Alternative Presents and Speculative Futures: Designing fictions through the extrapolation and evasion of product lineages.

The core question addressed by this invited keynote and conference paper is how fictions are designed to negotiate, critique and realise the multiplicity of possible new technological futures. Focusing on methods, processes and strategies the presentation initially describes how things/technologies become products, employing the perspective of domestication to describe the transition from extraordinary to everyday. This development suggests a product history, a traceable lineage that goes back through generations, each one a small iteration of the previous. By modelling this lineage, design fictions can do two things: 1. Project current emerging technological development to create Speculative Futures: hypothetical products of tomorrow. 2. Break free of the lineage to speculate on Alternative Presents. These fictions effectively act as cultural litmus paper, either offering vignettes of how it might be to live with the technology in question or challenging contemporary applications of technology through demonstrable alternatives. The presentation focused on how these two types of fiction are created, how they differ from science fiction, other modes of future thinking and technological critique - more specifically how both methodologies utilise designed artefacts. What informs the development, aesthetics, behaviour, interactions and function of these objects? Once created, how and where do they operate? How can we gauge and understand their impact and meaning? As a consequence of the presentation Auger was invited to run workshops and projects in Basel (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst) and HEAD (Haute école d’art et de design), Geneva and is advising on the design of a new masters programme at the Basel Hochschule

Re-engaging with the intimacy of materials through touch

In today’s retail led world consumers are suffocating through an excess of soulless products. It is time we paused to breathe. "Touch has a memory" - John Keats. [A1] It is often assumed that product designers, especially in the fashion industry, will have a deep understanding of the tactile properties of materials that they use. This tacit knowledge is also assumed to be an essential ingredient for intimate engagement with the materials, for touch is about direct contact, close and personal; it is not sensation at a distance in the way of sound and vision. Through this intimacy, the designer can fully understand the potential sensory impact on their customers and can share their knowledge of this intimacy with the customers. However the rise of fast, offshore manufacture has led to a virtual design approach where cad-cam rules and the first direct contact that the designer has with their material is often when they receive the finished goods. The approach has become embedded in teaching, where virtual-oriented design is cheap and simple as well as effective. This runs in parallel to what Black [A2] describes as "The Fashion Paradox", i.e. the tension between an industry which has become dependent on the overconsumption of the consumer society made possible by low cost design and manufacture processes with emerging imperatives of environmental and ethical issues. It has become easy to make and sell a lot of goods, but perhaps a new approach is needed before we drown in an ocean of stuff. We hypothesise that a business strategy to introduce a new intimacy with materials to consumers through goods and experiences that celebrate "the joy of touch" will a) spawn better, higher value goods with cutting-edge appeal and b) provide a positive piece in the jigsaw necessary to address the Fashion Paradox, taking the line described by Fletcher and Early in "5-Ways" [A3, A4] that touch is relevant to the production of "supersatisfiers...which begin to break the chain of consumption and dissatisfaction". There are always many old voices that decry the lack of materials knowledge in the "designers of today", and we do not wish simply to join them. To avoid this yet to achieve new thinking in the territory we take a tangential approach that does not get stuck into stuff to early. Accordingly, the method will apply a method of research and teaching based on storytelling in multidisciplinary teams developed by Smith and Sams [A5, A6]. This reflects on the role of designer-storytellers described by Seah [A7] and Erikson [A8]. Thus, perhaps counter-intuitively, we seek to stimulate word-based approaches to a physical effect. The resultant project vehicle "Touch Stories" is inspired by the observations of experimental psychologist Charles Spence, e.g. [A9], that people have difficulty in detecting and remembering touch, but can be taught touch skills. This builds on earlier design projects "Touch Gourmet" by Torres and Sams [A10]. We provide below a short summary of the science context as well as the more usual design context for the project. The work described here is our first experiment using this method in the touch context with a fashion student community of young business and design professionals. In recognition, we report in the style of a science experiment - which also reflects the background of the second author. We are at the very start of a journey which we intend to take well beyond fashion (for the challenge of new materials and "too much stuff" spreads well beyond Fashion and its Paradox), thus to stretch and develop the territory, through the processes described in [A5, A6]. It’s a journey the design world needs to ‘touch on’

Work of Art: Understanding Enterprise and Employability in Art and Design HE

A publication created to support learning and teaching in enterprise and employability in art and design higher education. We hope by sharing what enterprise and employability looks like in practice we can engage in discourse, develop an understanding across disciplines and use these aspirations to develop future strategies across UAL and within art and design practice

Collaboration : a key competence for competing in the 21st century

It is now an accepted fact that in the 21st century competition will be between networks of organisations and individuals, which efficiently and effectively integrate their competencies and resources in order to compete in a global economy (Bititci et al, 2004). Similarly the SME'2000 conference, which was held in Bologna, concluded that 'SMEs belonging to networks are often more competitive and innovative than those operating in isolation. When working together, SMEs can increase their focus through specialisation in functions that are complementary within their networks'

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Transition Processes Towards Internal Networks

As a result of many changes in the competitive landscape, knowledge has become a crucial resource of firms, which has impelled firms to change their forms of organizing. Evidence suggests that internal networks, as such an alternative form of organizing, progress to emerge to facilitate the organization and management of knowledge. Insights into how firms actually change into internal networks have been sparse, however. On the basis of three case studies conducted at Rabobank-one at the group level, one at the local member banks, and one at the business unit Spectrum-this paper furnishes this lack of inquiry with new insights. The evidence illustrates that when firms change into internal network forms of organizing, horizontal knowledge flows between subunits are facilitated.differential paces of change;internal networks;knowledge flows

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.

This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level. The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor. The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits. The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process

Supporting community engagement through teaching, student projects and research

The Education Acts statutory obligations for ITPs are not supported by the Crown funding model. Part of the statutory role of an ITP is “... promotes community learning and by research, particularly applied and technological research ...” [The education act 1989]. In relation to this a 2017 TEC report highlighted impaired business models and an excessive administrative burden as restrictive and impeding success. Further restrictions are seen when considering ITPs attract < 3 % of the available TEC funding for research, and ~ 20 % available TEC funding for teaching, despite having overall student efts of ~ 26 % nationally. An attempt to improve performance and engage through collaboration (community, industry, tertiary) at our institution is proving successful. The cross-disciplinary approach provides students high level experience and the technical stretch needed to be successful engineers, technologists and technicians. This study presents one of the methods we use to collaborate externally through teaching, student projects and research

A Proposal for Supply Chain Management Research That Matters: Sixteen High Priority Research Projects for the Future

On May 4th, 2016 in Milton, Ontario, the World Class Supply Chain 2016 Summit was held in partnership between CN Rail and Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business & Economics to realize an ambitious goal: raise knowledge of contemporary supply chain management (SCM) issues through genuine peer-­‐to-­‐peer dialogue among practitioners and scholars. A principal element of that knowledge is an answer to the question: to gain valid and reliable insights for attaining SCM excellence, what issues must be researched further? This White Paper—which is the second of the summit’s two White Papers—addresses the question by proposing a research agenda comprising 16 research projects. This research agenda covers the following: The current state of research knowledge on issues that are of the highest priority to today’s SCM professionals Important gaps in current research knowledge and, consequently, the major questions that should be answered in sixteen future research projects aimed at addressing those gaps Ways in which the research projects can be incorporated into student training and be supported by Canada’s major research funding agencies That content comes from using the summit’s deliberations to guide systematic reviews of both the SCM research literature and Canadian institutional mechanisms that are geared towards building knowledge through research. The major conclusions from those reviews can be summarized as follows: While the research literature to date has yielded useful insights to inform the pursuit of SCM excellence, several research questions of immense practical importance remain unanswered or, at best, inadequately answered The body of research required to answer those questions will have to focus on what the summit’s first White Paper presented as four highly impactful levers that SCM executives must expertly handle to attain excellence: collaboration; information; technology; and talent The proposed research agenda can be pursued in ways that achieve the two inter-­‐related goals of creating new actionable knowledge and building the capacity of today’s students to become tomorrow’s practitioners and contributors to ongoing knowledge growth in the SCM field This White Paper’s details underlying these conclusions build on the information presented in the summit’s first White Paper. That is, while the first White Paper (White Paper 1) identified general SCM themes for which the research needs are most urgent, this White Paper goes further along the path of industry-academia knowledge co-creation. It does so by examining and articulating those needs against the backdrop of available research findings, translating the needs into specific research projects that should be pursued, and providing guidelines for how those projects can be carried out