The pallet project

Engaging in issues of sustainability, and how I make a difference as a designer, is very important for the way I run and develop my studio. How can I use design as agent for social change and empowering local communities? The Pallet Project takes this philosophy to a newly interactive conclusion

Co-Created Personas: Engaging and Empowering Users with Diverse Needs Within the Design Process

Personas are powerful tools for designing technology and envisioning its usage. They are widely used to imagine archetypal users around whom to orient design work. We have been exploring co-created personas as a technique to use in co-design with users who have diverse needs. Our vision was that this would broaden the demographic and liberate co-designers of their personal relationship with a health condition. This paper reports three studies where we investigated using co-created personas with people who had Parkinson’s disease, dementia or aphasia. Observational data of co-design sessions were collected and analysed. Findings revealed that the co-created personas encouraged users with diverse needs to engage with co-designing. Importantly, they also aforded additional benefts including empowering users within a more accessible design process. Refecting on the outcomes from the diferent user groups, we conclude with a discussion of the potential for co-created personas to be applied more broadly

Prototype system for supporting the incremental modelling of vague geometric configurations

In this paper the need for Intelligent Computer Aided Design (Int.CAD) to jointly support design and learning assistance is introduced. The paper focuses on presenting and exploring the possibility of realizing learning assistance in Int.CAD by introducing a new concept called Shared Learning. Shared Learning is proposed to empower CAD tools with more useful learning capabilities than that currently available and thereby provide a stronger interaction of learning between a designer and a computer. Controlled computational learning is proposed as a means whereby the Shared Learning concept can be realized. The viability of this new concept is explored by using a system called PERSPECT. PERSPECT is a preliminary numerical design tool aimed at supporting the effective utilization of numerical experiential knowledge in design. After a detailed discussion of PERSPECT's numerical design support, the paper presents the results of an evaluation that focuses on PERSPECT's implementation of controlled computational learning and ability to support a designer's need to learn. The paper then discusses PERSPECT's potential as a tool for supporting the Shared Learning concept by explaining how a designer and PERSPECT can jointly learn. There is still much work to be done before the full potential of Shared Learning can be realized. However, the authors do believe that the concept of Shared Learning may hold the key to truly empowering learning in Int.CAD

A New Consumerism: The influence of social technologies on product design

Social media has enabled a new style of consumerism. Consumers are no longer passive recipients; instead they are assuming active and participatory roles in product design and production, facilitated by interaction and collaboration in virtual communities. This new participatory culture is blurring the boundaries between the specific roles of designer, consumer and producer, creating entrepreneurial opportunities for designers, and empowering consumers to influence product strategies. Evolving designer-consumer interactions are enabling an enhanced model of co-production, through a value-adding social exchange that is driving changes in consumer behaviour and influencing both product strategies and design practice. The consumer is now a knowledgeable participant, or prosumer, who can contribute to user–centered research through crowd sourcing, collaborate and co-create through open-source or open-innovation platforms, assist creative endeavors by pledging venture capital through crowd funding and advocate the product in blogs and forums. Social media- enabled product implementation strategies working in conjunction with digital production technologies (e.g. additive manufacture), enable consumer-directed adaptive customisation, product personalisation, and self-production, with once passive consumers becoming product produsers. Not only is social media driving unprecedented consumer engagement and significant behavioural change, it is emerging as a major enabler of design entrepreneurship, creating new collaborative opportunities. Innovative processes in design practice are emerging, such as the provision of digital artifacts and customisable product frameworks, rather than standardised manufactured solutions. This paper examines the influence of social media-enabled product strategies on the methodology of the next generation of product designers, and discusses the need for an educational response

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

The Visual Driver; promoting clarity and coherence

Drawing from a research-based case study for a vision support charity, this professional paper articulates the role of a 'visual driver' as a key tool in shaping a rebranding. The 'visual driver' is a visual-based rubric of nine subjects, each with an image critically selected to capture the personality and essence of an entity. The paper discusses challenges around identifying the subtleties of a brand, how it behaves, its world outlook, its tone of voice. All difficult to define. However, once established, the designer’s journey towards creating a successful brand with personality becomes clear. Furthermore, the participatory nature of the 'visual driver' rubric – as it passes between designer and client, communicates early ideation as well as initiating an informed dialogue between multiple parties. The flexibility, accessibility and the participatory nature of this method are especially critical when working alongside clients with sensory impairments. The case study within the paper demonstrates the flexibility of the ‘Visual Driver’ to incorporate textures which enhance the effectiveness of the tool for an organisation dealing with visual impairment. The paper articulates how the 'visual rubric' enables designers to work collaboratively with clients, comparing their creative thinking and ensuring a better awareness and understanding of the brand challenges from client and end-user perspectives. Increasingly, developing a modern brand strategy demands a multiplicity of additional sensory feedback— aural, touch sonic etc. The paper concludes by presenting and discussing how a multisensory 'visual driver' was used to facilitate a rebrand

Sharing the vision:representing the matters of concern for design-led fledgling companies in Scotland

Design is being performed on an ever-increasing spectrum of complex practices arising in response to emerging markets and technologies, co-design, digital interaction, service design and cultures of innovation. This emerging notion of design has led to an expansive array of collaborative and facilitation skills to demonstrate and share how such methods can shape innovation. The meaning of these design things in practice can't be taken for granted as matters of fact, which raises a key challenge for design to represent its role through the contradictory nature of matters of concern. This paper explores an innovative, object-oriented approach within the field of design research, visually combining an actor-network theory framework with situational analysis, to report on the role of design for fledgling companies in Scotland, established and funded through the knowledge exchange hub Design in Action (DiA). Key findings and visual maps are presented from reflective discussions with actors from a selection of the businesses within DiA's portfolio. The suggestion is that any notions of strategic value, of engendering meaningful change, of sharing the vision of design, through design things, should be grounded in the reflexive interpretations of matters of concern that emerge

Selling fashion: realizing the research potential of the House of Fraser archive, University of Glasgow Archive Services

The House of Fraser archive is a rich resource for the study of the development of fashion retailing in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century. It is, however, underexploited by textile, fashion and retail historians. During the summer of 2009, the University of Glasgow archive services will complete an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project which seeks to improve the accessibility of the Archive. Adopting a progressive approach to archival description, the project is developing an innovative online catalogue, providing fuller access to information about the Archive and the resources contained within it

DIY networking as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research on the hybrid city

DIY networking is a technology with special characteristics compared to the public Internet, which holds a unique potential for empowering citizens to shape their hybrid urban space toward conviviality and collective awareness. It can also play the role of a “boundary object” for facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and participatory processes between different actors: researchers, engineers, practitioners, artists, designers, local authorities, and activists. This position paper presents a social learning framework, the DIY networking paradigm, that we aim to put in the centre of the hybrid space design process. We first introduce our individual views on the role of design as discussed in the fields of engineering, urban planning, urban interaction design, design research, and community informatics. We then introduce a simple methodology for combining these diverse perspectives into a meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of related events with different structure and framing. We conclude with a short summary of a selection of these events, which serves also as an introduction to the CONTACT workshop on facilitating information sharing between strangers, in the context of the Hybrid City III conference

Design as Externalization: enabling research

The article is concerned with a central contribution of designing to information visualization in the digital humanities. The activity is characterized as one of externalization, instantiation in visible or tangible form of ideas that might otherwise be internal to the minds of the designer and other participants. A spectrum of different interpretations of this process in the existing literature is discussed, focusing on early attempts to theorize designing as a means of creating new knowledge, and especially the ways in which that new knowledge contributes to defining or redefining the question or problem to be addressed. The arguments are illustrated with recent practical examples from the authors’ own work in designing with a range of cultural organizations, museums and archives. The article concludes with reflections on how projects may best benefit from this work of design, empowering the designer as a co-researcher, alongside the historian, curator or other humanities scholar