3132 research outputs found
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Institutionalizing New Civic Learning Traditions: Nurturing design practice in planning cultures
Get PDFDesign professionals working on civic design initiatives are aware of the current trend to democratise civic think tanks. These think tanks have been taking form under the name “social labs” (Hassan, 2014), “urban labs” (Scholl et al., 2017), and even “sidewalk labs” as advanced by Google (Mondon, 2015). Without the explicit commitment to an identifiable design process, street-level think tanks risk devolving into familiar planning exercises. There are multiple forces acting to resist initiating, sustaining and expanding design dialogues in the public sphere. Only by recognising these challenges can the governance of representative decision-making be genuinely and effectively enabled with inclusive alternative designs for our decision-makers
Integrating Speculative and Systemic Approaches into Service Design
Get PDFHumans live in multiple social service systems. These social service systems are composed of multiple levels of services and service systems. Influenced by various systemic factors and system interconnections, designers face more complex systemic challenges and uncertain future challenges when dealing with these service issues. Therefore, to better deal with the systemic and future issues embedded in services, this paper explores the relationships between systemic and speculative approaches and service design; and also discusses how designers need to evolve their design capabilities to better adapt to complex systemic challenges and uncertain future challenges.
This paper proposes the synthesis that systemic and speculative approaches, with their characteristics of systemic thinking, long-term perspective, and critical/reflective thinking, can cut into the service design process and help service designers to deal with more systemic and future-related problems through the application of relevant thinking and methods. Through literature review, the paper clarifies the relationships and possibilities between speculative and systemic approaches and service design, identifying shared concerns, complementary contributions, and gaps that need to be considered. Then proposes an extension of systemic design and the speculative approach to the service design process. Besides, through interviews with five design schools’ service design program leaders and comparing the programs, the paper also proposes five design capabilities that service designers should better evolve further
Rethinking Participatory Design Research Methodologies
Get PDFThis presentation is an exploration of changemaking design practices centred around the problematics of engagement through the lens of micro-(im)mobilities (Sheller, 2018, p2) that are reproduced in conventional participatory design and research methodologies. I have observed that traditional social design, co-design and focus group models of academic social research lean heavily on the labour of the oppressed for the gain of those in positions of power.
As a disabled woman with fluctuating health, mental and physical capacities, I must live in an extremely mindful way, measuring my energy levels and outputs like they are granules of gold dust. This gives me a lesser travelled path to and through my research and allows me a particular sensitivity to the burdens that I require of the people whom my work will benefit. With this in mind, as a consistent and defining characteristic of the experiences that myself and others are familiar with, I am working on a theoretical positioning around the principle of minimising the burden of change on the shoulders of the oppressed. I am working towards a balance between paternalistic speaking for others and the ideology of Nothing About Us Without Us (Germon, 2000). Having said that, I feel strongly that intersectional communities should be represented and be in decision-making positions of power and that “in some instances speaking for others constitutes a violence” (Alcoff, 1991). However, I would argue that in many instances requiring others to speak for themselves to attain basic human rights is also a violence. Additionally, we are always speaking for others, even if we identify as a member of that community. Meadows discusses leverage points in the system (Meadows, 1999); my work aims to better understand and communicate the ontological perspectives of marginalised people within the paradigm of change-making and how they manifest as pressure points in the system. I aim to show that careful consideration of this standpoint can be a catalyst to creativity rather than a barrier to overcome.
This presentation includes examples of previous projects that have been designed from this standpoint. I will also be discussing and sharing personal reflections on my own experiences as a disabled woman in academia and the importance of Cripping my work. I will explore ways in which Crip culture can be assimilated into research practices to the benefit of the participants and the researcher
Using Systemic Design to Drive the Transition of a Professional Kitchen towards the Circular Economy Scenario
Get PDFConsidering products as systemic objects, if the focus is a professional kitchen, it can be considered a system in itself—where the food and the work of cookers draw connections among different tools and appliances to produce a meal.
This research applies systemic design to design the future of professional appliances into a circular economy scenario, not taken in isolation but as part of the system of a professional kitchen. Moreover, this design challenge can be considered a systemic one because it should consider different requirements simultaneously as the product one, the environmental, the economic and the cultural and social ones. To reach and implement this scenario, a systemic design approach can be useful to use and apply with its tools and methods to reach different design solutions than the current ones conceived in a linear economy scenario. Trying to solve this design dilemma, some tools are in the development phase to help the work of designers in the process.
The research (in progress) started from a holistic diagnosis of the context to have a complete picture of the state-of-the-art. Moreover, to move more deeply into the kitchen environment where there is a great use of resources (food, energy, water, etc.). An assessment of the flow of information and resources is in the developing stage. It will support an understanding of how they are used and be illustrated in a gigamap (holistic diagnosis).
Thanks to the involvement of a large industry producer of professional kitchen appliances in this research, it will be possible to add data thanks to field research in their canteen. In addition, it will be possible to test the primary draft thanks to interviews with chefs and collect feedback about the problems related to the management of resources.
At the end of the data collection process and the development of the tools, future work will be to test their efficacy in a workshop with design students and discuss the results. The research will reflect on and build an understanding of the usefulness of this approach to designing solutions for a circular economy scenario
Finding yourselves in a changing world of work
No full textThe career landscape is changing at an unprecedented pace. As a result, students in post-secondary education, and those that have recently graduated from post-secondary education, face tensions between the education system and real-world employment. Are post-secondary institutions sufficiently preparing students to navigate the changing work environment with the training and skills they acquired during school? This study explores “How might individuals discover future work aspirations during a conventional post-secondary course of study?”.
While every person has the right to write their own story, dysfunctions in the social system inhibit our journey towards finding the right places where we can realize our full potential. For example, the lingering perception that post-secondary education is the default path to success and a curriculum that hinders self-reflection results in disillusionment among generations of graduates who find themselves stuck on a career path leading in the opposite direction than their actual goals. Fixing the dysfunctions can help alleviate the problem of 40.5% of graduates being unemployed and underemployed (CIBC).
A gigamap is a visual design tool used to describe and illustrate the complexity of a wicked problem and the associated greater system in consideration with respect to the research question. The research team conceptualized this system as a pinball machine to emphasize the limits of control that youth have in finding a career in Canada. The eroding goals and shifting the burden archetypes and the multi-level learning loop diagrams are used to describe different reactions to the feeling of being stuck. Through this gigamap, we can begin to unravel the forces that move individual aspirations in hopes of generating insights that lead individuals onto the path of fulfillment. Thus, our wicked problem is the tension between inter-generational values, the needs of the changing world and the speed of the educational system adapting to this phenomenon.
Tal, B., (June 20, 2013) In Focus Tenth of Canadians aged 15 to 24 not employed or in school. CIBC Capital Markets
Mirror in the Bathroom
No full textMirror in the Bathroom is an aluminium cabinet sited in a one-bedroom flat in London. It generates spatial possibilities by orchestrating notions of projection (temporal and pictorial) and registration between human, non-human, and technological others.
The CNC-machined, robotically formed door constructs a reflective membrane that negotiates the space of observing, the function of the cabinet, and a projected architecture. The disposition and reflexivity of this assembly construct a situation in which observers are simultaneously present and absent. Between worlds. This spatial phenomenon is analogous to knowing-with, an epistemological framing that maintains the necessary indeterminacy and undecidability of a system’s edge if it is to produce and maintain difference.
This exhibit is accompanied by the presentation, “Practicing Architecture In The Distinction,” a discussion of two architectural design research projects that tease out the potential of architecture for understanding what is at stake from the placement of boundaries and their relative position to an observer
Destination Design: A design thinking approach to tourism development through the evolution of Destination Management Organizations
Get PDFThe effects of COVID-19 have shown that tourism is a fragile industry, but vital to the economic health of communities. Tourist destinations are developed through a complex system made up of a large number of stakeholders. This destination development system is ripe for innovation, as drivers of change in technology and the experience economy are opening up new opportunities for communities, while challenging the operations of legacy institutions.
This paper explores how communities might adapt to these changes by utilizing design thinking and co-creation methodologies to create resilient destinations which attract tourists and improve the lives of locals.
Through research into the traditional destination development system, we identify that Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) play a crucial role in the information exchange between stakeholders. However, DMOs are becoming less relevant in this exchange. We find that by taking a reactive approach to their work and attempting to manage increasingly more complex relationships, DMOs are not meeting the needs of tourism operators or their local communities.
Destination design, in contrast, is an emerging area of study which seeks to understand how elements of design thinking may be used to creatively solve problems in the tourism and destination development fields. This project explores the potential for DMOs to become designers instead of managers of destinations. In doing so, they can reassert their relevance by adding value to their stakeholders, which could result in better outcomes for tourists and locals.
The authors propose a Destination Design Methodology & Toolkit, which includes a process and workshops to help communities co-create resilient destinations
Divining Nature: Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France by Tili Boon Cuillé (review)
Get PDFInward Identities
Get PDFThrough a cultural viewpoint on a hyphenated identity, I examine ways of displaying relationships between spaces. My studio and material-based research reveal my personal experience as a Hindu Canadian. I produce paintings, mixed media, and installation artworks using materiality, artist techniques, and experimental processes. As I address themes of cultural hybridity, movement, displacement, and memory, I develop new ways of representing the social institutions, achievements, spiritual symbols, and traditions that epitomize South Asian and Canadian cultures.
I express a conflict of feelings through colour and materiality to create an environment that will encourage healing. By looking at how mandalas are discussed and used in Eastern and Western practices, my investigations include intersecting ideas about the mandala in Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist cultures. I examine how the materiality of salt can be used to accentuate spirituality and convey a sense of displacement within my cultural experiences.
An autoethnographic research approach is used to address hybrid cultural identity as a language, as well as to communicate the aesthetics of material, in combination with spiritual and meditative practices. As I highlight the space between what is tangible and what is a distant memory, I integrate two diametrically opposed cultures to embrace the contrasts of my identities
E-Toronto: Building a Digital Society
Get PDFWith the rise of smart city projects around the world, we begin to question “What is a Smart City”? With many smart city initiatives being led by tech giants with corporate agendas, projects often fail to launch. With a focus on big data-driven strategies, these initiatives take on more of a technocratic approach. As a result, these projects often look at citizens as sensors and fail to prioritize the value that people bring to the process of urban development. With data proving to play a key role in the process of decision making, researchers question who has the right to data? And with citizens playing a pivotal role in the process of data collection, how can its value also be shared with those who generate it?
Through a speculative and critical design approach, this paper explores the question, “What if the citizens of Toronto could begin to control and engage with their data?” Beyond addressing major issues around data privacy, how could the city encourage data-driven participation under open data initiatives? By imagining E-Toronto, a smart city initiative that is citizen-centric, this thesis explores how data can become public infrastructure to support urban development and create new and more contextual experiences for citizens