Seven Ways of Designing

On 18 and 19 November 2015 the Seven Ways of Designing intensification seminars took place. They were attended by third and fourth year students on the Degree in Design at EINA Centre for Art and Design which is attached to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The sessions focused on solving two problems: the lack of student autonomy in understanding their own working processes, as detected in their degree final projects, and a drop in motivation in third year students as a result of the overexposure to technical subjects in the curriculum. This article describes the seminars and analyses the attainment of the two objectives from a quantitative and qualitative viewpoint. As a result of the evaluation of the students’ processes during the seminars a certain polarisation in student autonomy was observed. The surveys show success in recovering motivation. Interviews with the participants show that learning the design process may be linked to the idea of “personal discovery”. In conclusion we stress the need to include this kind of seminar in every term in order to monitor student autonomy in different academic years and to maintain motivation.