Making Exhibitions, Brokering Meaning: Designing new connections across communities of practice

New media museum exhibits often see designers representing the research of expert content providers. Despite perceptions that such exhibits provide museum visitors with a greater depth and range of experience, differences in knowledge and practice between designers and content providers can see content development become an unruly, competitive process in which audience experience, digital mediation, visualisation techniques and meaning become contested territory. Drawing on Etienne Wenger’s theory of “communities of practice”, this paper argues that designers’ advocacy for audiences and distance from exhibition content well positions them to broker interdisciplinary goal setting so that exhibitions observe the representational objectives of content providers and meet the needs and preferences of museum visitors. A wide range of design literature already discusses the pragmatic benefits and ethical importance of user-centered design, while the literature on co-design suggests that designed outcomes are more successful if the design process considers the interests of all stakeholders. These discussions can be compelling, but the inherent challenges in engaging others’ perspectives and knowledge in the design process are less acknowledged, Wenger’s ideas on the social dynamics of group enterprise offering designers valuable insights into the actuality of negotiating designed outcomes with non-designer stakeholders. The paper has two main aspects. The first outlines the theory of communities of practice, focusing on the brokering of knowledge and practice between disciplines. This discussion frames an analysis of the design process for two museum exhibitions. Representing an original application of Wenger’s ideas, the discussion recognises the unique role of the designed artifact in brokering information visualization processes, transcending the actions and intentions of individual stakeholders. While accepting there are successful examples of interdisciplinary exchange in various areas of design, the interpretation of examples via Wenger contributes useful principles to the theorisation of co-design with non-designer stakeholders. Keywords: Information visualization; New media museum exhibits; Multidisciplinary projects; Communities of Practice; Brokering; User-centered design; Co-Design; Etienne Wenger</p

Giving voice to equitable collaboration in participatory design

An AHRC funded research project titled Experimenting with the Co-experience Environment (June 2005 – June 2006) culminated in a physical environment designed in resonance with a small group of participants. The participants emerged from different disciplines coming together as a group to share their expertise and contribute their knowledge to design. They engaged in storytelling, individual and co-thinking, creating and co-creating, sharing ideas that did not require justification, proposed designs even though most were not designers …and played. The research questioned how a physical environment designed specifically for co-experiencing might contribute to new knowledge in design? Through play and by working in action together the participants demonstrated the potential of a physical co-experience environment to function as a scaffold for inter-disciplinary design thinking,saying, doing and making (Ivey & Sanders 2006). Ultimately the research questioned how this outcome might influence our approach to engaging participants in design research and experimentation

Design as a means of exploring the emotional component of scent

This paper demonstrates how industrial designers can generate engaging solutions by applying new technology to the area of scent-delivery through the use of practice-based research. It discusses works by Jason Morenikeji, Nick Rhodes and other designers contrasting these with developments in the scent and nano-technology industries. The paper also presents a series of designs by industrial designer Ben Hughes, namely ‘Fontenay aux Roses.’ It also includes a collection of wearable, smart interactive scent delivery devices designed for Jenny Tillotson’s e-Scent research project at CSM. 'Fontenay aux Roses 1' is a wearable bag-type device that houses a battery and pump unit to deliver three types of scent, controllable by the user. The prototype was made by award-winning bag designer Ann Chui. Fontenay is a brooch -type device that attaches to a garment with a magnetic snap-fastening. Three different snap-on covers show how the device might be customised by the user, branded by the scent manufacturer, or added to by a third-party. In both its design and its co-engineering by Murray Tidmarsh and Ben Hughes, it is an exploration of the use of rapid-manufacturing technology for this type of object. This work has evolved to incorporate devices for insect repellent under the title “E.Mos”, two of which Ben Hughes designed and created the prototype for

Foroba Yelen: Portable Solar Lighting and Sustainable Strategies for Remote Malian Villages

‘Foroba Yelen’ is a conference paper recording the case study led by Hall of a design enterprise project in Mali that investigated how designers can co-design and develop portable, sustainable solar lighting for remote off-grid Malian villages and how this can ultimately assist in an overall national-level strategy for slowing the rural urban migration patterns of West Africa. The project had a positive impact on the local community by enabling sustainable local lighting that helped maintain cultural practices, encouraged enterprise and facilitated education. The lights would be rented out by villagers and profits used to construct new lights designed to use locally sourced materials, construction techniques and components. The research builds on existing expertise of cross-cultural collaboration by the lead author (Hall 2009; Hall 2010; Hall 2012; Hall 2013), and describes the technical and cultural challenges faced by designers working in this challenging context – in particular, the challenge of whether to use imported or locally sourced technologies, locating suitable making processes and issues of deploying co-design methods across cultures. Impact is demonstrated by improvements in the social life of villages through public lighting as part of a strategy for slowing the rural–urban migration patterns and helping to maintain food production in the countryside. New knowledge, including methods for sustainable development, communication by remote design teams and design pedagogy, is presented in practice-related activities by designers in international collaborations. The range of project communications was mapped and diagrams generated to identify the most successful remote communication platforms. Following the project completion, the work was exhibited at the Royal College of Art (2011) and featured in three articles in Lighting Design (2012), Axis (2012) and New Design (2012). The project was funded by the eLand Foundation in Switzerland, Nakumatt Holdings in Kenya and Philips Lighting in Holland

Preferences of Co-Designed Cultural Textile Products from Guatemala and Peru

This research involves working with fair-trade weaving groups in Guatemala and Peru. Artisan textiles were co-designed with contemporary color palettes and layouts for backstrap weaving with U.S. designers. Co-design has been integrated into the textile design process in this study through pictures and technical diagrams. The textiles were then incorporated into modern silhouettes of apparel and home décor

Co-designing Infrastructures

Co-designing Infrastructures tells the story of a research programme designed to bring the power of engineering and technology into the hands of grassroots community groups, to create bottom-up solutions to global crises. Four projects in London are described in detail, exemplifying community collaboration with engineers, designers and scientists to enact urban change. The projects co-designed solutions to air pollution, housing, the water-energy-food nexus, and water management. Rich case-study accounts are underpinned by theories of participation, environmental politics and socio-technical systems. The projects at the heart of the book are grounded in specific settings facing challenges familiar to urban communities throughout the world. This place-based approach to infrastructure is of international relevance as a foundation for urban resilience and sustainability. The authors document the tools used to deliver this work, providing guidance for others who are working to deliver local technical solutions to complex social and environmental problems around the world. This is a book for engineers, designers, community organisers and researchers. Co-authored by researchers, it includes voices of community collaborators, their experiences, frustrations and aspirations. It explores useful theories about infrastructure, engineering and resilience from international academic research, and situates them in community-based co-design experience, to explain why bottom-up approaches are needed and how they might succeed

A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales

Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales

An Analysis of the Co-Constructed Learning Process among Mathematics Grounding Activity-Designers

The “Just Do Math (JDM)” project, initiated in 2014, aimed to build the ground that would promote students’ learning mathematical interest and achievement and cultivate “Mathematics Grounding Activity (MGA)-designers” and “MGA-teachers” for designing and implementing MGA modules.&nbsp; Consequently, this study aimed to explore module designers’ role perceptions and its developmental processes in the JDM Project.&nbsp; An exploratory qualitative approach was employed to reach the objectives.&nbsp; Data were gathered through observations, interviews, and various kinds of documents, and then qualitatively analyzed by the editing and immersion analytic techniques.&nbsp; Findings were reported as followings: First, MTEs claimed that the four-element PD model (i.e. goals, contexts, theories, and structure) was employed in the JDM project for conceptualizing the MGA-designers’ PD programs. &nbsp;Grounded on this argument, MGA-designers’ PD process was correspondingly analyzed and portrayed consistent with the four elements: Goals—Building grounds by doing mathematics and solving problems; Theories—Emerging into design-based PD process; Structure—Co-constructed learning and symmetrical roles of MTEs and MGA-designers; Context—Analogous and interactive learning process.&nbsp; Secondly, within the whole co-constructed and designed-based PD activities, MGA-designers endeavored to simultaneously learn how to design and exercise the design task of MGA modules.&nbsp; Thus, MGA-designer A’s designing process was used to illustrate these MGA-designers’ learning process within the PD program, where two contrary cases were presented to compare and contrast his designing processes.&nbsp; In these two cases, the three-phase “problem-solving” model (i.e. entry, attack, and review) was employed for describing the learning context, where the four-element PD model is embedded correspondingly

Компютърни експерименти в обучението по моден дизайн

This article examines innov ative techniques in design copyright collages, designs and promotional materials. Di scussed are computer tools for processing photos and drawings. Presented realized projects of young designers designed in co mputer programs Photos hop and CorelDraw. Comment on current projects are students first-year unde rgraduate program Fashion New Bulgarian University. An attempt to parse the vari ous stages of graphic design digital collage

The role of object in service design

For successful service design, how to utilize users’ insight, knowledge and experiences are core factor to consider. How to facilitate the users’ value creation by providing and delivering resources and processes through interactions between service and user is also another key factor. Designers focus on designing the interactions- touchpoints/evidences- as important part of their work. Through the service design processes of exploration and creation, the designers design a physical-, visual- or virtual- object to facilitate users’ service experience. However, the research of the designed object is limited only on their importance or a certain case. This study seeks different roles of the designed object in service design through case studies, which collected from three years of TOUCHPOINT- service design journals. Thematic analysis and affinity diagram tool were conducted to analyze collected data and categorize found different roles. The study addresses five roles of the object: Empowering, Emotion, Enriching, Education, Enhanc-ing. Designed objects empower users and their rights, deliver certain emotion or solve emotional problems, enrich users’ lives by providing opportunities for users to interact others, deliver knowledge and share information and provide communication channels, and finally enhance service performance. Furthermore an object sometimes takes multiples roles or changes its role to another. Designers bodily know how to utilize unique feature of the object in designing services. Some of objects enable co-creation and on-going service changes. The object and service element supports each other. The study suggests that understanding the role of object in service design reinforces ser-vice designers’ competence in shaping users’ service experience