Presenter: Theodoros Dounas

Key words: Ubiquitous digital repositories, Design studio, Usability

This paper investigates the usability and effect of a ubiquitous digital repository in the architectural design process.Acknowledging the post-digital era where students work with diverse media either digital or analogue, the project explores the suitability of a digital log in augmenting conceptual thinking, feedback provision and intellectual exchange by means of a studio in an architectural undergraduate course. Students integrate a digital log into their workflow resolving a design task of an architectural studio. A server-based repository serves as students’ individual archive as well as a share-point for peer-students’ informal exchange and tutors’ feedback. Students integrated the repository into the design process rather hesitatively. The initial hypothesis that the familiarity and the wide-spread use of digital technology such as mobile phones and tablets in daily life would facilitate the integration of the digital technology into the design thinking process has to be further qualified. The conclusion of the study is that sketching and organization habits from the analog media the students have learned persist even with a more digitally inclined generation. The use of digital tools that obliterate the analog-digital division, holding the best of both worlds are still subject to the constraints of timely introduction in the curriculum, cultural resistance in terms of organization of a project and more so void of experimentation in their use by students.

*This is a Teaching Development Fund project