Empowering Expression for Users with Aphasia through Constrained Creativity

Creative activities allow people to express themselves in rich, nuanced ways. However, being creative does not always come easily. For example, people with speech and language impairments, such as aphasia, face challenges in creative activities that involve language. In this paper, we explore the concept of constrained creativity as a way of addressing this challenge and enabling creative writing. We report an app, MakeWrite, that supports the constrained creation of digital texts through automated redaction. The app was co-designed with and for people with aphasia and was subsequently explored in a workshop with a group of people with aphasia. Participants were not only successful in crafting novel language, but, importantly, self-reported that the app was crucial in enabling them to do so. We refect on the potential of technology-supported constrained creativity as a means of empowering expression amongst users with diverse needs

Does design education always produce designers?

By questioning what we mean by the term ‘designer’ this paper describes the ideas behind a new Open University course in Design Thinking. The paper shows how the creative skills of students can be consciously developed, and deliberately applied outside of the creative industries in what are termed ‘embedded’ contexts. The distance learning model of education pioneered by The Open University is briefly sketched before the developments and ideas behind the new course in Design Thinking, in particular the concept of ‘social practice’ are explained in detail. The paper presents the results of an extensive student and tutor survey regarding the course before concluding that, although it is possible to teach design practice by distance, practice-based expertise for tutors remains a critical success factor

Weaving Lighthouses and Stitching Stories: Blind and Visually Impaired People Designing E-textiles

We describe our experience of working with blind and visually impaired people to create interactive art objects that are personal to them, through a participatory making process using electronic textiles (e-textiles) and hands-on crafting techniques. The research addresses both the practical considerations about how to structure hands-on making workshops in a way which is accessible to participants of varying experience and abilities, and how effective the approach was in enabling participants to tell their own stories and feel in control of the design and making process. The results of our analysis is the offering of insights in how to run e-textile making sessions in such a way for them to be more accessible and inclusive to a wider community of participants

Guidelines Towards Better Participation of Older Adults in Software Development Processes using a new SPIRAL Method and Participatory Approach

This paper presents a new method of engaging older participants in the process of application and IT solutions development for older adults for emerging IT and tech startups. A new method called SPIRAL (Support for Participant Involvement in Rapid and Agile software development Labs) is proposed which adds both sustainability and flexibility to the development process with older adults. This method is based on the participatory approach and user empowerment of older adults with the aid of a bootstrapped Living Lab concept and it goes beyond well established user-centered and empathic design. SPIRAL provides strategies for direct involvement of older participants in the software development processes from the very early stage to support the agile approach with rapid prototyping, in particular in new and emerging startup environments with limited capabilities, including time, team and resources

Recovery From Design

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form

GLOBAL GIAN: Online and Off line Incubation of Grassroots Innovations and Traditional Knowledge: Towards Tianjin Declaration

The forces of globalisation are known to squeeze space for local initiatives, ventures and sometimes even innovations. The markets are dominated by large players whose scale of economy makes it difficult for new entrants, even with better products and services to survive. At the same time, there are certain sectoral and regional niches and need segments in society which remain unfilled even by the forces of globalisation. The growth thus does not become inclusive. India, China and Brazil among three major countries in the world are facing this challenge to varying degree. There are certain needs of small farmers, artisans, urban vendors, mechanics and other self-employed people or small and tiny firms which are not met by the local R&D and design institutions in public or private sector. When these needs remain unfulfilled for long time, they may give rise to either apathy, adjustment or even dissatisfaction. Sometimes, this dissatisfaction may evolve into social disaffection leading to tensions, feeling of deprivation and exclusion. An international conference was organised at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (TUFE), Tianjin, China to bring together the partners from China and Brazil besides representatives of 15 other countries. Tianjin declaration was issued at the end of the conference to invite stakeholders from all around the world to join this movement (see annexure 1). It is hoped that academics, industry associations, entrepreneurs, designers and technologists will join hands to strengthen the resolve of grassroots innovators to reach global markets. We have to ensure that disadvantaged people around the world are not deprived of opportunities of learning from creative people in different countries. The barriers of language, literacy and localism will have to be overcome.

Learning the Designer's Preferences to Drive Evolution

This paper presents the Designer Preference Model, a data-driven solution that pursues to learn from user generated data in a Quality-Diversity Mixed-Initiative Co-Creativity (QD MI-CC) tool, with the aims of modelling the user's design style to better assess the tool's procedurally generated content with respect to that user's preferences. Through this approach, we aim for increasing the user's agency over the generated content in a way that neither stalls the user-tool reciprocal stimuli loop nor fatigues the user with periodical suggestion handpicking. We describe the details of this novel solution, as well as its implementation in the MI-CC tool the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer. We present and discuss our findings out of the initial tests carried out, spotting the open challenges for this combined line of research that integrates MI-CC with Procedural Content Generation through Machine Learning.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted and to appear in proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, EvoApplications 202

Design in the new Do-It-Yourself age: trialing workshops for repairing

Traces of a renovated interest in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) have been observed in relation to technological advances and lowered prices facilitating the access to the practice at different levels of skills. This research envisaged the DIY trend as an opportunity to foster sustainable impact in a society where everyone can and does design. In this paper the role of Design in this ‘new’ DIY age is addressed. In particular professional designer as facilitator in investigated when supporting the DIY practitioners in repairing, reusing and in general practices prolonging product lifespan (RE-DIY). The facilitator role is studied through action research approach by setting four workshops in Italy in which designers supported practitioners in repairing and repurposing in ideal workspaces. The repairing workshops validated the hypothesis of a positive contribution by design in supporting the development of RE-DIY practice by optimizing resources (e.g. saving materials), informing on processing (e.g. 3D printing), increasing quality (e.g. refining the aesthetics). Critical components of the workshops have been identified such as the relevance of facilities, availability of time, emotional attachment to the item. These can be overtaken through the use of professional Design expertise based on abductive approach, finding an ordering principle and reasoning on multiple levels

The four powers of design: A value model in design management

This analysis proposes a framework to bridge the gap between the world of designers and the world of managers. Illuminating her thesis with examples from Steelcase, Decathlon, and other companies, Brigitte Borja de Mozota parallels design's ability to differentiate, integrate, transform, and contribute to the enterprise and bottom-line results with a corporate focus on markets, processes, talent, and finances