Exploring Playful and Effective Digital Design Process with Games: a Framework for Digital Design Studio Teaching and Learning

The idea of developing a framework, to integrate design studios and computer graphics, is derived from the nature of architectural design, which has always combined creativity and technology. Furthermore, as computers are being increasingly used in design studios, a systematic digital pedagogy, which can take advantage of the strengths of computers in all stages of design, should be developed simultaneously to facilitate learning. This paper attempts to propose a playful and effective digital design process that can be flexibly applied to computer-based design studios and design-based computer graphics courses. The pedagogical framework is based on a set of digital design games that follows a general design process presented by the author. First, the components of digital design games will be defined and the relations of those game components will be clearly depicted. Then, a framework will be proposed, followed by the use of an example demonstrating applications of the framework. Continual advancements in digital technology have created generation gaps among teachers at architectural schools. A structured digital design process can help teachers, with varying levels of computer-capabilities know what, when, and how, adjustments should be made to achieve the goal of digital design education