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The situation we face today with COVID-19 moves us to reformulate the work of design in favor of the physical and psychological health of people through the study of interactions within the spaces themselves. There are issues that, when observed, become opportunities for analysis and reflection to generate new ways of inhabiting space. This observation forces us to respond as academies in the search for new tools in which professionals are trained to act in favor of present and future solutions. In times of confinement, being obliged to stay at home for a longer time and to reduce interactions in public spaces has consequences of various kinds, leading to the emergence of new needs within the domestic space. This space has had to adapt from one day to the next to fulfill various functions that were not considered original and that now require urgent adaptations. The project Re-signify the Domestic Space in Times of Confinement aims to provide a new approach to the problem of housing in times of confinement from the School of Architecture, Art and Design at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, to train professionals of the XXI century before emergencies such as the one originated by COVID-19. It is intended to re-think and re-signify the domestic space from confinement, as an opportunity to rethink new and different ways of living in the future. The project aims to work in an interdisciplinary way, with students of Industrial Design and Architecture, to address the social challenges of the situation caused by confinement. Micro and autoethnography, virtual ethnography, and person-centered design methods are applied, generating more responsible results, based on conversation and the most direct relationship between the designer, technical knowledge, and practical user knowledge. Here, the person-centered design is understood as a practice of mobilization and response that generates new meanings within the production of spatial imagery. Ethnography and auto-ethnography allow the designer to immerse himself in a particular reality, in people's daily activities, to understand how they operate from a reflective and empathetic position. With micro-ethnographies, it focuses on a particular aspect in a short period of time, placing, in this case, the social problem in a spatial dimension, discovering particular problems, within a global pattern, to through immersion in the reality studied, visualizing an added value based on people's preferences and motivations. This article compiles, compares, and explains the processes and results around the research as the characterization of domestic space in the search for well-being. Thus, it was fundamental to identify the influence of the principal elements within the domestic environment. It was worth noting that the research was carried out under confinement conditions, placing the person and the domestic space experience at the center. The paper concludes with a reflection around the user's personal experience to their own relationship with the domestic space, around the use of new ethnographic tools, and pointing to new questions about the experience of the domestic space, in times of confinement and in the future.

Over a course of 5 weeks, freshmen students of the core curriculum called ‘Creative Studies’ conformed by 8 different academic programs from 2 faculties, developed a research based on discovering insights focusing on cultural and social aspects on a previously selected community into the city of Queretaro, Mexico. The students were enrolled in a new educational model in which they study their first year with an exploration academic core and then they select their major field in order to eventually graduate with a specialization. The students developed a research challenge in which they worked in transdisciplinary teams focusing on classroom exercises and field work alternated to guarantee immersion and experience based on theoretical content taught in the classroom and then applied on field in order to acquire core and transversal competencies. This paper describes the process in the implementation of the challenge-based learning focusing on how the students with different profiles developed their competencies through working on the challenge, guided by the teacher and teaming with their classmates in activities and exercises in order to achieve their goals.

Playlab, an educational initiative of the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the Tecnologico de Monterrey University, provides a steady academic base for innovation in product co-design adapting to changing social and cultural contexts. Play Lab aims to bring students from different disciplines together to tackle social challenges within a specific local community as a platform for social innovation and moving beyond the classroom into an established social community. The professors deploy a wide arrange of participatory and ethnographic tools from which students choose and implement in the specific community context. Thus the students have to go through a full and profound social and urban research of the chosen context before deciding on a viable collaboration design. Play Lab has had three iterations with different students in 2016, 2017 and 2018. This paper hopes to compile, compare and explain the processes and results of Play Lab while analyzing some variables as a reference. Using a methodology proposed by Hansson et al. (2011) we performed an evaluation of the aforementioned iterations. We believe we have gained clarity regarding future strategies, methods and tools to be further used in Play Lab, our academic alternative for social innovation.