Design thinking and aesthetic meaning-making : Interlaced means to engage in collaborative knowledge-building

Engaging in knowledge building that is collaborative and that integrates design thinking among interdisciplinary teams is increasingly a means to innovate in product and service design and in business. However, the actual ways this might be accomplished are challenging. These questions are important ones for design educators, researchers and practitioners. This paper studies the question from an educational point of view. It examines what happens when two design researchers and educators, one from an industrial design background and the other a design process oriented background, animate a workshop and how the participants roleplaying various stakeholders engage in design thinking, both as a discovery strategy and through the concept of ‘aesthetic meaning-making’. The workshop aims were to improve collaborative design thinking skills and to explore how a team of experts and non-experts interact within a design project to achieve consensus on goals. During the workshop participants became at once users and makers of emergent results. Two of the participants add their perspectives on how, in this scenario-based workshop project, the exchange of knowledge and learning occurred through both their phenomenological experiences and the collaborative inquiry. They also explain how collaboration among their respective teams resulted in their innovative propositions. Design thinking, complex project scenarios, and collaborative inquiry within interdisciplinary teams, in the context of design education, form the framework of this paper. The process is described, both in terms of the theoretical framework that underlies the concepts of meaning-making with users and as a form of engaging in experiential knowledge generation. The theoretical framework and workshop description introduce these concepts and the workshop engagement and results are presented, with perspectives from the workshop creators, the animator and the participants themselves

COVID-19 lockdowns’ effects on the quality of life, perceived health and well-being of healthy elderly individuals: A longitudinal comparison of pre-lockdown and lockdown states of well-being

Purpose. The concept of lockdown in relation to COVID-19 is thought to have an indirect impact on the quality of life and well-being of the elderly due to its consequences on the physical, psychological, and cognitive health of individuals. However, previous published studies on this subject are limited in terms of methodological approach used, including the absence of pre-confinement status and the type of experimental design, which is often cross-sectional. The present study proposes a longitudinal design with pre-confinement measures. It assesses changes in quality of life, perceived health, and well-being by comparing the period before lockdown (T1 = December 2019), three months after the start of the first lockdown (T2 = June 2020), and during the second lockdown (T3 = January 2021) due to COVID-19. Materials and Methods. This study is conducted with a group of 72 healthy elderly persons. They completed an electronic (online) survey assessing personal factors, activities, and participation as well as responding to the EuroQol-5D and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale. Results. A decrease in quality of life, perceived health and well-being was observed between T1 and T2 and between T1 and T3, but no difference was reported between the two lockdown periods. The variables associated with these changes included energy level, level of happiness, physical activity, change in medical condition, memory difficulties, level of perceived isolation and age. Conclusion. This study will help to target variables that may have a deleterious effect on older adults for consideration in future confinement settings and for preventive purposes

Decision support tools for crop protection – current options and future prospects for growers of carrot and other apiaceous crops

Apiaceous crops are challenged by a range of pests, pathogens and weeds. It is possible to plan in advance to avoid some of these, whilst others may require rapid responses during the growing season. This paper reviews the decision support tools available to growers of apiaceous crops, with a focus on Europe, and considers future opportunities that improvements in technology will allow. There are a good number of tools available to monitor and forecast the most significant pest insects infesting apiaceous crops, but fewer tools to assist with the management of pathogens

From Onthologies to Folksonomies.A Design-Driven approach from complex information to bottom-up Knowledge.• From Onthologies to Folksonomies. A Design-driven approach from complex information to bottom-up Knowledge (with de D. de Kerckhove and C. M. de Almeida)

A design-driven approach from complex information to bottom-up knowledge This paper explores the social challenge posed by the complex situation in which contemporary society and all its activities are immersed regarding knowledge management. The addressed question is how information design can contribute to the construction of a hybrid, bottom-up and collective ontologies-in-progress and dialogue with the complexity of the practices around digital knowledge. We argue that it is necessary for information design strategies to deepen its understanding of the semantic web and the new forms of creation of ontologies. The aim is to broaden the analysis of the role of information design in this moment of change so that design can find a concrete space of agency. What could be the role of information design in such a scenario? We claim that information design can develop an essential role in developing more suitable prostheses, more versatile instruments and simpler technologies. It is a territory of power and responsibility because it places in the hands of information design the possibility to define and discriminate what can enter in the grid of shareable knowledge and learn to listen to and to be supportive of bottom-up social processes. That is a great responsibility and a great opportunity. A new design approach is required to dialog with the strategies of a web-based culture, as an example of a complex phenomenon (Lewin, 1992), among which we can find hybrid, bottom-up and collective ontologies, built in process with the contribution of users that trace definitions, associations and variations, in a kind of defective semantics, founded on co-tagging, mash-up and syndication. Design has the possibility to establish a rhetorical of project in order to create a dialogue between the social and the technical tissues. This means not only to produce a toolkit to support new scenarios with sustainable models, but also to suggest a vision of a different cultural apparatus, to offer a new way to online interaction, and new points of access to knowledge. Keywords: Design and society (primary keyword) cross- disciplinary; trans-disciplinary; inter-disciplinary; multi-disciplinary; bottom-up knowledge; creativit