Design Students Experimenting with Free Software—talk
Hosted By
Labels
Abstract
For design students, software is a basic and everyday working tool. When teaching design, the question of how much software should be taught is as persistent as it is relevant. In this talk, I present some notes on an assignment given to design university students from several disciplines, in which they are asked to identify and test free and open-source software for a common task in their daily practice, and to produce a short evaluation and public review.
The assignment aims to introduce the free software philosophy through a practical approach. It includes an introduction to the basics of free software, community building, and the presentation of case studies such as Blender and its animated films. This activity is preceded by a theoretical reflection on software from the perspective of Vilém Flusser’s black box theory.
Student reviews reveal several recurring themes regarding the relationship between design and software. One of the most common is the lack of basic technical understanding of the functions encoded in user interfaces, along with a certain blind trust in the “wizard” assistance provided by proprietary software. This issue has deep pedagogical implications for design education, since at some point developing technical competence in design seems to be reduced to becoming “an advanced user” of a specific software suite.
The assignment asks students to distinguish between two different situations when testing the selected free software: the uncomfortable sensation of lack of knowledge or speed when learning a new tool - in comparison to performing the same task in familiar software-, and the objective issues of usability or missing functionalities in the tested software.
As a general conclusion, most students value both the experience of discovering free software suited to their specific needs and the testing process itself as a meaningful alternative. Some students also discover a new world to explore and experiment.