Andy Law
Associate Professor, Industrial Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Andy Law is probably best described as an experience designer who gets excited about the culture, correspondence and interesting friction in all kinds of networks including production, educational, telecommunication, transactional, entrepreneurial and social networks. As associate professor of industrial design and director of the ID Department’s Graduate Program at the Rhode Island School of Design, he asks students to investigate and challenge contemporary design issues.
Previously, Law served as sub head of curriculum and as a Davis Fellow for Reflective Teaching.
Introducing The Thesis Grid: A Writing and Design Process
If writing is a process of thinking, why is it not a critical component of today’s design curricula? This project responds to the frustration undergraduate industrial design students experienced writing about their work while at the same time, these same students—all millennials—were prolific writers, not in the studio or classroom, but on their blogs, Twitters, texts and hashtags.
This pedagogical project explores the problem/opportunity above: can the design and writing processes, rather than antagonizing one another, engage each other into one dynamic practice for students? Andy Law of the Rhode Island School of Design looks at ways to integrate the two—by considering writing in terms of tangible making and production: accumulation, curation, framing, publishing (as both broadcasting and sharing with peers). He will highlight the value and impact this integrated approach offers students and teachers alike.
