Mark Strachan

Swinburne University of Technology · Faculty of Health, Arts and Design

Traditional undergraduate design briefs frequently remain within familiar boundaries, theoretically framed for the purpose of teaching particular design themes, techniques and processes within discipline silos and their practices. Through introducing significant and challenging topics, valuable learning contexts can be generated using systems and s...

This paper illustrates a teaching case of two inter-disciplinary subjects taught to groups of third-year undergraduate design students in the areas of systems and service design and business strategy. Both subjects were developed in 2006 as part of a strategy to develop students' understanding of design thinking, systems thinking, user-centred desi...

In 2006 the Faculty of Design, Swinburne University, started planning the creation of a suite of ‘core’ subjects that all undergraduate students from Communication Design, Industrial Design, Interior Design and Multimedia would undertake during their 3 years of study. I was given the opportunity to create, and lead, a 3rd year studio called Design...

Concern about 'sustainability' is becoming ubiquitous in many domains of life. First emerging in the 1970s, the term quickly spread from ecology to economics and other areas to become a new global philosophy. Today, the concept of 'sustainability' is used in such varying contexts that it has been suggested that any generic meaning is impossible. Th...