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Precedent Knowledge: Practicing Designers’ Perspectives and Experiences
No full textThis basic qualitative study informed by a hermeneutics approach presents how practicing designers across multiple domains of design define the construct of precedent knowledge, a form of design knowledge, and how they collect and use it in their design work. Interviews were conducted with 18 practicing designers across multiple domains of design, including fashion, product, graphic, game, instructional, and media design. Whether they used the specific term “precedent” or not, the study participants were able to address and discuss their precedent knowledge. They also reported multiple and varied sources of precedent, as well as multiple and varied practices in gathering and using precedent. The findings from this study verify, extend, and refine the construct map (included in this manuscript) resulting from a prior systematic literature review. Extensions to the construct map are use of precedent to assess innovation, and understanding of precedent as pre-schematized knowledge
Engaging the public in technological futures: a participatory speculative design approach to polyphonic representational spaces
No full textThis paper explores the concept of polyphonic representational space as technological imaginaries of multiple individuals regarding public space. The context of this research relates to implementing digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things and AI, in the public realm and their impact and challenges on policymaking, everyday practices and spatial experiences. Speculative design offers a way of creating multiple scenarios for the future and provoking conversations regarding technological futures. This research adopts a participatory speculative design (PSD) approach to engage with people, not necessarily designers or technology experts, in the future prototyping process. We introduce a study conducted in three stages: two speculative prototyping workshops, two public exhibitions and a workshop with policymakers. The paper concludes by reflecting on how PSD can gather polyphonic views about technological futures in places, including opportunities and challenges and potential applications in policymaking processes
Prospective design: A structuralist design aesthetic founded on relational qualities
No full textProspective design is a research program founded on critical dialogues between Global South and Global North philosophies of design. Prospective design expands the current work on designing sociotechnical transitions by including the contradiction between “forces of nature” and “human forces” as a structural feature of Western society, which generates patriarchal and feminist worldviews, colonies and metropolises, and capitalist and socialist economic systems. In prospective design, contradictions are sensed, expressed, and worked out through a structuralist design aesthetic founded on the concept of existential structures, i.e. an accumulated set of relationships needed to reproduce human life. Instead of changing them directly, this design aesthetic guides designers to prospect thriving relationships in their metastructures and infrastructures through a poetics of resensitization that reunites our bodies and minds
Grand narratives of Value and their relationship with design
No full textWe all use value speak in our everyday conversations. Within the field of design, the implications of value are even more integral: we expose and negotiate value in order to create “desirable” experiences and avoid “bad” products, and our respective ideas of value guide our actions and judgements of what is “worthwhile” or “important”. Yet despite its prevalence, our understanding of each respective value referent is often ambiguous and subjective. In this research, we examine three grand narratives of value and ascertain how each representation relates to design. We argue that the strengths and limitations inherent in theories of sociological, economic, and linguistic value are mirrored in their related design praxes. We propose that this holistic awareness enables a more critical and expansive assessment of design methods and practices
Designing Systemic Resilience in the Face of Looming Black Swans through a Seminar-Style Wargame
No full textBlack Swans have become the norm rather than the exception. These unimaginable events with massive consequences seem to be a by-product of our society ruled by complex systems. As more Black Swans are looming, an interest in becoming more resilient is rising. However, achieving resilience against Black Swans remains an ambiguous endeavour. Looking into academic literature, “wargaming” Black Swans is often proposed as an antidote since it explores decision-making in an adversarial and unimaginable context. However, how these Black Swan-focused wargames can take shape is unclear. In response, this paper proposes a design of a wargame addressing systemic resilience in the face of looming Black Swans consisting of four modules. The paper presents the iterative design process based on four playtesting workshops with 52 researchers and practitioners in design, crisis management, aviation, healthcare, and serious gaming. The paper concludes with recommendations and directions for future research
A Distributed Approach to Design Sketching
No full textThere has been much work towards understanding design sketching, its role and utility for design thinking. However, there remains little explanatory theory to structure our discussion of sketching and its importance. Drawing upon reflective practice as design paradigm and adopting a distributed theory of mind, I position sketching as distribution of design thinking. I provide an operational definition of the design sketch as particular type of design representation that includes sketch as articulation of future solution opportunities, variation in the expression of design intent through representational ambiguity, and the sketch as iconic representation. I locate the design sketch through a distributed lens to better illustrate its relation to design thinking in practice. The article contributes as framework and thesis argument for a distributed approach to understand design thinking through sketching. The paper concludes by providing a theoretical foundation and departure point for future studies of distributed design thinking through sketching
With great power comes great responsibility: The discourse of conduct and ethics in professional design
No full textKnowledge of professional design is (re)produced through discourse and its culture of use: from the language used, interactions with others and objects created, to the techniques and procedures that connect and distribute professional design knowledge. Here, discourse both shapes and is shaped by social practices and communicated through structures such as codes of conduct and codes of ethics. This paper explores the discourse of codes of conduct and codes of ethics for professional design developed by peak design organisations. We argue that such codes serve as forms of industry self-regulation encapsulating designers’ responsibilities and the ethics of their practices. However, codes of conduct and codes of ethics are conflated and reduce ethics and the responsibility of design(ers) to instruments and procedures which, though well-intended, without governance, are flawed. The paper proposes recommendations for revising these codes to better nurture ethical awareness and accountability in professional design practices
It really touches me: How to design Empathic Journeys with Virtual Reality in societal challenges
No full textDesigners are increasingly collaborating with various stakeholders to address complex societal challenges. These challenges often require a codesign approach, where differ-ent actors with diverse perspectives and experiences unite to explore innovative ave-nues for change. Such collaboration requires empathy between the actors to under-stand each other’s perspective better in their interactions. This paper aims to assist so-cial designers in orchestrating such empathic codesign processes by introducing an Em-pathic Journey framework. This conceptual and practical framework is based on em-pathic design theory and three design cases which used Virtual Reality for perspective exchange between actors. The framework addresses the importance of integrating an emotional spark through immersion and the necessity of embedding immersive experi-ences in a larger journey