The development of conceptual models and frameworks to inform design for co‐design in mass customisation

As mass customisation (MC) grows in both popularity and accessibility, there is an increasing understanding of its practical implementation. Much of the current research in the field of MC is quantitative; driven by the business, engineering and management perspectives crucial in operationalising the process. The customer codesigner is acknowledged as an integral part of the MC product and purchasing process, yet the experience of the customer as a co‐designer remains relatively unexplored in the literature. This thesis stems from the design research disciplines and reports on an investigation of individual customer co‐design experiences. This research study posits that the experience of co‐design consists not only of the specific activities at the ‘product configurator’ (as commonly described in the literature), but instead that a co‐design experience comprises four distinct stages that encompass the entire purchasing experience from the beginning of co‐design activity through to the receipt of the customised product and beyond; these stages being ‘explore’, ‘engage’, ‘anticipate’ and ‘own’. A multi‐method research design is used comprising: literature review; immersive research techniques; customer journey mapping and design probes. From case studies of each customer codesign experience, relatable information and insights can be drawn that inform designing for co‐design. This doctoral study presents series of new relatable models and frameworks that surpass anything currently available in the literature. They conceptualise and visualise the customer co‐design experience, and inform design for co‐design. These reveal not only what is happening now, but also support proposals for what could or should be happening now. The product envelope model brings together the findings from both the MC and customer experience literature to place the solution space within its broader context, highlighting the importance of service and brand within an MC product offering. The customer corridor model characterises the stages and phases of a co‐design experience within the product envelope and choreographs the interplay between co‐designer and producer. The experience matrix provides a visual representation of the placement and duration of key touch points that occur across the customer corridor, and offers a systematic approach to considering the role of enduring touch points throughout a co‐design experience. In concluding this phase of the work, new opportunities have emerged that provide alternative approaches for understanding and designing for customer co‐design experiences

Crossroads of Cuisine

Crossroads of Cuisine provides a history of foods, and foodways in terms of exchanges taking place in Central Asia and in surrounding areas such as China, Korea or Iran during the last 5000 years, stressing the manner in which East and West, West and East grew together through food. It provides a discussion of geographical foundations, and an interlocking historical and cultural overview going down to the present day, with a comparative country by country survey of foods and recipes. An ethnographic photo essay embracing all parts of the book binds it all together, and helps make topics discussed vivid and approachable. The book is important for explaining key relationships that have not always been made clear in past scholarship

Gothic lyricism

Considerable academic debate exists regarding the primacy of opposed tensions, which are commonly represented within Gothic literature (Hogle 2002, pp. 12-14). These paradoxical tensions support conservative values, and also work as a counterforce of representation driving towards revolutionary notions (Hogle 2002, p. 13). I have long been fascinated by Gothic literature’s capacity, via lyrical prose and verse, to relate terrible happenings with beautiful language, imagery, and/or structural innovation. This is a practice-led research thesis with a two-part structure, employing a work of prose/poetry novella along with an exegetical dissertation. Via dissertational inquiry, focus is given to a history of The Gothic—its politico-cultural roots and effects in literature and architecture. Much attention is given to a single binary of the Gothic genre, via the novella component. This dichotomy is the often-beautiful musicality of Gothic writing as it expresses ideas of debasement and death. Variations of this binary and its disjunctions between lyrical exquisiteness and expressions of horror are in high fidelity to life as it sometimes terrorises personhood. The ‘beauty/horror’ binaries of Gothicism echo somewhat the dislocation between the existential encounter of barbarism or death and the cognitive acceptance of these ‘Gothic happenings’ as relative truths. Each of the project’s rhetorical components espouse against some academic concession that Gothic binaries, via representational imbalances of power sustain patriarchal establishments. In contrast, this thesis finds Gothicism and its historical representations, textual and architectural, largely egalitarian or potently in favour of equalitarian revolution