Extended Abstract: Making Design Thinking Genre Knowledge: Embodiment, Typification, and Engineering Design

摘要

Due to the designerly nature of technical and professional communication (TPC), theoretical and methodological efforts to accentuate the link between TPC and design thinking need to consider what the two domains of practice might share. One approach to meet this need is to view the teaching of the design process in light of the rhetorical approach to genre as social action. Drawing from rhetorical genre theory, the authors articulate the design process as a kind of embodied genre composed of bodily actions and orientations to tools, texts, and environments. Using observational fieldnotes from an engineering design course, the authors report how a repertoire of embodied routines is demonstrated for students as a genre and later employed in their design work. The study uses rhetorical genre theory as a way of conceiving design thinking for TPC classroom’s and beyond.