Cursos / 1º Ciclo / Faculty of Architecture and Arts :: Design

TEORIA DA COMUNICAÇÃO - 2017/2018

3º curricular year
Semestralidade: 1st semester
ECTS: 3

Teachers

Leading Teacher: Prof. Doutora Paula Soares

Class type and School hours

Teórica : 2 Horas

Teaching Language

Portuguese

Main Aims/Objectives

The way the designers want their products to be interpreted and how they truly are understood by consumers are not always correspondent. In this sense, the objective of the course is that the student understands that the intentions of the designers should be some way contained in the products and that these meanings are not passively interpreted by consumers.

Specific Aims/Objectives

To comprehend the distinction between two perspectives on the products: designer and user.
To realize that there is often a mismatch between these two perspectives that is an important source of data on the affective reactions that people have about the products and their interactions with them.
To understand the perspective of the designer.
To understand the user´s perspective.
To comprehend the relationship between emotion and design and the role of communication in this regard.

Skills to be acquired

To comprehend that systematic interventions on the image of the products in the last two decades have experienced a significant evolutionary process;
To understand the impact on the products of the expansion and access to media;
To realize how designers must incorporate in their products a communicational dimension intelligible by most users.

Teaching Procedures

Lectures on the programme contents, accompanied by current examples and promoting debate in class.
Reading and critical debate of texts related to the topics addressed.

Programme

1. Fundamentals of project-environment configuration:
- The needs and aspirations of users;
- The processing by which an idea becomes an object of use;
- Satisfaction of needs.

2. Consumer product:
- Products for individual use;
- Products for a particular group;
- Products for indirect use.

3. Symbolic and functional configuration of the products:
- Socio-economic circumstances;
- Social strata and social status;
- Social status and prestige;
- Products as symbols;
- The designer as a creator of symbols.

4. Aesthetic design:
- Aesthetic communication;
- The aesthetics of the object;
- Aesthetic perception;
- Understand, see and become aware;
- Perception driven by interests;
- Importance of scarcity and abundance of information;
- Intellectual and emotional aspects of perception.

5. Communication theory:
- Speech and semiotics;
- Artificial semiotic and semiotic system;
- The field of intervention, the imaginary applicant;
- Body and method of semiotic significance.

Evaluation Type

Assessment in Theory of Communication is conducted according the General Assessment Regulations of the Lusíada University. Additionally, the following apply as criteria for continuous assessment: a) Class attendance, informative class participation; b) Two individual and/or group exercises proposed in class and debate; c) Two written exercises to assess knowledge acquired; c) Final semester exam.

Teaching Resources

Lectures (audio-visual resources);
Study trips (if they are appropriate to the topics addressed);
Text analysis;
Image research;
Individual and/or group assignments on the topics lectured.

Sustainability Objectives

Keywords

Perception. Emotion. Communication. Semiotics.

Main Bibliography

Complementary Bibliography