ABSTRACT
This essay serves as an introduction to the volume's third section “Performance Technologies and Design Thinking.” This introduction offers a survey approach to the broad topic of theatrical design and how new pedagogies are necessary to adequately address the needs of designing for experience. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of design thinking, which is a systematic approach to integrating both aesthetic and functional aspects of world-building for experiential frames. By tracking the historical trajectories of design from antiquity through the twentieth-century theories of Robert Edmund Jones a better understanding of holistic approaches to design and the ways that technologies allow interactivity and experiential response is uncovered. Through this exploration pedagogical approaches that blend theory and practice are found.
