---
title: Design Studio 0
page_type: course
track: Application
course_type: Workshop
feature_img: /assets/images/2025-26/year-1/t-1/design-studio-zero.png
img_caption: Barcelona seen on Google Maps, September 2025.
faculty:
    - saul-baeza
    - manuela-valtchanova
ects: 2
---

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## Syllabus

This intense three-day course is focused on equipping students with the skills and knowledge to tackle the complexities of emergent challenges through alternative presents. The course is structured to provide a comprehensive base for students as they embark on their master's journey, both conceptually and physically. To do so, we will follow a series of pre-established drifts around the city of Barcelona and its surroundings, developing real time cartographies of our experiences. Making use of the tool Atlas of Weak Signals, we will explore present weak signals in order to identify strategies to anticipate emergent futures. We will map and discuss ecosystems through first-person perspective encounters, all of which will be interconnected with each student's personal perspectives.

**Keywords: Alternative Presents, Design Space, Multi-Scale Mapping, Atlas of Weak Signals, First Person Perspective, Community of Practice, Cartografies**

## Learning Objectives

1. Comprehend Social and Critical Ecologies: Understand how techno-human practices integrate into and influence social and critical ecologies, enabling the creation of alternative narratives that challenge existing paradigms.
2. Identify and Analyze Weak Signals: Get to know the methodology of the Atlas of Weak Signals to identify early indicators of change, using these signals to explore potential intervention opportunities and construct plausible future scenarios.
3. Explore and Map Socio-Technical Systems: Explore, develop, and document the relationships within socio-technical systems, fostering a holistic understanding of the interplay between designed systems and their contexts.
4. Explore and walk more than human realities in the city of Barcelona and its surroundings.

## Schedule

Oct **5th, 8th & 9th**, 2025

=== "05/10 - Cartography 1: Montjuic"

    **Activity time**: 11:00 - 17:00
    
    **Meeting point**: Font Màgica
    
    **Requirements**: Bring your lunch, a bottle of water, a smartphone (if you have one), and a notebook.    
     
    **Goals**: Students will delve into the exercise of the Atlas of Weak Signals. This methodology provides a structured framework for students, designers, and professionals across diverse fields. The Atlas aids in identifying potential intervention opportunities by collecting and organizing early indicators of change, referred to as weak signals. These signals serve as a keyword taxonomy, offering a foundation for analyzing current systems and building plausible scenarios.

    **Activity**: Building up on our collective Google Maps cartography, adding, commenting and relating our experiences. Add a new input/reaction (Image, video, short text, question, commentary…etc) every 15 minutes.

=== "08/10 - Cartography 2: Besòs River"

    **Activity time**: 9:30 - 13:30
    
    **Meeting point**: Torre de l’Aigua -TBC-
    
    **Requirements**: Bring a bottle of water, a smartphone (if you have one), and a notebook.
     
    **Goals**: To effectively interact with social and critical ecologies through a First Person Perspective (1PP), it is essential to cultivate an understanding of the tools, material elements, infrastructures, communities of practice, and social networks integral to the socio-technical system under design. The exercises in this session present both a methodology and a structured system designed to facilitate the exploration, development, and documentation of these crucial references and relationships. These activities aim to provide students with a comprehensive and insightful understanding of the intricate interplay between the designed system and its contextual elements, fostering a holistic perspective on socio-technical landscapes.

    Students will delve into the exercise of the Atlas of Weak Signals. This methodology provides a structured framework for students, designers, and professionals across diverse fields. The Atlas aids in identifying potential intervention opportunities by collecting and organizing early indicators of change, referred to as weak signals. These signals serve as a keyword taxonomy, offering a foundation for analyzing current systems and building plausible scenarios.

    **Activity**: Building up on our collective Google Maps cartography, adding, commenting and relating our experiences. Add a new input/reaction (Image, video, short text, question, commentary…etc) every 15 minutes.
    

=== "09/10 - Cartography 2: IAAC Future house"

    **Activity time**: 9:30 - 11:30
    
    **Meeting point**: IAAC
    
    **Requirements**: Bring a bottle of water, a smartphone (if you have one), and a notebook.
     
    **Goals**: To effectively interact with social and critical ecologies through a First Person Perspective (1PP), it is essential to cultivate an understanding of the tools, material elements, infrastructures, communities of practice, and social networks integral to the socio-technical system under design. The exercises in this session present both a methodology and a structured system designed to facilitate the exploration, development, and documentation of these crucial references and relationships. These activities aim to provide students with a comprehensive and insightful understanding of the intricate interplay between the designed system and its contextual elements, fostering a holistic perspective on socio-technical landscapes.

    Students will delve into the exercise of the Atlas of Weak Signals. This methodology provides a structured framework for students, designers, and professionals across diverse fields. The Atlas aids in identifying potential intervention opportunities by collecting and organizing early indicators of change, referred to as weak signals. These signals serve as a keyword taxonomy, offering a foundation for analyzing current systems and building plausible scenarios.

    **Activity**: Building up on our collective Google Maps cartography, adding, commenting and relating our experiences. Add a new input/reaction (Image, video, short text, question, commentary…etc) every 15 minutes.
    Write a critical statement (around 200w) linking 5 of your initial inputs presented during the introduction day (02/10) to 5 inputs discovered during the course. 
    

## Methodological Strategies

Methodological strategies that will allow the development of the learning skills and results.

- Walks
- Discussions
- Atlas of weak signals

Learning strategies associated with the program experience.

- Peer learning
- Team-based learning
- Gamification
- Cartographies


## Deliverables

Develop your final design space as an evolving tool to accompany you through your journey in MDEF. Prepare a small presentation to share in class encompassing your reflections, process and results.

**Delivery date October 20th**


## Grading Method

| Percentage  | Description                                     |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------            |
| 50%         | Participation in the Activities of the Week          |
| 50%         | Final Reflection + Multiscalar Design Space                                 |

!!! ects "European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)"

    {{ ects }} ECTS

## Additional Resources

- Auger, J. (2010). ‘Alternative presents and speculative futures: Designing fictions through the extrapolation and evasion of product lineages’. Negotiating futures – Design Fiction. 42–57.
- Candy, S., & Dunagan, J. (2017). ‘Designing an experiential scenario: The People Who Vanished.’ Futures, 86, 136–153.
- Diez, T., & Tomico, O. (2020). ‘The Master in Design for emergent futures.’ IAAC.
- Hiltunen, E. (2010). Weak signals in organizational futures learning. Doctoral thesis. Helsinki: Aaalto University.
- Krogh, P., Markussen, T., & Bang, A. (2015). ‘Ways of drifting – 5 methods of experimentation in research through design’. In Proceedings of ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries Volume 1. New Delhi. Springer. 39–50.
- Lucero, A., Desjardins, A., Neustaedter, C., Höök, K., Hassenzahl, M., & Cecchinato, M. (2019). ‘A sample of one: First-person research methods in HCI’. In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion (DIS ‘19 Companion). ACM: New York. 385–388.
- Neustaedter, C., & Sengers, P. (2012). Autobiographical design: what you can learn from designing for yourself. Interactions, 19(6), 28–33.
- Rosenberg, D. (2015). Transformational Design: A mindful practice for experience-driven design. PhD Thesis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Tomico, O., Winthagen, V. O., & van Heist, M. M. G. (2012). Designing for, with or within: 1st, 2nd and 3rd person points of view on designing for systems. In Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design (NordiCHI '12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 180–188.
- Varela, F. J., & Shear, J. (1999). First-person Methodologies: What, Why, How? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(2-3), 1-14.
- Wakkary, R. (2021). Things We Could Design: For more than human-centered worlds. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
- Wensveen, S. A. G., & Matthews, B. (2015). Prototypes and prototyping in design research. In P. Rodgers & J. Yee (Eds.), Routledge companion to design research (pp. 262–276). London: Routledge.
- More to be provided along the course


## Faculty

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