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Materializing Data: A Macramé-Inspired Framework for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Creative Participatory Research
No full textThis paper presents the development of a macramé-inspired framework for evaluating the effectiveness of creative participatory research (CPR), addressing gaps in conventional framework models that overlook the complex, multidimensional and experiential nature of these research approaches. The framework was designed to visualize and materialize the evolving nature of CPR, where participant engagement, contextual factors, and the sometimes organic and unpredictable creative activities shape both the research process and its outcomes. To achieve this, we worked with a group of experienced researchers with expertise in participatory textile-making methods in a series of three online workshops. Through these sessions, the research team explored the challenges of evaluating creative participatory approaches to research, critiqued existing evaluation framework models and developed potential alternatives before finalising the proposed macramé-inspired framework prototype presented here. The resulting framework employs macramé components such cords, interconnecting knots, and anchor points metaphorically to highlight different aspects of creative participatory research processes including the research context, participant engagement levels, project scope and duration, key research activities and participant interactions. In order to support robust evaluation of research effectiveness, we have devised question prompts to encourage shared reflection and discussion between researcher(s) and participants, rather than the one-sided assessment more usually offered by a set of fixed evaluation ‘criteria’, thereby shifting the focus from static metrics to embodied, experiential data. The prototype macramé framework presented here has the potential to be adapted to a diverse range of creative participatory projects beyond its origins in participatory textile-making. We anticipate it to be particularly useful for researchers and practitioners seeking evaluation models that highlight experiential knowledge, contextual nuance and participant agency experienced ‘live’ in the unpredictable contexts of creative participatory research. Future research plans for this experimental prototype framework will include testing through case studies of real-life contextualised research settings
Expert Insights into XR and Urban Digital Twins: Shaping Future Phygital Cultural Experiences
No full textThis study examines the potential benefits and challenges of making tangible and intangible cultural heritage accessible through future Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) from the perspectives of experts in cultural heritage, sociology, urban planning, and architecture. Leveraging Extended Reality (XR), UDTs may provide immersive, engaging interactions with cultural heritage within future phygital city experiences. Through such engaged research practices, we envision enhanced communication between researchers, decision-makers, and citizens. This study uses three focus group meetings with cultural heritage and design experts. It addresses two primary questions: how cultural heritage can be experienced and utilized in UDTs as XR facilitates access to digitized everyday heritage, and what benefits and challenges are anticipated across diverse domains. Findings include UDT advantages, such as increased public engagement, educational potential, and preservation of ephemeral cultural elements, while also noting challenges regarding privacy, data accessibility, and technological limitations. This paper contributes to digital heritage discourse, underscoring the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for resilient, inclusive urban cultural futures
Review of PLAI, Visual Intelligence in Design and Art: An Experimentation Handbook with Artificial Intelligence
No full textHuman-to-human interaction design: Choreographing relational practices
No full textThis paper explores Relational Design as a choreography of practices that cultivate the skills necessary to navigate differences and build community within design processes. It promotes a design practice that sees relationship-building as a core function of creating long-term stewardship in participatory worldmaking. The relational practices presented here emerge from outside traditional design disciplines, drawing primarily from community organizing, with an understanding that change occurs through networks of interdependent relationships. The paper outlines a trans-experiential set of practices: honoring place as kin, revealing and redistributing power, cultivating a culture of accountability, facilitating dialogue, and hosting belonging and celebration. These practices strengthen multimodal design literacies that focus on care, repair, and regeneration. Ultimately, the paper positions Relational Design as a movement for fostering pluralist, coalition-based approaches to systemic regeneration
The Conspiracy Capitaliser: A Tool for Exploring the Intersection of AI, Politics and Profit
No full textThe Conspiracy Capitaliser is a physical interface for Generative AI which allows the user to produce a bespoke conspiracy through the operation of knobs, switches and buttons. The original intent of the artefact was as a personal exploration of how conspiracy theories were being monetised against a backdrop of social media disinformation and how these observations could be communicated to the general public. While the artefact began as a non-functioning sculptural work, the advent of accessible AI models like ChatGPT allowed it to become fully functional and transformed it into a useful tool for design ethics, public awareness and a better understanding of the systems that lie behind these emerging technologies. This paper describes the evolution of the Conspiracy Capitaliser through its conception, creation, its exhibition and how it became a multi-faceted lens through which both the designer and the public could explore problematic intersections of profit and technology
Knitting for a gnome and other spiritual kindnesses: Fabulating our way into relationality
No full textThis paper explores relational fragments from Nordic mythology and folklore through a critical fabulation that was crafted as a situated co-labouring and embodied auto-ethnographic designerly approach to expanding our design practice towards relationality. It is a search for and a move towards “alternative Wests” and seeks to step beyond Design-as-Modern. From the critical fabulation situated insights for designing relationaly are presented, not as a recipe for others but as inspiration for others to engage in their own culture to find their own situated practice
Exploring design fieldwork dilemmas in mental healthcare through Foucaultian mechanisms of power
No full textDesign scholars are advocating for building a deeper and more nuanced power literacy when applying participatory approaches in mental healthcare. Although actionable frameworks have been developed to identify risks, these approaches rely heavily on designers’ analytical skills and do not offer ways to understand power through multiple scales that simultaneously influence individuals and populations. If this concern is not addressed, designers might inadvertently reproduce harmful power structures. Therefore, this paper builds a Foucaultian lens of disciplinary and bio-power to reflexively analyze design fieldwork dilemmas in mental healthcare contexts from France and Estonia. It contributes to deepening designers’ power literacy by crafting a more systemic theoretical framework on power through five mechanisms, and exemplifying how designers might embody power through two instruments: objectification and normalization. Consequently, this paper reminds designers of their entanglement within the power web and informs intentional ways of rethinking design fieldwork methods by addressing the active mechanisms of power
The bread without form: Attuning to relational ways of making through convivial baking practice
No full textThis paper investigates the notion of form as a relational process rather than a fixed attribute of things. Through the lenses of contemporary design theory and symbiotic conviviality, we present a snapshot of the first author’s bakery practice, where the ever-emerging form of sourdough bread is used to discuss ways of attuning differently to dominant understandings of design, making, and materiality. The case presented here follows a practice-led research approach, with different sources of data captured through documentation and reflection. Our findings illustrate the methodological potential of baking to explore form-making as a convivial and symbiotic process. We conclude by laying out a few implications of employing practices of ‘making-with’ as a guiding principle to anchor design activity in an ethos of regenerative, evolutionary, and co-existence-based survival, thus prioritising care and signaling a shift away from the domesticating role of the designer
Co-creating the good life through food-based inquiry
No full textFood and eating (re)connect humans daily with worlds within and beyond us. From the trillions of microorganisms that help make us who we are; through the socio-culturally and tangibly graspable people, animals, plants, fungi and algae that we cohabit with; to decreasingly relatable systems of food production and provisioning across the planet, food stitches us together. We provide four mini cases to consider how using food as a methodology for experimental design research can build relations towards ensuring ‘the good life.’ We explore what the good life is, why relationality sits at its heart, and provide a framework for using food as a methodology for participatory Research through Design to examine how food-based inquiries (re)invigorate design’s worldmaking capacities, foster agency and transformative potential, connecting humans to others through cultural food heritage, for the good of all. The paper contributes to experimental design research by positioning food as a methodology; bridging worldmaking, multispecies relations, and food narratives; highlighting food’s experiential, relational and performative nature; its capacity to shape identities and social belonging
The impact of Midjourney on students’ design and design process: an exploratory study
No full textWe explored the impact of AI, specifically Midjourney, on the retail design process for master’s students. Over three years, three student groups followed the same design exercise, with AI introduced at different phases. Group 3, which used Midjourney during concept development, showed increased creativity, stronger storytelling, and more cohesive designs. However, AI had no significant impact on innovativeness or originality. Midjourney did accelerate ideation, allowing students to generate concept boards quickly, reducing early-stage development by 1-2 weeks. Despite this, its use declined in later design phases, as students found it unable to fully align with their visions. The study concludes that Midjourney is most effective in the concept phase, offering fast visualization, lowering technical barriers, and inspiring creative thinking. While it may not replace traditional design methods, it serves as a valuable creative tool for exploring and refining ideas