Wealth from waste : a transdisciplinary approach to design education

Design academics, students and industry experts collaboratively participated in designing an on-site system of organic waste management (food waste) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). With feedback from stakeholders in government, industry and facilities management, the principles of systems thinking and methods of service design were applied to a live transdisciplinary project with students across disciplines of visual communication, industrial design, fashion and textiles. The proposed model of design education required students to engage in three phases of transdisciplinary practice: 1. Problem formation, 2. Co-creation of knowledge and 3. Implementation and evaluation of the end product in an intensive two-week teaching period with students primed to understand the approach as problem-focused. This consisted of an evolving, emergent methodology, which was highly collaborative in nature. By presenting the complexities and evaluation of this model, we argue for the development of educational structures, methods and practices to support students in: Identifying their values and perceptions of the situation by positioning themselves within the bounded system of organics waste management at UTS through reflective self-auditing tasks; Reflecting on the intertwined nature of social and technical systems through stakeholder mapping and collaboratively defined systems of service provision; and Articulating how knowledge across disciplinary perspectives might be integrated into team processes through group charters and final design outputs. The model presented here is a first iteration of an ideal educational scenario, charting the overall developmental phases of the programme to illuminate challenges and opportunities for formulating and negotiating design problems in transdisciplinary teams co-producing design interventions.