Media Design Lab
How can designers increase the knowledge and autonomy of audiences through information processing, storytelling and user experience?
In 2021, the school decided to incorporate Media Design into its programs to help find new forms of commitment in the face of the major challenges facing our world today. At a time when infobesity and low-quality content predominate, the media designer plays a crucial role. By producing a message constructed in connection with users, the designer contributes to the democratic debate and the construction of contemporary culture.
The Media Design Lab explores the challenges of information, knowledge and communication. The Lab promotes the design of engaging and responsible narratives in the following fields:
- Information: written and on-line press, media, information sciences, complex systems;
- Mediation: scientific, events and cultural;
- Social: digital social media, places that foster social ties
"The aim of the Media Design Lab is to make citizens and users more autonomous in understanding the making of information and knowledge."
The Media Design Lab approach
The Media Design Lab's research work aims to:
Empower individuals in their relationship with information. This competence applies to various fields: print and online media, visualization and popularization of information, social media, etc.
Promote new forms of responsible and engaging storytelling. The Media Design Lab focuses its work on event and museum communication, scenography, serious games, etc.
The term media, as used by the Media Design Lab, refers to the notion of mediation. The medium is the means of mediation between a piece of information and an individual or between several individuals.
The Media Design Lab’s activities
The Media Design Lab is a platform for research, training and innovation in the field of knowledge mediation and media sociology.Find out more about the Research - Training - Innovation approach.
The Media Design Lab’s research areas
Three main themes structure the work of the Media Design Lab:
- How can social mediations be improved in the digital context? How can we create more connections between individuals in social media or in places that build social ties?
- How can we optimize the mediation of cultural, scientific or industrial knowledge in information science? How can we transform the information transmitted into relevant and easily assimilated knowledge?
- How can we increase the quality of the information produced by working on the structures, organizations and tools that produce it?
The methodology
The Media Design Lab's methodology is based on pragmatic design research, interdisciplinary teams and a project-based approach with a systemic vision.
The Media Design Lab aims to produce analyses and knowledge related to the production and consumption of information and knowledge, beyond the field of design. The questions raised within the Media Design Lab lead to innovation-oriented design projects and allow for the dissemination of knowledge and expertise to the professional and academic world.
The methodology used by the Media Design Lab is based on 3 principles:
- Methodological pluralism
Information and communication sciences, as an interdisciplinary field, are based on methodological pluralism. The Media Design Lab is thoroughly in line with this approach. It conducts an inductive research approach and relies on qualitative data collection. In order to develop projects, the Media Design Lab uses a practical approach based on action research. It adopts a hermeneutic perspective where the question of interpretation is central.
- A user-centered approach
The Media Design Lab advocates an approach based on the understanding of citizen issues. The approach is user-centered in order to address these issues from an inductive perspective and as close as possible to the lived experience. The Media Design Lab distinguishes between the methods of user experience and the methods of sociology and journalistic investigation, to which students in the master's program are introduced. The Media Design Lab uses co-design principles to involve the end user in the design of a product or service.
- Hybridization of skills
The research conducted within the Media Design Lab is based on a service design approach. The Media Design Lab's master's program favors interdisciplinarity and mixes students from different design fields (space design, product design, graphic design and digital design). In addition, the Media Design Lab brings together public and private actors, organizations, companies, associations, and individuals to create, develop, and test responsible, innovative, and exploratory information and communication devices.
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Become a partner of the Media Design Lab
Are you a company, association or local authority that wants to improve the quality of your content and its mediation?
The Media Design Lab offers you different types of collaborative project:
- collaborative workshops;
- assessment missions;
- research contracts;
- hosting doctoral designers.
The services provided are eligible for the Research Tax Credit.
Tell us about your project and we will get back to you promptly!
Contact us at projet@lecolededesign.com
The partners
Companies
Institutions and NGOs
The Media Design Lab Team
Karl Pineau
Director of the Media Design Lab
k.pineau@lecolededesign.com
Karl Pineau is a lecturer and researcher in information and communication sciences. He is the director of the Media Design lab at L'École de Design Nantes Atlantique.
He is also co-president of Designers Ethiques, an association for research and action on digital technology and design practices. Karl Pineau completed his doctorate in information and communication sciences at the Costech laboratory of the Université de technologie de Compiègne. His thesis is entitled "Le dossier d'œuvre et les musées. Un dossier pour grammatiser les œuvres". (The work file and museums. A file to grammatize works). It presents a study of the work file as an object of documentation of artworks through an informational and ontological approach of the file. The thesis was carried out under a CIFRE contract at a collection management software publisher - Decalog. Karl Pineau deals with the issue of digitization of the file in collection management software and more specifically with the role of grammatization that the work covers and that digital technology cannot easily transcribe.
Baptiste Fluzin
Course leader of the Media Design Lab
b.fluzin@lecolededesign.com
Some Alumni stories
- Riwan Majidate - Designer of playful tools - Creator and Animator of ANTAGÔNE, Freelance graphic designer and illustrator
- Nilo Macena - UX Designer at SOFTEAM
- Marthe Aubineau - Designer in charge of multimedia publishing for the Bibliothèque nationale de France & freelance art director
Guillaume Chuquet - Independant Interaction, UI/UX Designer