1 The Sixth International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC2020) Oulu, Finland, August 26 th – 28 th 2020 https://doi.org/ Design Strategies and Pedagogy for Extreme Conditions Created by Disasters Tao Huang 1 , Eric Anderson 2 1 School of Art and Design, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA 2 Resilient Farms and Design Studio, Makanda, USA Abstract: Facing an extreme event such as a disaster, designers are challenged to provide solutions to help people prepare for disasters and to reduce the human suffering associated with them. In an educa- tional setting, disasters present a challenging scenario for students to test and expand their research and design skills. This paper discusses a “design for disaster prevention” project run in both industrial design and communication design studio courses by the authors. It demonstrates the application of a hybrid “design thinking” methodology adapted for the disaster scenarios and prioritizing the need for disaster-resilient design strategies within the framework of project-and-issue-based design learning. Using student work as examples, this paper discusses two feasible design strategies to guide and foster creativity for designing for disaster prevention in the classroom. Keywords: disaster, creative process, design strategies, design pedagogy, prevention. 1. Introduction We define a natural disaster as a societal event that result in a significant loss of life as well as significant economic damage producing a widespread and protracted loss in the quality of human lives as a conse- quence of an inadequate or inappropriate human response to a hazardous natural phenomenon. These events present the most extreme challenges for designers; before these events, resources are usually limited for the preparation of these rare events; during the events, emergency response capacity is over extended, supporting infrastructure is destroyed and life-saving designs are put to test in extreme con- ditions; in the aftermath, tremendous resources are needed to recover and rebuild when time and mate- rials are limited. Extreme events call for extreme creativity. We argue that disasters are neither natural nor inevitable. There are natural hazards but only “human” disasters; human designs that are incompatible with the prevailing natural phenomena ultimately have disastrous consequences. In collaboration with other dis- ciplines that focus on solving this problem, designers are well positioned to provide a balanced view of technological design and social design regarding disaster prevention. Since 2010, our team of researchers and students has been conducting a collaborative, multidisciplinary, and multi-national project on how designers can contribute to building disaster-resilient communities. As communication and product designers, our focus has been on the creation of both two dimensional and three dimensional artefacts, rather than on architectural solutions. As a part of this research process, the “design for disaster preparation” project was launched in 2016 and has been offered twice a year both in our sophomore communication design studios as well as junior and senior industrial design