Digital Innovation & Design Education (DIDE)

How might we develop design pedagogies to meet the needs of fast-changing and transdisciplinary fields emerging from the digital creative economy?

To answer this question DIDE focusses on the everyday work of design professionals and provides translational research to develop innovative and effective educational experiences in future.

DIDE is located at Falmouth University within the School of Communication Design. Our research goals are at the intersection of future-oriented design, technology, and education. We focus on the work of design professionals (practice) and teaching and learning of design and creativity (pedagogy). Within these contexts of design practice and education we have examined: the development of entrepreneurial pedagogy in an art and design school context; the relationship between UX industry needs and academic courses; the everyday work and competencies of UX and digital product/service designers; and the problem of how develop lifelong learning capabilities in HE graduates. 

• 2021: DIDE worked with Professor Mark Evans and Dr Chris Parker within the School of Design and Creative Arts at Loughborough University to develop a research output.  
• 2023: DIDE ran a series of workshops at Falmouth University with students exploring the use of generative AI tools in the creative process with an external partner Senior Product Designer Nick Voke.  
• 2020–Present: DIDE runs an ongoing annual project with Chief Technology Officer Sam Lanyon and the Falmouth and Penryn Repair Cafe that introduces the circular economy to undergraduates. 

Dr James Branch received PhD studentship funding from the AHRC, Design Star centre for doctoral training, and Loughborough University. 

• Su, Cui., (2018). Teaching Entrepreneurship: Building on the Creative Advertising experiment. In: Falmouth University, Core Academic Training 2018. Falmouth, UK, 15 June 2018. 
• Branch, J., Parker, C.J. & Evans, M. (2021), Do UX design courses meet industry’s needs? Analysing UX degrees and job adverts, In: The Design Journal, Taylor Francis, London, 24 (4), ISSN: 1756-3062. 
• Branch, J. (2023). The Pedagogy of User Experience Design. PhD. Thesis. Loughborough University. Available at: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/The_pedagogy_of_user_experience_design/24221194 (Accessed: 16 Jan 2024).  
• Branch, J., (2023). Teaching and learning beyond knowledge and skills in user experience (UX) design. In: Falmouth University, School of Communication Research Seminar Series 2023-24. Falmouth, UK, 8 November 2023. 

DIDE’s has made an impact in the UX and HCI educational communities through the publication of a paper in The Design Journal (Branch, Parker and Evans, 2021). Several conference papers and workshops (Su, 2018; Branch, 2023) have made an impact at a university level by disseminating DIDE’s research into teaching and learning theory and practice.