Exploring where Designers and Non-Designers meet within the Service Organisation: Considering the value designers bring to the service design process

Service design is sometimes thought of as the interface between the customer and the service provider, a design process that exists between design thinking and business practices. Service design consultancies working with service organisations are increasingly attempting to develop design thinking alongside business processes within the organisation, but if everyone becomes a ‘designer’ what value is placed on the design-trained service designer? What qualities, knowledge and skills does a designer offer that identifies them as a valuable business asset who has an integral place within the business process, rather than as someone brought in when the organisation wants to be seen to be ‘creative’ or ‘innovative.’ The process of design for services is well documented, however there is not much debate around whether the service designer needs to be design-trained, or of what benefits they would offer if they were. It is assumed that design tools and methods can be introduced and disseminated to non-designers, but if tools and methods are all it took to design services, what is the future for the ‘designer?’ From observations of students studying service design at postgraduate level and a comparative study with design and non-design staff within a service organisation, this paper aims to uncover the value and ‘craft’ of the designer within the context of the service design process

Indirect Action: A Critique of Current Models of Political Art

The current critical discourse surrounding the political in contemporary art is dominated by the notion that the efficacy of an artwork is narrowly defined through the lens of socially affirming audience participation. Yet there is evidence that suggests that artworks employing a direct, activist-style approach can result in a less than engaging aesthetic experience, and have limited political impact. There is a case to be made for art that is jarring and alienating but at the same time political. Art that evokes an unresolved political reality – that does not sacrifice aesthetics for ethics – leaves in its wake not an affirming social experience, but an unresolved tension that has critical effect. By invoking the theories of Jacques Rancière and Claire Bishop, and drawing on the practices of Thomas Hirschhorn and Mike Kelley, this thesis – both in its dissertation and studio outcomes – offers such an alternative form of political art. Motivated by the changing political imperatives of late capitalism, my practice operates indirectly and obliquely, often via the conduit of the political poster — an iconic mainstay of leftist campaigning. By presenting an unresolved engagement with the Australian political context, my practice opens a range of issues for consideration, allowing the order of the sensible to be challenged and re-imagined

Volkswagen and Volkswagen: The Concept, the Car and the Company in Four Germanies and the United States

This thesis explores the changing cultural meanings that the Volkswagen took in Germany in an attempt to understand the cultural exchange between the United States and Germany. In sum, it establishes that the car takes a distinct cultural form in the two countries governed by unique and particular historical developments. Over the last decade researchers working with car cultures have realized the long standing error of taking American values associated with the car as a normative marker of global car cultures, yet no one has suggested a working methodology to ensure that non-normative meanings are captured in analysis. I suggest that this problem arises from studying single aspects of the car in isolation. The methodology that I propose looks at design, production, marketing, and consumption as a system where meaning can be produced, interpreted, and reassigned at the various stages. This wider approach allows for a non-normative analysis of car culture. This helps to demonstrate how the development of the car culture becomes more distinct through transatlantic interaction. I propose that the incursion of culturally significant foreign products causes shifts and redefinitions in the domestic market making the product a way to evaluate one’s own identity. The present work plots these various identities to capture the large trajectories of German car culture. I challenge the notion that there were necessarily different cultures of production and consumption in the United States and Germany which could explain the divergence in the two nation’s car’s cultures. When discussing the Weimar Republic I highlight Germany’s interest in motorization visa-vie developments in the United States. The section on the Third Reich places the creation of a Volkswagen as a lynchpin for the Nazi’s entire ultranationalistic modernization policy which carried meanings of their particular vision of racial community. The post-war section identifies the ways that the Federal Republic reinterpreted the Volkswagen making it a symbol of the economic miracle of the 1950s, and ultimately, a way to contrast the republic with the Nazis era and win international validation

A Laboratory Technique for Evaluating Marine Splash Zone Corrosion

An electrochemical cell and environmental chamber were developed to study corrosion in a simulated splash zone. The designs of the dual chambers and the mounting of the three electrodes in the cell resulted in an excellent simulation of the major parameters and conditions in the marine splash zone. Excellent data acquisition and corrosion observations were possible, thereby, leading to a successful laboratory technique for research on corrosion in the marine splash zone. Electrochemical corrosion measurements correlated with the progression of changes during the wet – dry cycles, and the corrosion behavior was verified by microscopic observation