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Does AI need designing? Exploring the contribution of designers in clinical AI development
No full textReview of Creative Design and Innovation: How to produce successful products and buildings
No full textDesigning a recovery playbook for Muslim Americans experiencing substance use disorders
No full textSubstance use disorders (SUDs) within the Muslim American community presents unique challenges influenced by cultural, religious, and social factors. Research indicates that SUDs are often hidden within Muslim communities due to the stigma surrounding them. Addressing SUDs requires culturally sensitive prevention and treatment programs that consider the diverse backgrounds and specific needs of Muslim Americans. The goal with this Lab was to create a recovery playbook that can guide Muslim communities in their journey through recovery. This playbook was based on the feedback we received from two online workshops with seven participants from across the US. Doing a thematic analysis of the data we gathered from these workshops led us to identify the resources that are available as well as the barriers that Muslim communities face in their recovery journey. This article documents the process through which we designed and developed the playbook which we hope will serve as a personal companion to anyone interested in aligning their recovery journey with their Islamic values
Designing fertility otherwise: Of human, animal and soil relations
No full textThis exploratory paper unpacks the design space of fertility sensing, reflecting on current meanings and designs for fertility in humans, animals, and soil. Attending to the curious relations between these, we explore how fertility technologies share histories across patriarchal and capitalist visions of bodies and land. We provide a critical feminist analysis of fertility sensing and begin to unpack how design might approach this space otherwise, by means of exploratory prompts and opportunities that we call ‘design seeds’. We accompany the design seeds with four evocative images, engaging practically and materially with these opportunities, opening up for critical yet hopeful engagements with human, animal, and soil fertility. We invite designers to notice these entanglements and extend to more-than-human perspectives in designing fertility tracking and sensing technologies
Citizen-designers making worlds in healthcare: A reflective reading of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The mushroom at the end of the world
No full textDesign in health and care has rapidly expanded into service experiences, digital, and all things patient-centered. As healthcare designers, with curiosities and concerns about our “collaborative survival,” we open up our conversations, unravelling long careers in service, health, and design and evolving questions of care for designers, educators, and citizens. The book The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing offers respite and reframe. Tsing’s book is a critical examination of the harms of capitalism, sharing learnings about matsutake mushroom ecosystems and relational concepts required for a liveable future. It sparked our interest in alternative narratives – complex, collective, diverse, intangible. This paper explores the fictions and frictions of healthcare and our conversations about design that cares — through the metaphor of precious mushrooms that thrive in the ruins of a forest. What is care that lives on the fringes of predictability, scale, efficiencies, and profit
Does seeing entail believing? Visualising information during societal crises
No full textDespite the shared belief that information visualisations are immune to manipulation, as visual stimuli, they “are no different from words in this regard, for any means of communication can be used to deceive” (Tufte, 1983). This paper discusses the power of information visualisation in engendering “a narrative experience” (Segel et Al., 2010) that cannot be considered politically neutral (Boehnert, 2016). In this sense, it can be compared to the concept of “tropes” (Haraway, 1988) which are narrative tools transmitting political and social agendas. The paper explores the existing literature addressing the circulation of information disorders (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2019) on social media platforms when supported by information visualisations. The starting point is that the complexity of the topic, its interdisciplinarity, and the dense availability of reflections call for a crisis, a “fracture line” (Foucault, 1969), that can lead to the unveiling of omitted dimensions. The exploration enabled the identification of a space for reconsidering critical approaches to information visualisation circulating on social media by defining literacy resources that combine terminologies, views, methodologies and approaches from diverse disciplines and fields
Time as an issue of power in participatory design
No full textParticipatory design researchers address complex issues through collaboration with other actors. These can be communities, third sector organisations, industry or governmental bodies, as well as other academic disciplines. Collaborators are seen as knowledgeable, and empowerment, mutual learning and democratic processes are emphasised. However, such positive claims have long been undermined by skewed power relations, many of which are related to time. Time, an evasive phenomenon tending to escape visibility, is in this paper given centre-stage. The aim is to identify time challenges in participation, exploring their effects and social implications. The analysis of a project in Kenya reveals how time challenges; limit the diversity of participants; hinder participants from taking on roles that can evolve as projects progress; and impedes opportunities for co-production of knowledge. Together, these issues indicate a need for increased responsiveness from funders regarding the importance of emergent project structures and inclusive budgets
Walking backwards as a radical practice for design
No full textWalking backwards is proposed as a radical design practice as it creates time/spaces in-between needed to counter dominant narratives focused on effectivity. So-called time-saving technologies, instead of creating possibilities for free, spontaneous, unstructured, embodied time, add more time and space for production and consumption. Walking backwards is explored as a relevant practice to learn to work in-between complexities, certainty, and uncertainty. Even though walking is a widely recognised and explored method within the arts and academia, the practice of walking backwards has not been studied for the purposes proposed in this text. The aim is to problematise the notion of efficiency and how it affects how we relate to design and research. Also, to contribute to change by proposing an embodied practice that creates time/spaces to slow down, reflect, and think differently, facilitating designing and researching otherwise. Walking backwards is always done in collaboration with the environment and has the potential to support participatory work with other designers/researchers and participants. It is radical in its accessibility, inclusivity and potential to change how we as designers relate to design and futures
Embedded actors in design objects: reflexivity in design for social innovation
No full textDesigners lead practices to focus on complex social-technical systems, however, most of the time they forget that they should also be embedded in the social structure they intend to change. Recently, researchers have been giving increased attention to “reflexivity” in design, but there has been limited exploration of designers’ long-term engagement within the design object, particularly in community-based social innovation. We utilized the constructivist grounded theory to analyze the reflexive discourse of three practitioners, exploring their understanding of the social structure, their own identities, and the impact of reflexivity on their subsequent design actions. This study represents a preliminary inquiry into how practitioners continue to engage in reflexive thinking throughout the process of “embedded practice” in various communities, as they reflect on their identities and achievements, and take action in subsequent stages of the design process. The study revealed that reflexivity can emerge from conflictual interactions, and lead to a reconfiguration of understandings and practices, enabling practitioners to critically engage with their social realities and transform them. Through dialogue with others, practitioners gain a deeper understanding of collaborators around them and their “position” in the system, leading to a more authentic sense of empathy. Furthermore, reflexivity enables practitioners to redefine their “relational position”, attaining higher levels of permission and agency. However, reflexivity can also inhibit agency by creating a sense of contingent action within one’s habitus or frustration with one’s inability to effect change
Digitalized intangible cultural heritage preservation – reinventing the design practice of Hong Kong men’s cheongsam
No full textHong Kong Cheongsam Making Technique is an important and critically endangered intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Hong Kong. Its high-standing cultural value and essentiality of urgent preservation have been authenticated by the progressive inscriptions onto the regional and national representative list of ICH. However, the current inheritance, especially that of men’s cheongsam, based on the conventional practice is considered inefficient. A practice reinvention is therefore needed. Digitalization and computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies provide a feasible approach to reinvent the practice. This practice-led constructive design research aims to translate the implicit knowledge of the veteran tailors into systematic formulas and algorithms through a triangulated and reflective study. The key determining entity and reliance in the traditional practice can be prospectively transferred from the retiring tailors to the lasting systems and data archives for a more sustaining preservation. This paper reports on the research plan and current progress of the project