“OPER.TEN” Transform Emergency Now! - facing Covid-19 with Open Innovation and Human Centered Design

The paper presents “OPER.TEN”, a 10 days program that hybridized Human Centered Design (HCD) with Open innovation (OI), developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The program adapted a HCD methodology so that the design teams could face the challenges of designing during a pandemic, such as relying on remote interactions only.  Methodological challenges are presented as well as tools and methods developed to overcome those challenges. To ensure fast implementation of the results, the HCD methodology was hybridized with pillars of OI by involving stakeholders of the territory that could participate with implementation capacity. The final network involved Universities, Companies, Municipality, and Government. After the design phase, 3 of 4 solutions were successfully implemented in 40 days. Results report how to hybridize a HCD with OI to push rapid implementations

PASSO Project: Design of a Smart System Using Biofeedback to Train People with Parkinson’s Disease

This paper describes the design process of a smart system monitoring and training the gait and posture of people with Parkinson’s disease. The project aimed to develop an innovative mHealth system and validate it in a laboratory context. The designed solution is supposed to help people in postponing the rise of the most impairing symptoms and prolong autonomy. The project was divided into three main design cycles regarding respectively the design and test of sensory signals, the smart wearable devices transmitting them, and the system interface. The multidisciplinary team involved in the project followed a User-Centered methodology, involving users in the design process to improve the system’s usability and accessibility. The adopted methodological strategy led to satisfactory results and proved to be particularly suitable for multidisciplinary design processes involving both human and technological factors related to the development of smart systems targeted to niche users

Sustainable Data-Driven Strategies and Active Well-Being: A Case Study

Nowadays the world is characterized by an increasingly aging society. This phenomenon represents a risk for the sustainability of the healthcare system. One of the factors that can accelerate the consequences of the aging process is sedentary behavior. Currently, there is a large availability of wearable smart devices and mobile applications, that can collect data. However, some social and functional problems were observed, therefore we believe that there is great room for improvement (Mincolelli et al., 2018). In addition, the paradigm of the Internet of Things is enabling those applications to share data with other programs and smart devices, which, in turn, can generate an ecosystem of services that can improve the quality of life, not only of the single user, but of many groups of a determined social context. The contribution presents a case study (PLEINAIR project) that focuses specifically on the development of Human-Centered outdoor smart technologies that can adapt themselves to the necessities of people of all ages and abilities in order to encourage them of taking care of their health

Call for Papers/Special Issue: 'Design contributions for the COVID-19 global emergency'

The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic disease (COVID-19), appeared for the first time in Wuhan (Hubei Province, China) in late 2019 and rapidly spread in the rest of the world since the early months of 2020, has produced a significant and sadly dramatic impact in the life of all people. To date (April 22th, 2020), over 2.550.000 people have shown symptoms and over 175.000 died for health and respiratory problems. While the entire humanity feels dangerously powerless at the same time an unprecedented amount of initiatives across the world have shown human creativity and resilience. The entire scientific community is cohesive in facing this emergency and the severe health-related issues that have arisen in the last months. In this unparalleled scenario, the global Design community is called to act. And it is doing it! The new instances pointed out by the global emergencies allow reflecting to the ways the Design discipline can answer to unprecedented phenomena, with the will to foresee likely solutions in the long run from the lesson that we can learn in these months. At the same time, it is possible to immediately underline all bottom-up and top-down reactions that formally and informally are arising as conscious designed actions to solve the COVID-19 both at the small scales and at the large ones. There is a widespread perception that this worldwide crisis will change all aspects of our way of living and relating to each other. Governments, companies, NGOs, communities and individuals are already dedicating their time to reflect the future scenarios, devising solutions that can enable a transition to the new world that might come after the pandemic. Whilst contributing to the on-going challenges of the pandemic, the Design community can also contribute through its abductive reasoning, with propositions for new scenarios on the post-pandemic aftermath. The aim of this Special Issue of the Strategic Design Research Journal is to enrich the cultural and scientific debate by gathering and mapping all progresses produced in the COVID-19 emergency scenario and, then, to understand the role of the Design discipline in facing the complex global emergencies

Design Contributions for the COVID-19 Global Emergency (Part 2): Methodological Reflections and Future Visions

This is a landmark publication for the field of design. It was catalysed by unprecedented circumstances, as designers around the world had to rapidly deploy their competencies in strategic problem-solving to help humanity in the fight against an invisible enemy during a global pandemic. In alliance with other disciplines, from medicine to mechanical engineering, from computing to anthropology, designers everywhere have addressed the challenges and produced remarkable results through a diversity of initiatives. This Special Issue presents a peer-reviewed sample of these initiatives

HABITAT: An IoT Solution for Independent Elderly

In this work, a flexible and extensive digital platform for Smart Homes is presented, exploiting the most advanced technologies of the Internet of Things, such as Radio Frequency Identification, wearable electronics, Wireless Sensor Networks, and Artificial Intelligence. Thus, the main novelty of the paper is the system-level description of the platform flexibility allowing the interoperability of different smart devices. This research was developed within the framework of the operative project HABITAT (Home Assistance Based on the Internet of Things for the Autonomy of Everybody), aiming at developing smart devices to support elderly people both in their own houses and in retirement homes, and embedding them in everyday life objects, thus reducing the expenses for healthcare due to the lower need for personal assistance, and providing a better life quality to the elderly users

Financed design research made by Universities: some considerations about the protection of results

The gradual decrease of the public funding of research, is counterbalanced by an increasing interest by part of the politic power to foster collaboration between universities and industry for development of competitive innovation. In the United States the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 allowed university patenting, by granting ownership and copyrights of inventions to universities and changing the way public organizations conceive the applied research. The patent has become an increasingly significant indicator of scientific productivity, and seems to be able to grant the kind of protection required by the Industry to cooperate with the University in funding research aimed to innovation. Through an analysis of literature concerning this scenario, the author provides some reflections about the protection of the result of a specific kind of applied research: the Design Research

Design Accessibile Considerazioni sull’inclusività e sull’esclusività del design

L'autore produce alcune considerazioni sulla connotazione assunta nel tempo dai concetti di esclusività ed inclusività, indagandone i riflessi sulla configurazione e fruizione di prodotti e spazi

Esercizi di design. – Morfogenesi e proprietà del materiale

La concezione della forma di un oggetto a partire dalle caratteristiche del materiale con cui sarà prodotto. Una riflessione sul senso del design, sul valore della rappresentazione e della sperimentazione diretta del rapporto tra morfologia e funzionalità. Una proposta di metodo progettuale incentrato sull’analisi dei bisogni dell’utente e sullo studio dei materiali. Infine una raccolta ragionata di progetti e prototipi funzionanti realizzati dagli studenti nell’applicazione di questo metodo

Fabbrica digitale e innovazione Il progetto di un Corso di Laurea in Industrial Design come occasione di riflessione sul futuro possibile del progetto

La proposta di un nuovo Corso di Laurea Magistrale Interateneo in Disegno Industriale delle Università di Ferrara e Modena-Reggio Emilia è stata basata, tra l’altro, su un lavoro di analisi del nuovo paradigma della fabbrica digitalizzata, noto come “Industry 4.0”. Il progetto didattico fornisce lo spunto per una riflessione su metodi e strumenti per la definizione del ruolo e delle competenze di un designer in questo scenario, dalla progettazione di prodotti e di servizi innovativi alla definizione e programmazione dell’innovazione dei processi che li governano. Attraverso una analisi della letteratura più recente sui ambiamenti degli scenari tecnologici e industriali, l’autore descrive le opportunità formative e di ricerca individuate per la disciplina del Design Industriale