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A Theory Instrument for reimagining embodied practices
No full textEmbodied Sensemaking Theory describes how people make sense in ongoing interactions with the social and material world. It has potential in projects aimed at changing embodied practices. However, designers often find it challenging to use this complex theory. We build on recent research on tangible ‘Theory Instruments’ for designers. We designed a Theory Instrument for embodied sensemaking with design students who design for social interactions and with young people who investigate their energy consumption. Our analysis of 12 experimental sessions shows how Embodied Sensemaking Theory helps reimagine human practices towards more sustainable futures. Our contribution is two-fold: We show that experiential actions (e.g. weaving lines, shaping textiles, wearing bodybands), rather than the tangible things as such, can represent theory key-aspects in use. We develop a logic of how to disentangle the complexity of lifeworld, socially situated practices, skills and affordances, action-perception couplings, rules and signs
Strategic Design Futures: Exploring strategy and futures to learn and practice design for intentional change
No full textDesigners change existing situations with a focus on changing the behavior of artifacts. When designers aim to intentionally change the behaviors of individuals, organizations, or social systems, practitioners use specific approaches. Strategy (strategic design) and futures (design futures) are two alternatives for designers working on complex situations that require intentional change. This paper presents and reports three editions of a course titled Strategic Design Futures that address this type of situation. The course includes a seminar and a project component, which are structured into six design activities: sense-making, participatory visioning, designing futures, designing strategy, participatory evaluation, and design implementation. The course has ambitious goals, and students can only learn initial competencies. After three iterations, the course has focused on participatory visions and designing futures. The initial competencies the course provides are seeds for complex design situations of the real world requiring strategic and futures-oriented design skills
Expertise profiling in design schools: A theoretical framework
No full textA renewed interest, propelled by the European Bauhaus initiative, has sparked a re-evaluation of design education in response to the growing complexity and interdisciplinary demands of design, encompassing both craftsmanship and academic discipline. While ongoing discussions focus on school types, curriculum development, and pedagogical approaches, there is an oversight in examining the expertise profiles of design educators. These profiles encapsulate the competencies and proficiencies of teaching staff, profoundly influencing the ethos, objectives, philosophy, and substance of education institutions. This paper proposes a theoretical framework delineating three archetypal expertise profiles for design educators: design practitioner, design researcher, and hybrid, nuanced to reflect the multifaceted nature of design expertise. Drawing insights from design history, theory, and professional experience, this framework holds promise in guiding the cultivation of expertise profiles, prioritizing proficiency enhancement, curation, and recognizing the value of hybrid profiles. Our aspiration is to elevate the quality, relevance, and adaptability of design education amidst the evolving landscape of contemporary design
Love. The forgotten dimension for just and democratic AI Futures
No full textAddressing the widespread use of AI-driven decision-making systems in public spheres, in this paper we advocate for the integration of love as both a virtue and an affection within the discourse of participatory practices in AI design and development. Based on an analysis of justice, the need to shift the focus to love will be highlighted. Furthermore, we introduce two directions love could play during AI design: (1) love as an epistemological design inquiry to question the conventional knowledge structures in design by integrating embodied and experiential knowledge, and (2) love as a political design inquiry to challenge unjust systems in AI. We underscore the necessity for critical inquiry, recognizing both love’s potential to nurture relationships and its potential for perpetuating inequalities. By proposing love as a foundational perspective in AI design and development, we encourage a paradigm shift and challenge exclusionary mechanisms, to cultivate just and democratic AI futures
Design for AI-Integrated Design Team Collaboration：A Strategy and Exploration Using Node Flow in Establishing a Reusable Representation of Knowledge in the Collaborative Process
No full textArtificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) introduces a new collaborative design paradigm where words, sentences, and images circulate within the team as new design knowledge. However, due to the limited controllability and inter-pretability of current AIGC models, collaboration between designers and AI de-mands continuous iterations and experimentation. How to establish a reusable representation for the knowledge of the collaborative process is an open prob-lem. Our comprehensive approach, including focused interviews, case studies, and workshops, revealed transmission patterns of design concepts during both divergent and convergent phases. To represent the interaction between design-ers, we propose a novel node-based design strategy, where each node is an AI operation with its prompts and outputs and each link denotes the data flow to the next node. Implementing this strategy, we crafted a design system that en-hances synergy between the design team and AIGC
Making Space Online: Situating Complex, Intersectional Identities
No full textThis co-authored visual essay explores our process of making space for ourselves online within the complexity of our intersectional identities. Individually, we’ve appropriated mainstream social media posts to share marginalized experiences, generate meaningful connections, and merge our personal and research identities. On Facebook, Griffin shares her experiences as a cis-female, invisibly disabled, neurodivergent design educator. On Instagram, Hull shares their experiences as fat, queer, trans non-binary design student. Together, using tools with low barriers to entry, we document how design educational praxis affords our marginalized voices access, or not, within physical and virtual design education spaces. As white authors, we reflect on how our experiences have been invisibly and inequitably racialized. This essay includes captured social media posts, data visualizations both poetic and pragmatic, and captions providing thick descriptions
ChatGPT: mediating complex design processes
No full textThis study explores the integration of ChatGPT as a facilitative tool in complex design processes within a project-based Transformative Design course. Student teams collaborated with external partners on projects concerning democratization of trading, democratization of local manufacturing processes, and promoting social inclusion. The inquiry observed if ChatGPT positively contributes to such processes and, if so, in what ways. We focused on its impact on teamwork, creativity, and informed decision-making. Data collection involved recording design sessions with automatic transcription, conversation logs from ChatGPT, semi-structured team interviews, observations and an anonymized questionnaire. Our findings point to ChatGPT’s ability to offer better assistance with real-life design processes - not as much in terms of creativity, but the ability to learn and get the information needed for design in complex and often novel domains. They also point to a shifting perception of human, technology, and world relationships
Empowering Stakeholders to Address Gentrification\u27s Impact on Urban Schooling
No full textResidential stratification has long governed American cities, as has the under-achievement of children living in urban areas (Sandy & Duncan, 2010). Policymakers, administrators, and educators working to address these systemic inefficacies need to consider intersectional factors to redesign urban schooling carefully. Gentrification often leads to more significant gaps between the socioeconomic classes, increasing the chasm between the needs of residents. How can we enable policymakers, educators, and parents to (1) track socio, cultural, and environmental conditions, (2) learn from the lived experience of underrepresented groups, and (3) design more equitable urban schooling policies? In this paper, the authors share the process of developing a participatory tool, Connect.Ed, which leverages qualitative and quantitative data to make interdependencies visible to improve urban schooling. Resulting in increased accountability among stakeholders, equitable engagement in under-invested neighborhoods, and a collaborative space for community engagement
