The situal self: fashioning identity discourses and loved objects

That we are what we have… is perhaps the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour’ (Belk 1988 p. 139). Women’s individual identity discourses are encoded socially and culturally through relationships with material objects and practices of dress. Relationships with loved objects yield an emotional and intellectual approach that literally unpicks fashion, exposing its operations, its relations to the body whilst at the same time binding feminine structures. This more expansive view of fashion situates the relationship material objects have to the self and how women relate to the material world as a universe of meaning making. The phenomenological inquiry presents a set of methods for practice based research including observations from workshops, in-depth interviews, case studies, films and questionnaires. The research as practice approach includes visual and verbal narratives that portray the essence of the self, interpreting the conceptual complexities that are inherently tentative, temporal and temporary in identity construction. The intimate research portraits are presented as the interplay between image and text; whilst the films portray the silent spaces in research contexts. These visual apparatus speak of expressions of embodiment. It is the articulation of these feminine practices that elucidates the incorporation of the socially constructed body into the corporeal. The situal thus embodies the lived relation as a result of the phenomena experienced in the specific social encounter. The situal, positions the social practices of fashion as a series of intimate identity discourses. Through this collective engagement, heterogeneous forms of knowledge emerge, transforming the act of dressing into a wider view of self and life

Designing Empathy: Ritual Respect

Design approaches have been developed to establish empathy between practitioners, researchers, collaborators, and participants in human-computer interaction (HCI) in the context of health, care, and wellbeing. Unpacking nuances of empathy, in this position paper we discuss our exploratory research into bereavement following miscarriage and consider how our visual practice has enhanced communication and comprehension within an interdisciplinary team. We propose that such accessible visualisations can stimulate a shared, compassionate understanding of user needs, and thus inform the development of empathic services, systems, and solutions

Making Design Explicit in Organisational Change: Detour or Latour

This paper explores a Latourian approach in addressing the challenge for Design Management to integrate design strategically within small, medium enterprises (SMEs). Design thinking’s positioning towards providing an accessible and open process for organisational change is argued to currently manifest a rhetorical detour around the role of design practice. The proposal is that the role of design can be expressed in the repeated interactions between participants and design artefacts, and how these are then translated into the organisation. The paper uses a case-­‐study method to produce a situated account of design work within a strategic design intervention with an SME. Drawing on Latourian principles around actor-­‐network theory (ANT), observations and accounts of the intervention are grounded in the use of tools, artefacts and activities deployed. This allows for analysis exploring the traceable influences design artefacts have on the work being performed and a reflective space for designers to assess their performative agency. The paper proposes an approach to the constraints and opportunities that design management encounter around the matters of concern for organisational change; and in so doing, how this can inform reflective design practice

Crafting Futures: Inspiring Interdisciplinary Innovation with Young Craft Artisans in Malaysia

The authors present a studio-based approach to inspiring interdisciplinary innovation with young craft artisans in Malaysia drawing on Crafting Futures, a project delivered in partnership between the British Council and The Glasgow School of Art. The Malaysian craft context currently faces a range of challenges that have led to a precarity in communities where craft has historically been a key mode of economic production, in addition to youth migration, particularly young women, from villages to urban centres. In response to this, Crafting Futures is predicated on the economic empowerment of young women in South East Asia through fostering innovation and design-led skills for female artisans. A Design Innovation pop-up studio programme was co-designed with Malaysian-based craft experts, and delivered to young craft students studying at the Insitut Kraf Negara, a specialist craft school in Rawang, Kuala Lumpur. Studio-based pedagogy underpinned the programme, with a focus on nurturing creative capacity-building towards cultivating a collective community of practice centred on Design Innovation approaches. The authors share insights surrounding the co-design process of programme development and delivery, where themes around gender, neo-colonialism and cross-cultural collaboration emerged. The authors conclude by discussing the value and impact of participation for the students, and set out directions for future regionally-focused research in the Malaysian craft context

Designing for reimagined communities

Within place-based design research the concept of community has become an increasingly important reference point, particularly in relation to the areas of co-design and participatory design. This Special Issue ‘Designing for Reimagined Communities’ emerged from a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded programme Design Innovation & Land-Assets: Towards new communities. Here, a review of available participatory and collaborative framings of community in design revealed a broad landscape of directions and options

In conversation: is care in opposition to design?

We need to challenge underpinning assumptions of design including 'Who does it?' 'What's it for?' and 'How do we learn to do it?' are brought into sharp focus by the question of care. Care might even be something conceived to be in opposition to design. Care isn't a discipline whereas design might still think of itself as one

Supporting the open innovation process in small and medium enterprises

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) encounter specific barriers in engaging in innovation. This paper explores the concept of open innovation and how best conditions conducive to this can be created to support SMEs to engage in innovation. It presents Chiasma – innovation workshops – as a method towards a collaborative approach that brings together SMEs, designers and academics. Design in action (DiA) is a knowledge exchange hub, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which draws together six universities and art schools across Scotland. Adopting a qualitative approach, the paper presents an ongoing process, whereby the approach emerges from action research in conversation with the actors involved

Craft, textiles, and cultural assets in the Northern Isles: innovation from tradition in the Shetland Islands

This article explores design innovation approaches in the creative economy in the Northern Isles of Scotland, specifically, the Shetland archipelago, focusing on the textiles sector. Shetland has a rich history of craft work, including Fair Isle knitting and lace making. We contend that the value of cultural assets in contributing to the creative economy is underexamined and that there is a paucity of understanding of the innovative potential of craft and creative practitioners in the region. The insights presented are derived from Innovation from Tradition workshops, which aimed to reframe the creative economy within an island context, elicit knowledge surrounding local cultural assets and explore the innovative capabilities of creative practitioners. We reflect on how a design innovation approach allowed us to garner the collective wisdom held in communities and foreground the focal themes of practice, place and people

Design Innovation: Experimental Creative Research Approaches

Design innovation is a way of structuring design research processes and practices in pursuit of valuable outcomes. Drawing together ideas of complexity theory, creative action and communities of practice, we depict design research as creative action ? an emergent, unpredictable, creative interaction amongst embodied participants and reified objects. From complexity theory we are interested in how modes of interaction and connection, combined with non-linear feedback processes, can give rise to innovation. In particular, we wish to explore how use of visual artefacts and the design of spatial and temporal dimensions of research might influence outcomes. We are attentive to the body as an expressive process rather than simply an instrument of the intellect and are cognisant that design research, like any other social practice, is linked to the processes of identity construction, which is inherently tentative, temporal and temporary in nature

Materiality Matters: Exploring the use of design tools in innovation workshops with the craft and creative sector in the Northern Isles of Scotland

This paper presents initial reflections regarding the use of bespoke design tools within a series of innovation workshops carried out with practitioners and stakeholders active in the craft and creative industry sector in the Scottish Islands of Orkney and Shetland. We argue that by emphasising such bespoke material tools located in and inspired by the local landscape, history and culture, we encouraged engagement, provided space for innovation and enabled creative collectives in their goal of enhancing and sustaining the creative economy in rural geographies