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Unlikely Bridges, Unexpected Circumstances: Testimonies of a Doctoral Program in Design in Porto, Portugal, 2011-present
Get PDFThis article expounds on the chronology of a PhD programme in design hosted by the University of Porto in cooperation with the University of Aveiro since 2011. Scientific, strategic, pedagogical and administrative occurrences and decisions are narrated and substantiated. Various challenges, as well as approaches for their resolution and/or mitigation, are presented. It is argued that an affective component is crucial to the success of the programme, made possible by the development of immersive research environments and working partnerships between student projects and external contexts (research centres, businesses, cultural agents, multidisciplinarity and internationalisation). A focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on course management and narratives is presented. It is argued that, in the post-pandemic era, the core challenges now reside in the maintenance of weak ties and affective components towards a stronger sense of community
Beyond Practice-Based Design
Get PDFThe call for papers raised a few important questions about the state of the PhD in design. I have worked in a few PhD programmes over the years, supervised well over a dozen students to completion and examined another 35 theses in perhaps seven countries. I have also run at least two programmes and have been on steering groups of, by now, three national and one European programmes. As the editors noted in their call, a PhD has become an entry criterion for academic teaching positions in design. The process has taken less than 20 years and is ongoing. It has had its hiccoughs, but the shift from a practice-based to a research-led occupation has been much faster than I expected 20 years ago. We are in good company with business and engineering schools – just 20 years behind
Structures and Mappings: Research as Narratives
Get PDFThis visual research explores processes of mapping, structures, and form as content. A series of maps present processes of time, and research narratives, truths and fictions. From Tolstoy’s use of the present in war and peace, slowing down time, and cinematic conventions, to T. S. Eliot’s ideas of past, present and futures, in Four Quartets. Michail Bakhtin describes a sense of epic time, as a closed, historical past. This research presents research and journeys, as open forms, through poetry, music by Beethoven, and works by Samuel Beckett.
A visual essay presents nine images, including original works by the artist in relation to music, and my current project: Recipes for Baking Bread. Colour, forms, closed, and open truth
Shifting the Value of Experience: From Design to Strategy
Get PDFThis paper is a reflection of the evolution of a user experience (UX) consultancy's transformation into a brand experience consultancy in an increasingly competitive market in China. As part of this transformation, the value of design has shifted from tactical to strategic. The authors compare and contrast the nature of experience design and experience strategy and how they are delivered to close the gap between designers and strategists. While this paper serves as a case study of one consultancy in China, the lessons, knowledge, and understanding gained are applicable to the user experience industry and global design community at large
Design is Everywhere, But Nowhere in Patent Analytics
Get PDFThe number of design patents has grown significantly in the last 140 years. However, a data-driven approach for design patents has been overlooked and underutilised in the design management and innovation research communities. Through the prism of a patent professional, data analyst and designer, this photo essay demystifies the complexity of design patent data and sheds light on the underlying value of design as it features among a range of diverse innovation activities. Patent network analysis and visualisation techniques enable the building of a series of patent citation maps and co-inventor networks. Cases from renowned companies—Apple, Dyson, Samsung, and LG electronics— reveal different shapes of innovation activities, focusing on product diversification strategies, collaboration patterns and design-technology cross-pollination flows
The Fifth Order of Design: The Value of Design in Times of Transition
Get PDFFailures in achieving sustainability are being recognised worldwide. Approaches to tackling sustainability challenges often fail to address the roots of these challenges. This paper contributes to a necessary discussion of an emerging necessity, a research agenda that encompasses the transformative strategic role and value of design in (co-)shaping sustainable and equitable futures. It draws attention to drivers of unsustainability and their complex interplay of design, environmental, economic, societal and individual values that govern our modern society. Richard Buchanan’s four orders of design model is reviewed in the process, with a fifth order being suggested to deal with the change of paradigm that sustainability requires. This comprehensive view is critical to tgetting to grips with global challenges (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) since the shift towards sustainability needs to address the root causes of systemic and interrelated problems that cannot be overcome by reactive marketing and technocratic approaches. Implications for design value, education, skills, and ways of designing are pointed out
Whole-being Framework: the Starting Point for Implementing Workplace Wellness Programmes
Get PDFThe Whole-being © framework was developed as a starting point for a holistic coaching approach, devised in the pursuit of a meaningful way to thrive both in our personal and professional lives. It is only when people are whole that a world based on integrity, freedom, kindness and compassion can materialize. This paper is aligned to the perspective of!experiences, specifically addressing the role design has in helping organisations understand what really drives their employees, while bringing attention to the “whole-being ecosystem” which influences people’s motivation and performance. A whole-system approach is necessary so that executives can thrive without running the risk of burning out. Policies must align themselves in the direction of this purpose, to create the right conditions for “whole-beings” to thrive, but in the midst of all of this self-awareness remains essential for the system to work. The training focuses on optimizing the participant’s energy as well as on developing certain attributes to feel and be whole
Meditation-inspired Visioning: An Experiential Method to Envision the Future
Get PDFAs humans we are urged to imagine and realise radically different, more desirable, and most importantly more sustainable futures (Hulme 2020; Pereira et al. 2019). However, the dominance of dystopian scenarios of irreversible environmental and social collapse, along with business- as-usual scenarios, hinder progress and contribute to a gap in futures literature relating to imagining desirable visions for humanity and how to reach them (Bennett et al. 2016; Rana et al. 2020). In this short paper, I share an experiential, meditation-inspired visioning exercise that can aid in enhancing people’s capacity to envision desirable and motivational futures
Bridging Strategy from Both Business Economics and Design Sciences: Influence • Management • Capital
Get PDFConsensus on the impact of design on perfor-mance can be said to be evident at all three levels of decision-making in organizations: strategic, tac-tical, operational (Brunswicker et al. 2019; Gemser & Leenders 2001). This impact broadly assumes the following forms:
Design impact for strategy in action and customer experience
Design impact for business strategy, process, innovation, and performance
Design impact for cultural change and organization transformation
Despite these revelations, precious little guidance is found in the way of forming a holistic view of the why of design science, core capabilities, theo-ries, and methods in business economics and the ultimate pertinence of the design function in any given organization. Similarly, the how, which would outline the ways in which these capacities could be built and coordinated towards the support of stra-tegic design and forward-looking decision-making processes is at best assumed, yet very rarely articulated.
This issue includes both the papers from academia and professionals we received through our Call, as well as the results of a complementary survey con-ducted by the editors with Chief Design Officers. Our editorial foreword uses the model (Figure 1) as the framework for a synthesis, linking strategy in design science and strategy in business science:
Part I - The vertical axis of Strategy from Vision to Mission through Value: design strategy versus cor-porate strategy, and business economics in design-driven organizations.Part II - The horizontal axis of Strategic Manage-ment and the Strategic design decision path. From design leadership and strategic positioning to busi-ness strategy and design management to strategy in action and design
“Let’s Take Care of the Caregivers”: Experience Design Strategies in Healthcare Institutions
Get PDFIn this paper, we present the findings of a project "Let's take care of the caregivers", an initiative carried out during the COVID-19 health crisis. The paper highlights first, the potential of experience design to identify the empathic, emotional challenges and assaults that caregivers have to cope with, and second, its capacity to design new work solutions and strategies that improve the lives of caregivers themselves. Moreover, the project also helped to structure a research program that will be developed through an academic chair devoted to the study of experience design in relation to transdisciplinary research in the fields of ethnography, medicine and management sciences. The ambition of the chair is to change managerial practices in care institutions (hospitals, nursing homes, hospices) and its potential for performance (Borja de Mozota 2001, 2010, 2014)