Eric Allan Hotchkiss

As the beginning course in the Designed Objects department, students will have an opportunity to explore different methods of working in order to begin establishing a practice that works best for them. Students will be building a strong foundation of skills and techniques needed to navigate an informed design process and successfully complete a design brief. In this hands-on class, students will learn how to find inspiration for an idea, develop that idea into a concept, and use that concept to design and fabricate a high-level, final prototype. Basic research theories and methods are introduced which are then applied towards studio projects. Fabrication and prototyping techniques are also incorporated in order to test out ideas and discover new ones. Students advance through definition, research, ideation, sketching, and modeling phases toward two? and three?dimensional representations (digital and physical) of their work that are orally defended during group critique. Readings and lecture content will vary and will focus on examples of historically relevant and contemporary designers, artists, studios, and design movements; as well as design practices that highlight different motivations of the designer. In addition to the two main projects that focus on different methods of approaching design? where students will be producing high-level prototypes, this workshop-style class consists of one-day projects and exercises designed to introduce techniques and skills such as technical drawing and sketching, form-finding, prototyping, and inspiration research, among others. This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.

The goal of this class is to design services, tools, and objects that will shape a new reality of human experience. The class will explore how long-term trends in urban migration, automation, AI, big data, climate change, food, and mixed experience will transform our day-to-day lives. Through research and experimentation, students will investigate the realities and possibilities of these conditions and consider how they will change what we eat, how we work and relax, what we wear, how we gather, and how we travel. As a living laboratory, students will use a variety of media, including digital fabrication, virtual reality, and physical storytelling, to create new design tools, scenarios, worlds, services, objects, and experiences. To accomplish this, students will research the historical, political, technological, ecological, and cultural trends of a particular topic.

SAIC Design @ Homan Square combines professional practice design experience with community activism. Operating out of SAIC's facility in the Nichols tower at Homan Square, the course engages students in a focused dialogue on social project implementation in Chicago and provides the tools and frameworks to realize those projects. Functioning as a pro bono 'design consultancy' where the residents, small businesses and community groups of North Lawndale act as 'clients', each job is treated as a discrete project involving research, knowledge-sharing and design action. The projects will cover a two-semester cycle, with each semester being offered as an independent class. This course, running in the Spring semester, will emphasize the last three stages of the design thinking process; ideation, prototyping, and testing. course class will focus on proposing and implementing solutions that address the contextual research carried out in the first semester. These solutions will be presented to, and critiqued by, the 'clients' who are the main stakeholders, North Lawndale community leaders, as well as SAIC faculty. Recognizing that making is a research process that reveals new problems, the reflexive activity of proposing, making, presenting and critiquing solutions generates new knowledge as well as physical outcomes. It is this collective 'new intelligence' that is the primary goal of the course.

The aim of the Summer intensive is for students to develop the skills essential to the practice of design and communicating design ideas. The goal is for students to establish a fluid working process that utilizes integrated digital and analog processes as a means to move through ideation, iteration, material testing, visualization and design communication. To this end, the class provides training in software including Adobe Suite, Rhino, Bunkspeed, computer aided fabrication (CNC milling, 3D scanning and printing, laser cutting), as well as manual techniques such as rapid sketching, various prototyping techniques, data visualization and visual communication strategies. Working both collaboratively and independently students will consider Chicago as a lab and explore its potential as a source and resource for design practice. Existing design skills will honed to new levels through the integration of studio work, demonstrations and hands-on workshops. You must be a Master of Design in Designed Objects student to enroll in this course.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

In this two-day a week thesis studio students frame their position and voice as designers by defining, advancing, critically examining and verifying a self-selected thesis project. Students combine studio investigation with primary and secondary research techniques to uncover, test and solidify new design ideas, processes, materials, technologies and behavioral insights. Through seminars and in class workshops this body of investigation is formed into a highly directed thesis proposal. Students are tasked with building relationships with external research partners and mentors to define parameters for decision making and verify the efficacy of their projects. The semester concludes with a peer and faculty review at which students must defend the formulation, investigation and synthesis of their thesis proposals. Readings and references will be shared individually with students as relevant to their individual thesis topics. Students will primarily focus on the development of their thesis project. This will be augmented with shorter assignments aimed at fostering the skills needed to successfully complete a year-long, exhibition ready project.

In the final thesis studio, students confirm and materialize their position and voice as designers by completing their self-selected thesis project initiated in DES OB 6150 -- Thesis Studio 1.Through an intensive period of seminar and tutorial discussion, prototyping, presentation and critique, students produce highly developed designed objects, systems, and experiences that critically engage specific areas of design, technology, and culture. Emphasis is given to determining potent vehicles through which the instance of the thesis is tested, exhibited and engages public consciousness. The course culminates in a thesis defense and the presentation of a final thesis project at the SAIC Design Show. You must be a Master of Design in Designed Objects Student to enroll in this course.