Design Drives - materials innovation

Design Drives Materials Innovation‘ outlines the potential of a D:STEM (Design, Science, Technology, Engineering amd Mathematics) approach to combining traditionally different fields through design-led, needs driven and technology anchored future products using electro/photo/bio-active polymers in physical formats defined in ‚dots, lines, surfaces and structures‘.It also identifies Ambient Assisted Living as a key driver for future applications

D-STEM: a Design led approach to STEM innovation

Advances in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) disciplines offer opportunities for designers to propose and make products with advanced, enhanced and engineered properties and functionalities. In turn, these advanced characteristics are becoming increasingly necessary as resources become ever more strained through 21st century demands, such as ageing populations, connected communities, depleting raw materials, waste management and energy supply. We need to make things that are smarter, make our lives easier, better and simpler. The products of tomorrow need to do more with less. The issue is how to maximize the potential for exploiting opportunities offered by STEM developments and how best to enable designers to strengthen their position within the innovation ecosystem. As a society, we need designers able to navigate emerging developments from the STEM community to a level that enables understanding and knowledge of the new material properties, the skill set to facilitate absorption into the design ‘toolbox’ and the agility to identify, manage and contextualise innovation opportunities emerging from STEM developments. This paper proposes the blueprint for a new design led approach to STEM innovation that begins to redefine studio culture for the 21st Century

Bioengineered Textiles and Nonwovens – the convergence of bio-miniaturisation and electroactive conductive polymers for assistive healthcare, portable power and design-led wearable technology

Today, there is an opportunity to bring together creative design activities to exploit the responsive and adaptive ‘smart’ materials that are a result of rapid development in electro, photo active polymers or OFEDs (organic thin film electronic devices), bio-responsive hydrogels, integrated into MEMS/NEMS devices and systems respectively. Some of these integrated systems are summarised in this paper, highlighting their use to create enhanced functionality in textiles, fabrics and non-woven large area thin films. By understanding the characteristics and properties of OFEDs and bio polymers and how they can be transformed into implementable physical forms, innovative products and services can be developed, with wide implications. The paper outlines some of these opportunities and applications, in particular, an ambient living platform, dealing with human centred needs, of people at work, people at home and people at play. The innovative design affords the accelerated development of intelligent materials (interactive, responsive and adaptive) for a new product & service design landscape, encompassing assistive healthcare (smart bandages and digital theranostics), ambient living, renewable energy (organic PV and solar textiles), interactive consumer products, interactive personal & beauty care (e-Scent) and a more intelligent built environment

A healing landscape for Indianapolis, Indiana : creating mental resiliency through a restorative landscape

The principals and theories of therapeutic landscapes are based on the benefits nature has on a person’s health. This study will identify what elements of nature are beneficial to a person’s mental health. In other words, it will discuss how the physical environment effects a person’s perspective, the meaning that they find in nature, and the physical effects of being immersed in nature for a significant amount of time. This study will also describe the elements of spiritual landscapes and how those elements collaborate to form environments conducive to healing. Spiritual landscapes with therapeutic aspects could be accessible in public residential settings as restorative or preventive landscapes if they adhere to the principals of therapeutic design. Based on this idea, this study will also address how spiritual elements can be used to combat the common negative aspects of residential settings in urban environments. Finally, the project will conclude with a comprehensive landscape design for a site in Indianapolis, Indiana.Thesis (B.?)Honors Colleg

D‐STEM: a Design led approach to STEM innovation

Abstract: Advances in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) disciplines offer opportunities for designers to propose and make products with advanced, enhanced and engineered properties and functionalities. In turn, these advanced characteristics are becoming increasingly necessary as resources become ever more strained through 21st century demands, such as ageing populations, connected communities, depleting raw materials, waste management and energy supply. We need to make things that are smarter, make our lives easier, better and simpler. The products of tomorrow need to do more with less. The issue is how to maximize the potential for exploiting opportunities offered by STEM developments and how best to enable designers to strengthen their position within the innovation ecosystem. As a society, we need designers able to navigate emerging developments from the STEM community to a level that enables understanding and knowledge of the new material properties, the skill set to facilitate absorption into the design ‘toolbox’ and the agility to identify, manage and contextualise innovation opportunities emerging from STEM developments. This paper proposes the blueprint for a new design led approach to STEM innovation that begins to redefine studio culture for the 21st Century

CraftTech: hybrid frameworks for textile-based practice

Growth in wearable technology is forecasted to grow from $30bn to$160bn over the next 10 years, suggesting consumers’ need and demand for smart wearables will be high. Smart apparel is not new, over the past decades, various technologies had been applied onto apparel, however most have received limited acceptance. In many existing products, the technology is applied as an add-on function onto garments creating obtrusive designs which are challenging to maintain in everyday lives. As noted by Dunne, existing products tend to be a culmination of apparel and technology practices instead of an integration of both. In contrast to fast evolving technologies, the fundamentals of creating and constructing a garment have remained the same since the invention of the sewing machine in the 1800s. Using the data collected from a collaborative workshop between the Institute of Textiles & Clothing (ITC), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPolyU) and The Royal College of Art (RCA), this paper reports on the development of a hybrid design framework utilising interdisciplinary approaches to smart materials, methods and techniques to bridge the gap between design technologies. With a common focus on praxis, the teams tested, challenged and extended the affordances of polymeric optical fibre through experimental iteration, failure and reiteration

S++ : A Hybrid Textile for Healthcare and Well-Being Contexts

This paper presents a collaborative, design-led research project between KYOTO Design Lab (DLab),t he Department of Advanced Fibro Science, Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Royal College of Art’s Textiles Programme (RCA). The project involved an initial one-week workshop, followed by a 6-month design research associateship at KIT’s D-Lab – an innovation incubator delivered through practical design methodologies and interdisciplinary collaboration. The focus of this project was to investigate the possibility of re-engineering chirimen, a traditional ‘intelligent’ silk crepe fabric being woven in the Tango Peninsula, in northern Kyoto Prefecture. Varying the weave structure itself and introducing PTT, a thermoplastic polymer, enabled the creation of a hybrid textile of silk which is hydrophilic and Polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) which is hydrophobic. This hybrid textiles structure offers new product applications for chirimen silk in healthcare contexts against a background of industry decline and shrinking markets for this highly sophisticated textile

D-STEM: a Design led approach to STEM innovation

Advances in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) disciplines offer opportunities for designers to propose and make products with advanced, enhanced and engineered properties and functionalities. In turn, these advanced characteristics are becoming increasingly necessary as resources become ever more strained through 21st century demands, such as ageing populations, connected communities, depleting raw materials, waste management and energy supply. We need to make things that are smarter, make our lives easier, better and simpler. The products of tomorrow need to do more with less. It is recognised that STEM subjects need Design to translate and realise their full value to the economy and that Design’s role is greater than being a creator of objects. The issue is how to maximize the potential for exploiting opportunities offered by STEM developments and how best to enable designers to strengthen their position within the innovation ecosystem as active agents of change. As a society, we need designers able to navigate emerging developments from the STEM community to a level that enables understanding and knowledge of the new material properties, the skill set to facilitate absorption into the design ‘toolbox’ and the agility to identify, manage, contextualise and influence innovation opportunities emerging from STEM developments. This paper proposes the blueprint for a new design led approach to STEM innovation that begins to redefine studio culture for the 21st Century

Who’s at the gap between research and implementation?:The places and spaces of encounter between scientists and local people in Madidi, Bolivia

Increasing attention in the conservation sciences is being paid to the existence of a ‘gap’ between research and action. Although much research has implications for management, rarely does it have real impact on the problems it seeks to address. As a result researchers are increasingly concerned with demonstrating that the impacts of their research go beyond academia. Recent scholarship has proposed various solutions for ‘bridging the gap’. However, missing from the debate is a closer analysis of who lies within the gap and what happens in that place: What kinds of encounters and misencounters occur between scientists and non-scientists during the practice of doing scientific research, especially in situations that include ‘everyday’ activities and communication (i.e. fieldwork)? This thesis approaches the issue by enacting a Participatory Action Research methodology in the Amazonian region of Madidi National Park in Bolivia, that includes a quantitative analysis of past research, semi-structured and unstructured interviews (n = 137), and workshops and focus groups (n = 12) with local inhabitants, scientists and park guards. The study demonstrates the significance of currently unacknowledged or undervalued components of the research-action gap, such as power, respect and recognition. It explains how and why within spaces of encounter and misencounter between scientists and local people, knowledge can be exchanged or hidden away, worldviews can be expanded or further entrenched, and scientific research can be welcomed or rejected. It reconceptualises the gap as a crucial, productive space within which asymmetrical relations of power between scientists and local people have the potential to be transformed. In additional, the thesis discusses the implications of these spaces for the future of conservation science and practice in postcolonial contexts, with an explicit call to action for researchers to reprioritize the who at the gap between research and action