Perspectives on Innovative Designs and Learning

Digitalization has changed ways of learning as well as challenged condi-tions for creativity in different landscapes of learning. This raises questions about how to approach learning and design in new ways. To address these queries, this conceptual symposium paper presents three perspectives on how innovative designs and learning in analogue and digital activities can promote new metaphors, theories, and methodologies to study these kinds of processes. The first perspective adds a focus on the environment and spaces based on ecological understanding of design and learning with a pivot point on boundaries and people’s wayfinding. The second perspective adds a fo-cus on activities with artifacts and people's engagement in creative and play-ful processes of making and breaking as part of a design and learning pro-cess. The third perspective takes the position of collaborative design in edu-cational settings, with a focus on context and sequences, framing and fixing points, and on the choice of material and semiotic resources to ex-press/represent knowledge. Despite differences in these perspectives, they can be used in different educational practices to understand peo-ple’s engagement in design and learning. The paper shows that dif-ferences in perspectives not necessarily represent division or disa-greement, but rather exploratory routes that can generate new learn-ing, understanding and resources to approach societal and educa-tional challenges.