When Michelle Ou was given the chance to create her own service design project, she was instinctively drawn to the challenge of inclusive education. Could design study work for you too?
The project was part of Co-evolution of Problem and Solution, one of four interlinked subjects in the Graduate Certificate in Social and Service Design.
Using a technique called problem framing, which students learn as part of their degree, Michelle started trying to understand and contextualise the problem, as well as to map out the stakeholders and interrelationships that contributed to its complexity.
Every student’s needs are unique, but the dialogue around disability hasn’t thoroughly changed in the school system yet.
I wanted to explore what could be done to create judgement-free learning environments that met all students’ needs.
– Michelle Ou
"From exploring the current context of the problem, we then thought, what are some of the points where we can really zoom in and start unpacking?" she says.
The project produced a series of recommendations, including advocating for more diverse representation of ability in teaching roles, thereby giving students role models with different needs and abilities, as well as communication and teaching styles
Projects like these are typical within the Graduate Certificate, which combines theoretical learning with hands-on practice. Students explore designed based creative problem-solving using tools and engage with case studies and live briefs to explore how service responses can be designed to solve social problems.
For Michelle, a user experience and service designer at the UTS-affiliated Centre for Inclusive Design, the curriculum helped her re-affirm her commitment to use design as a tool for social inclusion.
"As designers, we’re in a position where we can create products, services and experiences that really impact the people who use them, so I think it’s important to have these considerations of the social impact of what we’re putting out into the world," she says.
"Who are we actually designing for? Who are we excluding? Why is this happening, and what can we do about it?"
"The graduate certificate really spoke to me because it addressed these questions and equipped me with a toolkit and a mindset to better my craft as a designer."
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Michelle’s is just one of many UTS postgraduate design stories. Ready to start yours? You can:
