Dates: 19th to 31st December 2016

Venue: IDS, Building 8, GTU, 75 Kostava Street, Tbilisi and surrounding area

Event: Kitchen Appliances

Format: Winter 2-week Workshop Session

Instructor: Alex Velasco, Past Design Instructor, IDS, Instructor at 

Ajeenkya DY Patil University, Pune, Maharashtra, India,  Doctoral Researcher, Istanbul Technical University

Photo © Nino Akhobadze

Alex was back! – but only for a couple of weeks… Now the Design Instructor at Ajeenkya DY Patil University in Pune, India, during his brief return to the IDS he was full of energy and ideas, as always, and the students – especially the fourth year ones who had been guided by him during their freshmen year of 2013-2014 – just loved it. It was also a good experience for the new members of the growing academic team of the IDS who had never met Alex before and now had a first-hand chance to appreciate teaching methods of the mastermind behind the IDS curriculum.

Alex split the workshop into three parts: Week 1 was a pre-week conducted by Giga before Alex’ arrival in Tbilisi to introduce project and brief, form groups, and give the teams Task 1: Desk research on area of interest, and Task 2: Assigned Readings. Week 2 started with Alex discussing with the IDS student teams the brief, process and outcomes. Mind Map was created, paperwork handed out, and research introduced. Students then carried out research readings and Alex gave them Brainstorm Deep Dive with Sketchathon, followed by students voting on the best ideas and naming the representatives for idea champions. Alex then introduced students to the Elevator Pitch - a summary to quickly and simply define a process of the product creation and its value. Voting on ideas continued, this time both from the IDS jury and the students, and review of the first week was continued by Introduction to Scenarios. Alex handed out scenarios to the students and advised them to use virtual and real LEGO tools to develop scenarios.

Final week started with scenario presentation and project outcomes were handed out. Alex listened from the teams on detailed description of final slide show, and teams continued working on concept of kitchen appliances Efficient ways of depicting concepts were discussed so that teams can make product concept presentation. The most advanced teams worked on wire framing while others continued identifying scenarios for the concept. Final Presentations were made on 30 December and on the New Year Eve discussions all were wrapped up so that we all could say farewell to Alex and invite him to join us again with more of his new, equally exiting and useful ideas.