: performance challenges, related to the know-how of designers; systemic challenges, related to the complexity of designed systems; contextual challenges, related to the relationship with cultures, environments, and policies; global challenges, related to the interconnection of systems and the wider aim of sustainability.

For each of this, students will be exercising (practicing) a critical perspective on the present, but constantly going back in time to recover references in history for a better understanding of what is being observed today. The critical perspective will be developed and exercised through discussions with peers, dialogues with guests and experts, exercises for self-development (individual and in group), in a collective journey that will last the entire semester. Developing criticism and understanding of the present will also allow the students to reflect on the social role of design today and how one may develop a personal, social and critical utopia for the future of the design profession. 

External guests will be invited to contribute to the collective reflection by narrating their personal experience and identity. Because of the dialogical nature of the course, a regular attendance is recommended.

There are no pre-requisites for attendance.

The evaluation will concern the development of abilities useful to: 

- expose and compare the concepts introduced in the course;

- apply and explain a critical vision/understanding of integrated product design, also in an historical perspective (what happened yesterday, what happens today, what might happen tomorrow);

- recognize and describe one's own professional identity also with respect to the evolution of product design.

These abilities will be evaluated throughout the course, with special attention to the active participation of students in the activities proposed. 

The final examination will include two main elements: the presentation of a personal diary, representing the critical journey developed by the students during the semester; the delivery of an essay that will critically elaborate on the contents of the course, and the reading of TWO BOOKS that each student can choose from the course bibliography.

orig. Grammatica della fantasia (1973)

orig. La speranza progettuale (1972)