Facing Complex Problems through Visuals: Visual Thinking and Visual Communication Practices to Enhance Understanding of Complex Problems

New technologies, lifestyles and other irreversible changes are generating unprecedented interconnectedness challenges and problems that we face as society and organizations. These changes are also bringing new possibilities to visual communication practices. In this major research project I will argue that rhetoric and logical reasoning alone are insufficient and must be enriched by visual thinking and visual communication to enhance better understanding, in the face of these interconnected and complex scenarios. Through a process of literature review and research of the main trends in professional practice on visual thinking and visual communication practices, this paper describes the particularities that make these tools so effective for facing complex problems. As I will argue, visual thinking and visual practices expand our ability to share common mental models, enhance participation and co-creative design, boost our understanding of complex information, facilitate data analysis and systems thinking, and enable us to connect emotionally with audiences

Software Usability

This volume delivers a collection of high-quality contributions to help broaden developers’ and non-developers’ minds alike when it comes to considering software usability. It presents novel research and experiences and disseminates new ideas accessible to people who might not be software makers but who are undoubtedly software users

Is Augmented Reality the future of business? A qualitative study on factors affecting the potential for mass adoption of augmented reality in business processes.

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that might bring radical shifts to the way we live and interact with the world around us. This thesis examines the benefits and use cases of AR in business processes. Furthermore, it examines the limitations and barriers that can explain why more companies are not committing to the technology. The aim of the thesis is to determine if AR belongs in the future of business, and if so, when there will be mass adoption. To do so, we interviewed 10 individuals with experience and expertise in AR. Using thematic analysis, we divided the findings into three different time periods, yesterday, today, and future. Limitations and barriers were further divided into four categories: hardware, UX and software, culture and society, and company. Our findings reveal several benefits to AR, for example improved efficiency, accelerating training and reducing costs. More importantly, AR is set to drastically change how we see and interact with our surroundings. It has the potential to become an integral part of our daily lives. However, findings highlight several limitations and barriers that must be overcome for AR to reach mass adoption. Most prominently, cumbersome hardware, and the need for acceptance and a normalization of AR in both companies and society. Nevertheless, we conclude that mass adoption of AR is likely to happen in the next 10 years. Consequently, the thesis imply that companies should prepare themselves proactively for an AR revolution, so that once the limitations and barriers are softened, companies are able to keep pace with the technological advancements and thrive in the years to come.nhhma

Big Data and Technologies of Self

The entry of Big Data into the educational field has generated noticeable binary reactions and a recycling of criticisms already directed at the quantification of reality, datafication in the social sciences, standardization in education, and neoliberalism in the West. This paper reapproaches Big Data’s entry into education from a curriculum studies perspective, which deploys interdisciplinary approaches from philosophy, history, sociology and politics of knowledge and wisdom. The analysis of key definitional debates, binary reactions, and systematization are considered from the point of view of historically shifting technologies of self, as core conditions of possibility for the controversies that emerge when two fields intersect. Specifically, the alliance presumed between self and knowledge, and of both with reality, have long and provincial heritages that contemporary movements such as Big Data seem to reanimate and reconfigure. The paper concludes with consideration of whether Big Data can be understood as a gamechanger in the educational and curriculum fields and if so, on what basis

Tactile Interfaces: Epistemic Techne in Information Design

This dissertation is a study of the rhetorical concept of techne and how it might inform the field of Information Design, specifically in an Instructional Design space. I argue that current models of Information Design draw insights from (a) the scientistic models that emphasize rational and universal reach (b) the craft tradition that places emphasis on mechanistic acquisition of the right skills and (c) an interpretive rhetorical model. These perspectives dominate the Instructional Design paradigm, rendering systems-based design processes that at times eschew designing in favor of organizing. I suggest that the discipline requires a remediated epistemic techne shaped by models proper to the crafts and broadened to physical embodiment and sculpting physical knowledge. This enhanced model emerging from practices in sculpture and enhanced by participatory/meta form of design is epistemic techne, given that the philosophy of techne is a high form of practical reasoning whose adaptation to Instructional Design is knowledge in making. Because the literature of Information Design is vast and still emerging, my analysis emphasizes the dominant perspectives. The challenge posed by both the histories of techne and of Information Design is that of a series of rhetorical paradigms that have at once prescribed and defined these concepts. What we see emerging, and certainly, what I wish to put forth, is a genuine ethos of expertise amenable to changing strategies of Information Design demonstrative of an epistemic techne

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Proceedings of the International Conference ‘Between Data and Senses; Architecture, Neuroscience and the Digital Worlds’.

The cross-over between the digital and the physical is being increasingly addressed in design disciplines, architecture, arts and urban studies. Artists and designers increasingly make use of hard data to interpret the world and/or create meaningful and sensuous environments or design objects. Architects attempt to measure neurophysiological data to understand better the human experience in spaces. Designers script parametric processes to translate data into responsive, meaningful and/or aesthetically intriguing installations. Scientists and architects/ artists/ designers collaborate to visualise data in new and creative ways so as to trigger and reveal further connections, interpretations and readings. Practices such as the above attempt to break down the dichotomy between data and the sensuous (or else the digital and the physical). They translate elusive, ephemeral and intangible aspects of a place into solid data. In other instances the solid data are interpreted and represented in a way so as to be perceived by the different senses and/or experienced in a different manner. In this context, methods and conceptual frameworks of different disciplines need to engage in a dialogue; and through these cross-disciplinary practices, new strategies and processes emerge. This publication aims to present collaborative projects, where methods from more than one discipline are involved. This publication also addresses how collaborators from different disciplines can work together to deal with current design and social issues