3,359 research outputs found

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

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    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

    Thinking geo/graphically: The interdisciplinary space between graphic design and cultural geography

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    In relation to the understanding and representation of everyday life and place, it is clear that many cultural geographers are beginning to explore what one might call “creative” qualitative research methods, the majority of which draw on the discipline of fine art. In particular, the use of film and sound within research is increasing, as are calls for conference submissions and journal articles relating to such work. Such developments within cultural geography mirror those across qualitative research within the broader social science arena, and for geographers the use of this type of media is perhaps a way to contend with the ongoing, relational nature of place and the representational challenge that brings. In contrast, the perception of the traditional medium of print seems to be that it is lacking the fluid nature of film or sound, only capable of generating representations of place that are too “static” or “fixed.” However, this paper proposes that interdisciplinary collaboration between cultural geography and graphic design offers much with regard to the development of print-based creative methods for understanding and representing everyday life and place. It suggests that the form of the book offers an opportunity to develop geo/graphic work that engages both form and content in a holistic way, enabling the production of a space of interpretation and multi-sensory exploration for the reader. Such work engages with contemporary debates around representation, and positions the reader’s interaction with the book as both cognitively and performatively embodied. For the researcher, the geo/graphic design process also functions as an analytical tool, one that, through the development of the material form of the work, re-situates them in place and enables further reflection and understanding

    Virtual reality for assembly methods prototyping: a review

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    Assembly planning and evaluation is an important component of the product design process in which details about how parts of a new product will be put together are formalized. A well designed assembly process should take into account various factors such as optimum assembly time and sequence, tooling and fixture requirements, ergonomics, operator safety, and accessibility, among others. Existing computer-based tools to support virtual assembly either concentrate solely on representation of the geometry of parts and fixtures and evaluation of clearances and tolerances or use simulated human mannequins to approximate human interaction in the assembly process. Virtual reality technology has the potential to support integration of natural human motions into the computer aided assembly planning environment (Ritchie et al. in Proc I MECH E Part B J Eng 213(5):461–474, 1999). This would allow evaluations of an assembler’s ability to manipulate and assemble parts and result in reduced time and cost for product design. This paper provides a review of the research in virtual assembly and categorizes the different approaches. Finally, critical requirements and directions for future research are presented

    The theater-system technique: agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction, applied to highly automated vehicles

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    In this paper, the theater-system technique, a method for agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction concepts is described. The technique is based on the Wizard-of-Oz approach, originally used for emulating automated speech recognition, and is extended towards an interactive, user-centered design technique. The paper describes the design process using the theater-system technique, the technical build-up of the theater-system, and an application of the technique: the design of a haptic-multimodal interaction strategy for highly automated vehicles. The use of the theater-system in the design process is manifold: It is used for the concrete design work of the design team, for the assessment of user expectations as well as for early usability assessments, extending the principles of user-centered design towards a dynamically balanced design

    An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

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    How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

    Special Session on Industry 4.0

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