Fixperts: models, learning and social contexts

Fixperts is a learner-centred, creative-problem-solving and project-based learning programme. In a Fixperts project, participants (Fixperts) team-up with an insight provider (Fix Partner) to identify a daily problem in the Fix Partner‘s life that becomes the focus of a project aimed at delivering a solution or Fix. This paper introduces four pedagogic models developed via delivery of Fixperts projects at leading international design universities. It presents four approaches to the challenge of moving from the Person, to the Problem, to the Fix. These four models - Primary, Partnership, Community, Public - represent the evolution of the Fixperts framework to better enable the development of students as confident and empathetic socially-led designers. Fixperts builds competencies which are predicted to become essential to an ability to thrive in our increasingly uncertain future.