Creating inspiration by developing digital mood boards in student teams

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/TechneA.5361

Abstract

Mood boards have notable potential to serve as inspirational tools in design. However, we still do not fully understand how mood boards are created utilizing material found online in collaborative educational settings. The purpose of our study is to deepen our understanding of both team design and the creation of shared digital mood boards through a qualitative analysis on how three student teams created shared mood boards using computers, and how they gathered inspirational material from the Web. We discuss how the creation of a shared mood board is a complex process, including deepening and broadening cycles, where a key idea is either explained more thoroughly, or then expanded with additional, related ideas. In relation to mood board ideas, the teams decided the specific keywords to be used to gather images online, balancing the design constraints, with an intuitive yet systematic way of working. We encourage to acknowledge a digitally created mood board as a collaborative method for creating meaningful starting points for designing, and for finding inspiration outside the direct design problem. Our study provides information which is beneficial for developing pedagogies that include collaboration and the use of online inspirational material.
Keywords: team ideation; mood board; sources of inspiration; online material; metaphor; design education

Author Biographies

Anniliina Omwami, University of Helsinki

Anniliina Omwami is a craft-education teacher (M.Ed) and a doctoral researcher at the Department of Education (Craft Science) at the University of Helsinki. Her main research interests are to analyze sources of inspiration, and the connection between inspiration and idea development in professional and student-level designing. Recently, she has also focused on analyzing the creation and use of mood boards and team interaction in co-design settings.

Henna Lahti, University of Helsinki

Henna Lahti is a PhD, a Docent of Craft Science, and a lecturer at the Department of Education at the University of Helsinki. Her main research interest is in developing collaborative designing in various learning environments. She has published articles on collaborative design methods, virtual design studios, and design thinking including material and embodied practices, and pedagogical aspects of collaborative designing.

Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, University of Helsinki

Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen (Ph.D.) is a professor of Craft Science at the University of Helsinki and a Docent at Aalto University. Her main research interest has been to analyze expertise in design, the nature of the design process and the role of the external representation, embodiment, materiality in the design studio learning and makerspaces (STEAM). She has analyzed collaboration and embodiment in various settings, and at different levels of education.

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Published

2024-02-07 — Updated on 2024-02-15

How to Cite

Omwami, A., Lahti, H., & Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P. (2024). Creating inspiration by developing digital mood boards in student teams. Techne Series - Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A, 31(1), 65–81. https://doi.org/10.7577/TechneA.5361

Issue

Vol. 31 No. 1 (2024): Techne series

Section

Artikler

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Copyright (c) 2024 Anniliina Omwami, Henna Lahti, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen

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