Are We All Designers?

Several design writers have proposed, or at least implied, that “…we are all designers…” through the way we manipulate the environment around us, select the items we wish to own, plan, build, buy, arrange, and restructure things all in a form of design. During the same time, design as a behavioural phenomenon has increased its capacity and breadth and as a result, design activity extends from the objects we use on a daily basis to cities, landscapes, nations, cultures, bodies, genes, political systems, digital existences, food production, the way we travel and even cloning sheep. This paper reports on an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that seeks to explore current models of creative practice, examining where disciplinary, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological edges lie in an attempt to define the significant drivers of any movements across disciplinary boundaries. The project’s creative workshop activities have also facilitated comparison of the outputs between single-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary group working and has allowed the research team to explore how non-designers and designers alike transfigure creative space during practical design exercises. The outputs of the first workshop pose fundamental questions for the future of design education models based purely on disciplinary perspectives and furthermore questions whether current understandings of design thinking encompass more generalist human traits. The need to educate designers who can surf across disciplinary boundaries to tackle the 21st century’s emerging complex and wicked social, environmental and economic issues suggests a radical rethink against the individual and disciplinary based perspectives that largely prevail

Circularity Indicators for Packaging: A Literature Review and System-Based Classification

The transition to a Circular Economy (CE) in the packaging industry is vital to address growing environmental problems. Circularity indicators play a critical role in evaluating progress and guiding decision-making. However, existing indicators lack suitability for packaging and do not factor in the systemic considerations required for successful transition to CE. This study identified 21 circularity indicators relevant to packaging, critically assessing their: suitability for the packaging industry; and inclusion of systemic considerations across lifecycle stages such as sourcing, design and production, distribution, use, and end-of-life. Using a three-point scale (extensive inclusion, partial inclusion and none), the indicators are classified to establish the extent to which they consider systems, such as Packaging Characteristic, Infrastructure, Value and Regulation. The analysis highlights several gaps, including overemphasis on end-of-life systems, limited consideration of value for stakeholders, insufficient alignment with upstream systems, and inadequate consideration of regional infrastructure and regulation. The findings underline the need for future indicators to adopt a holistic approach, integrating diverse systems to enable effective CE strategy implementation. By highlighting these gaps, this research lays the groundwork for developing robust indicators that not only assess circularity but also guide the packaging industry toward a realistic implementation of CE strategies

Twenty questions about design behavior for sustainability, report of the International Expert Panel on behavioral science for design

How behavioral scientists, engineers, and architects can work together to advance how we all understand and practice design—in order to enhance sustainability in the built environment, and beyond.https://www.nature.com/documents/design_behavior_for_sustainability.pdfPublished versio

Question asking in design reviews: how does inquiry facilitate the learning interaction?

Design reviews are common educational practice in design disciplines, where students meet with instructors and other stakeholders to discuss the progress of a project they are engaged in. Such reviews are tightly coupled with project-based learning approaches in the design studio. A number of research studies have looked into various characteristics of instructor-student interactions during design reviews. In this study, we investigated the question-asking behavior of instructors, students and clients. We paid particular attention to high-level questions that relate to causal and generative reasoning. We analyzed 22 reviews involving six undergraduate industrial designers, who undertook design projects individually. We observed that the instructors and clients were not effective in modeling question asking behavior for the students during the reviews. We also observed that the structure of the reviews did not facilitate the desired behavior either. Consequently, we present a theoretical framework that proposes a more explicit structure for design reviews, deliberately addressing particular aspects of the design process. Ultimately, we suggest that instructors should be inquisitive about the students’ design approach, and that the students should take responsibility for reflectively articulating their design thinking and actions during design reviews

Immunotargeting of antigen xCT attenuates stem-like cell behavior and metastatic progression in breast cancer

Abstract Resistance to therapy and lack of curative treatments for metastatic breast cancer suggest that current therapies may be missing the subpopulation of chemoresistant and radioresistant cancer stem cells (CSC). The ultimate success of any treatment may well rest on CSC eradication, but specific anti-CSC therapies are still limited. A comparison of the transcriptional profiles of murine Her2+ breast tumor TUBO cells and their derived CSC-enriched tumorspheres has identified xCT, the functional subunit of the cystine/glutamate antiporter system xc−, as a surface protein that is upregulated specifically in tumorspheres. We validated this finding by cytofluorimetric analysis and immunofluorescence in TUBO-derived tumorspheres and in a panel of mouse and human triple negative breast cancer cell-derived tumorspheres. We further show that downregulation of xCT impaired tumorsphere generation and altered CSC intracellular redox balance in vitro, suggesting that xCT plays a functional role in CSC biology. DNA vaccination based immunotargeting of xCT in mice challenged with syngeneic tumorsphere-derived cells delayed established subcutaneous tumor growth and strongly impaired pulmonary metastasis formation by generating anti-xCT antibodies able to alter CSC self-renewal and redox balance. Finally, anti-xCT vaccination increased CSC chemosensitivity to doxorubicin in vivo, indicating that xCT immunotargeting may be an effective adjuvant to chemotherapy. Cancer Res; 76(1); 62–72. ©2015 AACR.</jats:p

A systematic review of optical coherence tomography findings in adults with mild traumatic brain injury

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is common with many patients suffering disabling long-term sequelae, with visual symptoms frequently reported. There are no objective biomarkers of mTBI that are routinely used in clinical practice. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been used in mTBI research, as it enables visualisation of the neuroretina, allowing measurement of the retinal nerve fibre layer and ganglion cell layer. This systematic review aims to appraise the available literature and assess whether there are significant changes within the retinal nerve fibre layer and ganglion cell layer in subjects after mTBI. A systematic review was carried out in accordance with PRISMA guidelines and registered with PROSPERO (Number: CRD42022360498). Four databases were searched for relevant literature published from inception until 1 September 2022. Abstracts and full texts were screened by three independent reviewers. Initial screening of databases yielded 341 publications, of these, three fulfilled all the criteria for inclusion. All three studies showed thinning of the retinal nerve fibre layer, whereas there were no significant changes in the ganglion cell layer. This systematic review demonstrated that thinning of the retinal nerve fibre layer (but not of the ganglion cell layer) is associated with mTBI. It provides preliminary evidence for the use of the retinal nerve fibre layer as a potential biomarker of damage to the visual system in mTBI. Further prospective longitudinal studies ensuring uniform diagnosis and accurate phenotyping of mTBI are needed to understand the effects on the visual system and potential of OCT as a prognostic biomarker