Color and territory : empathy as a tool to enable international collaborative design projects
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Even before COVID-19, collaboration in the academic context has been taking new forms, but now more than ever, technology and online connectiveness offer new approaches for the learning experience. Universities and design institutions recognize that some soft skills are better developed in a multicultural, multi-perspective environment. This new take on global collaboration has resulted in a wide variety of programs between academic institutions and are oriented to develop both knowledge and collaboration. This paper aims to share the methodology and outcomes of a program between the Fine Arts program at SUNY Genesee Community College located near Buffalo, New York and the Industrial Design program in the Facultad del Hábitat belonging to the UASLP in San Luis Potosí. It started in 2017, but took a surprising improvement during the COVID-19 Pandemic fall semester of 2020, where students participated in an internationally collaborative exercise based on color, territory, localism and aesthetic perception between design students from México and USA. The main outcome was that students were given the opportunity to discover the cultural richness of their counter parts working in cross-cultural teams. While working in these teams, the students creatively shaped their interactions with each other in order to establish emotional bonds using social media. The experience shows a hint of an approaching future, where social relationships will need to adapt to changing norms and the value of a global empathic community is recognized.
