Teaching
ES138 Computing, Design and Values – Harvard University
May 7, 2024
Is design a unique computational domain? Can computing, whether with rules or data, assimilate design values? Is the varied nature of design integral in the pursuit of intelligent machines? A new research course I designed, ES138 Computing, Design, and Values at Harvard University, explores answers to these questions.
Course Description
The course takes an interdisciplinary approach on the foundations, use, and prospects of computing in design disciplines. Teaching “design” to every possible discipline engaged with design is unattainable due to varying idiosyncrasies. Instead, here we opt for a “common ground” set of ideas, methods, and tools on computation that can be applicable to individual disciplines and their problem areas, with an emphasis on problems requiring visual-spatial reasoning, or the analysis and generation of spatial physical things.
Lectures expose students to rule-based and data-driven traditions of design computing research, scholarship, and design technology. Students formulate final research projects reflecting the themes of the course, to address problems in a design area of their choosing. Examples include architecture, materials science, robotics, HCI, and cultural heritage.
Concurrently, the course provides seminar-style sessions, incorporating close reading of texts, to foster a critical (evaluative) mindset on computing. Discussions focus on how computing assimilates judgements related to aesthetics, usability, performance, or other evaluative criteria. Topics include issues of design authorship, ethics of computing, and models of language, perception or learning. Readings engage key issues from architecture, art and design, philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, cognitive science, and AI.
The seminar-style sessions aim to provide a platform for students to develop original design-related research and to gain experience in oral discourse or in writing on topics not covered in a regular curriculum. As a result, student projects from ES138 frequently result in quality research publications and form a basis for thesis projects.
Press
“The Language of Design: SEAS Class Combines Computation and Design Philosophies.” By M. Goisman, August 23, 2024 (Harvard SEAS Newsletter).
Excerpt: “Last spring, a class at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) aimed to combine computation with traditional design concepts. This broadens the ways architects and designers can approach how they solve design challenges. “ES138: Computing, Spatial Design, and Human Values” introduced students to a range of design and computational concepts. Then, it challenged them to design final projects to solve challenges in a range of design spaces. Examples include robotics, materials science, architecture and fashion.”