LAMP&D: A DESIGN DRIVEN PROCESS FOR A COLLABORATIVE AND PLAYFUL LEARNING EXPERIMENT IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

This paper focuses on an on-field-research experience carried out in a seventh-grade class in Milan by a team of teachers from different educational level: it was a fruitful collaboration between two educational institutions, the middle school and the university, that hardly find opportunities for dialogue. Moreover, it turned out to be a valuable experience in terms of approach to design by younger students, application of innovative teaching processes and methods, experimentation of production technologies specific to the “industry 4.0” paradigm, use of co-design practices. The "Lamp&d" project, in fact, led to the prototyping of a table-lamp through: a brief co-built by the university researchers and the middle-school teachers; a collaborative and problem-based learning that actively involved all the actors of the process; an experiential and playful methodology to develop a design thinking, based on "playing cards" able to stimulate and guide students' creativity; a designoriented learning driven by a trial and error process; a first approach to digital fabrication technologies which led to a physical prototyping realized thanks to the collaboration with the FabLab of the partner university.