BOOKS ON DESIGN METHODS AND COURSES FROM AAU DESIGN LAB

You find a link to where to buy each book in the links below

DESIGN METHOD

DESIGNING FOR LONGEVITY

Product longevity is one of the cornerstones in the transition towards a more sustainable society and a key driver for the circular economy model. This book provides designers, developers, and creators with five distinctive expert strategies, detailed case studies, action guides and worksheets that support both beginning and advanced design practitioners in creating new product concepts with long-lasting strategic fits.


Designing for Longevity shows how expert design teams create original and long-lasting product concepts from the early development phase. It focuses on integrating business knowledge, market conditions, company capabilities, technical possibilities and user needs into product concepts to make better strategic decisions. It demonstrates how, for products to be durable, designers must create a long-lasting strategic fit for the customer, company, and market. Key case studies of products such as Bang & Olufsen’s A9, LEGO Ninjago and Friends and Coloplasts’ Sensura Mio, among others, offer readers inspiration, guidance and real-world insights from design teams showing how the strategies can be applied in practice. Action guidelines and worksheets encourage broad, analytical problem-solving to identify and think through challenges at the early concept stage.

Beautifully designed and illustrated in full colour throughout, this book combines original research and the hands-on tools and strategies that design practitioners need to create useful, sustainable products.

DESIGN METHOD

DESIGNERLY ENTREPRENEURSHIP

This book pushes designers to accelerate actions, get real skin in the game and let customers evaluate with their wallets to drive fast, focused, and valid product development.

The challenge presented in the book requires an equal balance and integration of the designerly and entrepreneurial aspects. When partaking this challenge, we promise you beyond the design task will have real skin in every other aspect of the game. You will:

• Feel 100% ownership for the business, by becoming the investor and business owner.

• Experience all production considerations and issues, by becoming the producer.

• Consider the ‘real’ market fit and user need, by becoming the marketing and salesperson.

This book pushes designers to design for the real-world, with a 100% ownership and full consideration of the design, the business and the production aspects from the start and throughout the entire process.

PROCESS BOOK

DESIGNERLY LOOPS​

How do you do design for the first time? Design was originally taught as an apprenticeship, because there is no one solution for, how to approach a design challenge. It is situated. It depends on the expertise of those tackling it. It depends on their circumstances and loads of other factors.

Designerly Loops is an apprenticeship notebook with roadmaps, worksheets, short explainer videos and reflections:

• The roadmaps will guide you in your design journey. It is kind of a map for navigating an unknown territory for the first time. We tried to lay this out to support you in moving forward.

• The worksheets will suggest relevant actions and support you in more doing.

• The short explainer videos will answer most of your practical and theoretical questions and also show concrete examples of different tools and techniques typically used in the design process. These videos are only produced in Danish (as a start).

• The reflections will help you reflect, to become reflective in your prac tice and move up the ladder of expertise. It will help you to do and think in a focused and reflective manner.

The content in the book stands on the shoulders of design thinking and designerly research, as well as our own research on how to build a design expertise. We have written it because we found, that there is missing a book that teaches design students to move forward, not only in their project, but in their enhancement of their skills within design.