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Fostering Pluriversal Perspectives in Theory of Change: A Case of an Urban Regeneration Project
No full textThis paper chronicles how we used a Theory of Change visual map to support pluriversal perspectives in urban regeneration projects. The map was tested in four cities under regeneration as part of the T-Factor project. Unlike most Theory of Change maps, it supported city stakeholders in three main aspects: 1) planning interventions to operate within multiple time horizons, 2) considering multiple actors, both human and non-human, in the decision-making process, and 3) reflecting on planned interventions to ensure a long-term impact beyond project scope. In addition, the Theory of Change map led towards a new approach for portfolio-based interventions in urban regeneration projects, emphasising long-term thinking and prioritising care activities over tangible hard ends. The map supplements the classic evaluation-based Theory of Change model, expanding the logic of how a polyphonic change process in the urban realm could occur through collaborative design practice
Discovering service insights through data-driven user analytics process: Studies based on the social media platform Instagram
No full textA critical goal when designing commercial services is the discovery of customer insights. In the digital transformation era, customer discussions of brands on social media have become indispensable for brands to explore service insights. The use of data-driven approaches for exploring service insights from the vast range of customer online data merits research. This study proposes a data-driven user analysis process to help brands explore service insights from massive amounts of data using data-mining techniques based on the social media platform Instagram. Using the proposed data-driven user analysis process, service designers can gain brand service insights from a large amount of customer social media data, thereby providing a reference for data-driven service design in terms of methodology and case practices
Daily doses of wellbeing: How everyday technology can support positive activities
No full textDue to their widespread use, consumer technologies like messaging or video streaming services present a promising opportunity to disseminate wellbeing interventions, such as positive activities, to a large audience. Currently, this potential is primarily leveraged by dedicated wellbeing applications. To broaden the scope of applications, we conducted a student-led case study that explored how positive activities could also be integrated into consumer technologies that are not originally designed for wellbeing. Based on the analysis of concrete design examples, we identified three strategies for integration: 1. addition, 2. enrichment, 3. transformation. We showcase each integration strategy through a specific design example. A variety of design mechanisms were employed whereby particularly prompts to create an opportunity and self-reflection to foster motivation and capability have been observed. Together, our findings demonstrate how positive activities and mechanisms to support behavior change can be woven seamlessly into contemporary technology through minimal redesigns
Design for Balance: Reimagining Processes and Competences for Sustainable Futures
No full textThe 6th Assessment Report (2021) claims that the most ambitious threshold of the Paris climate agreement will be reached and exceeded by 2040: climate change and climate diplomacy do not coincide. The adaptation and mitigation failure indicates a certain increase in inequalities at the intra-state and global levels and substantial economic damage. Design for Balance stimulates the reimagination of our productive, technological, societal and cultural systems, moving away from compensation strategies, which focus on balancing their negative impacts, to embrace systemic change, which focuses on establishing new balance within their components. Design principles, processes and competences have highly contributed to the simplistic vision of facing sustainability through compensation strategies. Reaching a systemic “balance” asks designers challenging questions: which design principles could inform this new paradigm of balance? Which design processes could enable its growth? Which diverse knowledge and competences are required to design for embracing it? The track invites proposals reflecting on the evolution of design practices, processes and related competences. The track goal is to address design practices, processes and competences that failed in promoting sustainable change, by analyzing their gaps and limitations and reimagining them through redefying principles, bodies of knowledge and systems of competences
Should we re-frame Sustainable Interaction Design? Towards a more holistic sustainability “in designing”
No full textThis essay presents the findings of an exploratory literature review on the evo-lution of Sustainable Interaction Design (SID). Historically, SID has referred to Blevis’s principles of sustainability through design , related to behavioural change, and sustainability in design with a predominant focus on environmental sustainability. However, a significant paradigm shift in the field urges to encompass a third sustainability in designing dimension, related more to the design process as emphasised by scholars, now offering methodological guidelines to create sustainable interactions. The study proposes an updated frame of SID starting from its first definitions. Secondly, if environmental sustainability remains crucial, it is no longer considered - by scholars - sufficient to advance sustainable development goals without incorporating the social-economic dimensions. By bridging the gap between SID’s principles, this paper reflects upon how holistically involving these additional dimensions in multiple design process stages will contribute to addressing environmental quality alongside social equity and economic prosperity
Editorial: Language in design
No full textThe role of language is central to the practice of designing, though our understanding of this role has evolved from more formal-language representations to more natural-language representations. Language plays a central and critical role in all aspects of design including: collaboration, problem understanding and framing, modelling, decision-making, creativity, and marketing. With textual data relating to design widely available, and recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), we are poised at an interesting stage in our understanding of the role of language in designing. The last few years have seen what is being called a Cambrian Explosion in large language models (LLMs) that effectively represent human language and to all appearances, human knowledge and reasoning as well. Subsequent deployment of AI applications have thrown into sharp relief questions regarding the role of language in the exploration and representation of knowledge in general; questions that will have a large impact on how we go about designing. This theme track re-examines the role of language in designing, asking questions about how the latest developments in technology will change practices of language use in general and conversation in particular in design processes. We invite contributions that focus fundamentally and empirically on analysing language as a way to understand designing and design education in all forms, whether through ‘conventional’ conversation, or through AI-mediated conversation
Towards just futures: A feminist approach to speculative design for policy making
No full textThere is a call for more use of future-oriented design methods like speculative de-sign in developing policies. While these methods offer potential benefits in helping future-proof policies, they also run the risk of solidifying existing structures of pow-er if not applied critically. In this paper, we describe a case study examining smart doorbells in Amsterdam, where we created a speculative design exhibition grounded in feminist theory in order to challenge the existing power structures in the public domain. We then discuss the insights from our design process and the reaction the exhibition received in light of how feminist theory can help ensure a critical application of future-oriented design methods in policy design
Reimagining Temporality: Exploring the Intersection of Time and Trauma in Design Research
No full textTime plays a central role in design research, influencing how people complete daily tasks, plan for the future, and interact with technology. Designers employ various methods, such as journey maps, diary studies, temporal probes, and storytelling, to articulate their conceptualizations of time. They use time to ground findings and envision future possibilities through tools like systems maps and the futures cone. This paper critically examines the use of time-based techniques in design research, highlighting their limitations and capabilities. It explores the intersection of time and trauma, acknowledging trauma\u27s impact on an individual\u27s perception and experience of time. The paper advocates for alternative framings of time, such as feminist temporality and Crip time, to better accommodate complex and nonlinear experiences like trauma. By doing so, it encourages designers to engage with messy temporal experiences to create more inclusive and appropriate design solutions
Adelaide’s graphic heritage: The quintessential “contested” colonial city
No full textAdelaide, the state capital of South Australia, is a quintessential colonial city. However, in the land colonial settlers called Australia, colonialism demeaned notions of Country in a physically and politically contested space. New approaches have been called for to reconsider Australia as a shared space that places high value on indigenous identity. From within a context that challenges us to think about how Country and culture might be envisioned, designed, planned, and implemented, this paper reports on a hypothesis about how the concept of graphic heritage can be applied to enhance sustainable development in this South Australian setting. Building on recommendations from a collaboration between academic research with the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO, the imprecise relationship between heritage interpretation, presentation, and representation is exposed to reveal how graphic heritage can function as an enabling tool for disparate partners to provide a focus for discussion and joint purpose
Vovousa 2048: a Design Fiction workshop imagining the future in a rural and remote area in Greece
No full textIn July 2023, the author carried out a design fiction workshop over a 4-day span in Vovousa, a village of 132 inhabitants by the banks of the wild river Aoos/Vjosa, in the heart of the Pindus range, in the area of Epirus, Greece. In a location with a history of tensions regarding the creation of hydroelectric dams, the workshop participants were invited as a group to consider and discuss different scenarios for the future of the settlement, set in the year 2048. As a group, they publicly presented artefacts from one selected future with the discussions following indicating that the polyphony generated by the proposals ought to be a given in any community inquiring their preferred future. Such investigations on futures ought to be a constant and continuous endeavor, since, as this short workshop illustrates, even the best outcome today is no panacea for living a preferable future tomorrow