Educating Thriving Systems Designers

Waguespack, Leslie J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03925-7_9

Educating Thriving Systems Designers

Leslie J. Waguespack²

Chapter
First Online: 11 April 2019

216 Accesses

Abstract

With its origins deeply rooted in the natural sciences, computing education’s commitment to design has drawn largely from what Schön calls technical rationality, a presumption that design like any computation can be achieved algorithmically. In the narrowest of contexts this may be true but, in any practical, social sphere of relevance design is a truly “wicked problem!” Indeed, extensive effort has been invested in attempts at “design by computer” through artificial intelligence approaches, but none have demonstrated any semblance of the ingenuity or the quality, ascribed to successful human designers. This discourse contemplates a vision of design education based upon first principles of a designerly way of knowing specifically centered upon computing professionals. We review the “wicked” nature of design in computing and propose a pedagogical framework to provide the concepts and skills to seed design competency in the student aspiring to become a computing professional.

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Notes

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3.
An earlier version of this discourse was presented in March 2017.{Waguespack, L.J., Babb, J., Yates, D., “Contemplating Design Pedagogy in Computing Education,” Eleventh International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, Toronto, ON, CA. 4–6 March, 2017.}
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Computer Information Systems, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA
Leslie J. Waguespack

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Waguespack, L.J. (2019). Educating Thriving Systems Designers. In: Designing Thriving Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03925-7_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03925-7_9
Published: 11 April 2019
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03924-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03925-7
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