Design Research Society Digital Library
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Exploring travel demands in vertical cities: A collaborative design and user behavior experiment using Minecraft
No full textThe rapid expansion of modern cities has created an urgent need to explore innovative approaches to development to address sustainability challenges. Vertical cities are one of the potential solutions to optimize the lives of residents by using space efficiently and introducing advanced transportation. Leveraging Minecraft\u27s multiplayer online game, we constructed a prototype multi-level city and conducted a behavioral simulation experiment. In this experiment, 30 participants devoted over 5,000 hours to creation, experience, and observation. This study investigates the viability of Minecraft as a collaborative design and behavioral research platform, focusing on constructing vertical cities and exploring their travel needs. It represents a novel approach in multi-user collaborative experimentation through a gaming platform, marks a new attempt in the field of collaborative design and behavioral analysis
Co-design towards positive change
No full textFounded in 2014, the Design for Behavior Change Group (now the Designing Change Group) has been promoting knowledge, understanding and actions on how to initiate and maintain positive societal change for the wellbeing of mankind and the planet. Its research focuses on leveraging design to facilitate ethical and responsible behavioral, organisational and societal changes in pursuit of these objectives. Co-design, by actively engaging end-users and other key stakeholders in the design process, offers a promising approach to creating more effective and responsible change interventions. The current strand for DRS2024 explores theories and empirical cases that adopt or reflect co-design on supporting the development of ethical and responsible interventions in the expanding realm of behavioral, organisational and societal change
Trauma responsiveness by design: Towards an ethic of care and accountability in design research
No full textDesign research can help us understand, dismantle, and transform unjust systems and the material realities that they create, while guiding us towards transformative, radical futures yet to be designed. However, design research can also be a site of harm and trauma. We argue that a “do no harm” guiding principle to ethics in design research is insufficient. Rather, design researchers need to reckon with and prepare for the likelihood that they will cause harm to the people and communities they engage in their design processes. We draw from the ethics of care and accountability theorized and explored by feminist thought in order to delineate a trauma-responsive design research model. This model can help design researchers take accountability as they work to minimize, acknowledge, and repair harm. Moreover, establishing a praxis of trauma responsiveness as an ethical imperative in design work can help design researchers amplify the liberatory potential of their practice
Designing Workplace Balance: An Exploration of Design Strategies and Interactive Innovations in Overtime Culture
No full textSince the pandemic, balancing work demands and employee well-being has gained prominence, especially where overtime culture intensifies. This study aims to enhance the well-being of both corporations and their employees by integrating innovation into work environments through comprehensive design strategies. It features a literature review examining historical context and opposing challenges within the workplace, focusing on design approaches that promote team participation, optimize user experience, and manage stakeholder relationships. Key findings include the adoption of a cyclical participatory design process as a framework for team organization, a familiar mode as a cue to enhance user experiences, and five innovative tool designs that integrate the appearance and functionality of common office supplies. These tools can disguise themselves within the work environment, preserving organizational culture and social dynamics. This research transforms insights into workplace overtime culture into comprehensive design strategies, delivering innovative concepts and tangible support for future workplace improvements
Empowerment through participation? Three Case Studies of Social Design Projects with Disadvantaged Female Communities in Hungary
No full textParticipatory methods are widely used in design, but it’s important to take a critical stance towards how they impact vulnerable communities in the context of today\u27s societal crisis (Juarez et al., 2008). This paper presents recent findings from the comparison of three social design research projects conducted in Hungary, which point towards evidence that empowerment by design can be beneficial for underprivileged women. This notion of empowerment is defined through developing embodied expertise, problem-solving skills, and agency in a design context. In order to understand how design can contribute to building such notions in participants, the author contextualizes the community’s barriers, and analyzes case studies of varying participation levels based on Healey’s engagement model (Healey et al., 2014). The author examines the cases from an intersectional viewpoint (Crenshaw, 1989), examining the barriers they highlight, resulting in a nuanced recommendation on establishing an effective level of participation within vulnerable communities
Co-creating pluralistic futures: A systematic literature review on participatory speculative design
No full textIn an increasingly uncertain future context, participatory speculative design be-come a future probe for exploring complex socio-technical issues and a diverse world. Compared to speculative design, the focus of participatory speculative de-sign shifts from artifacts to process, empowering the public through multi-stakeholder participation. Building upon future prototypes and scenarios, partic-ipants and designers co-create potential pluralistic futures, and democratize im-agination. This paper, based on a literature review of recent research in this field, outlines three practical pathways of participatory speculative design, which are characterized as technical speculation, social speculation, and integrated speculation, along with seven participatory methods that can be used in the de-sign process. Finally, the study proposed a framework for participatory specula-tive design flow, delineating four phases to guide the practice of participatory speculative design
What does design research do?
No full textThis paper examines the aims, approaches, and impact of a selection of 62 con-temporary design research projects in the UK. Whilst there is general acknowl-edgement that design research can contribute to the social, cultural, environ-mental and economic fabric of a nation, there is little evidence (to date) that ar-ticulates clearly the specific impact(s) of design research. This work, conducted over a four-year period (2017 to 2021), involved working with over 2,000 design researchers. Building, maintaining, and articulating impact is vitally important in the current research funding climate in the UK where there are significant pres-sures for governments and organisations to prioritise what are deemed to be es-sential components of a functioning society. As such, this paper aims to highlight the power and impact of UK-based design research across social, economic, cul-tural, and environmental contexts that contribute to a diverse and rich national landscape
Modelling Reflection in Descriptions of Design Practice using Linguistic Inquiry
No full textReflection plays a vital role in the development of designers, enabling them to evaluate their experiences, enhance their learning, and foster professional growth. This research analyzed reflections of 56 design students, as part of graded coursework, using content and dictionary-based approaches (LIWC). Building on an existing model of reflection with eight components (experience, belief, difficulty, perspective, feeling, learning, intention, and descriptive) we identify, using descriptive statistics, the linguistic features associated with each component and correlate these to grades achieved. We distinguish two types of reflections associated with higher grades: those emphasizing personal experiences that we term holistic narrators, and those that focus on critical self-evaluation that we term in-depth explorers. Our results provide insights for design educators, guiding interventions to enhance critical thinking and self-reflection among design students. They also inform the development of automated tools to assess and enhance reflective practice in educational and design settings
Towards a Definition of Autographic Sonifications: Listening as an Act of Knowledge
No full textIn recent years, sonification as a method to analyze, represent and communicate data through sound has grown significantly showing a diversity of purposes, users, and topics. In data journalism, education, art, or data monitoring, sound is used to both support and engage experts, researchers, and the general public with a broad range of scientific and social phenomena. As the field is moving towards shared design and evaluation processes, new practices seem to emerge that put the listener at the center. By analyzing recent cases from the Data Sonification Archive, the paper proposes a definition of autographic sonification as a self-encoding process in which the act of listening becomes central to making sense of complex phenomena
Workshopping the Textile Hand: Reimagining Subjective Assessment of Textile Materials with Digital Technologies
No full textDesigners continuously move between analog and digital spaces in order to assess sensory qualities of materials to build comprehensive references when sourcing and selecting them. Material decision making in contemporary design practice is increasingly collaborative. However, traditionally, subjective assessment of textiles has been studied at the individual level, focusing less on group workshops. This paper analyses two workshops where participants assessed sensory properties of textile materials, one individually, and one in groups, to show: 1. the difference of subjective material collection between individuals or groups. 2. improvements to the subjective assessment process, comparing physical and digital tools. 3. validation of the subjective differences among various material properties, contributing valuable insights for the assessment process in digital environments. This paper contributes references for the implementation of subjective assessments using digital platforms, ultimately improving the user experience for future designer-researcher digital tools