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Are service designers positioned to design for sustainability?
No full textWe have designed systems that influence the daily choices of 8 billion people and have brought our world to the brink of collapse as a result. In this context, designers, in general, have been concerned with sustainability for a long time. While the field has acknowledged that not only product design but also services and systems are spaces to address sustainability, much of the literature has centered on creating methods and tools. This work could be limited in preparing designers for action because prescriptive guides are rarely easy to implement in designing activities. Leveraging design to intentionally shift a linear economy towards services is a design opportunity for a renewed focus on sustainability. This paper is a critical literature review about how service designers are particularly prepared to address sustainability in their practice and their potential contribution in designing for climate action
Prototyping as making sense of expressions
No full textPrototyping is a complex process of navigating a chaotic design space. Especially when there are few criteria for success, it is often difficult for a designer to know what direction to follow. We argue that prototyping can be considered as a process of sensemaking driven by finding the right expression of a design goal. To illustrate this, we present the case study of the aural-visualiser 1000, a functional refined prototype that resulted from an open-ended design project. Using its process as an example, we abstract important expressions that informed the design and prototyping of the aural-visualiser 1000, pointing to when the conception of the project changed and how that affected our making sense of the design space. We reflect on this design process to articulate productive pivots and tensions that led to the finished artefact
Prototyping an employee experience model. A participatory action research project to support organizations in redefining the working routines starting from Employee Experience Design
No full textIn the post-pandemic context, organizations are facing critical and systemic changes, particularly in people’s way of working and related processes. In the last decades, Design and Business Innovation literature presented the different ways Design supports organizations\u27 innovation and transformation processes. This paper starts analyzing experimental approaches - namely design intervention - that Design may implement to support organizations in redefining working modes. The focal point of this contribution consists in the redefinition of working routines through the prototype of employee experience models. Furthermore, the existing literature presents a gap in the experimentation and implementation of prototyping activities in the employee experience design. Indeed, the application of service prototyping to employees\u27 experience represents a stimulating challenge among design practitioners and researchers. In a moment of massive uncertainty in knowledge workers’ routines, how can Design be applied to Employee Experience to support organizations in redefining working scenarios? More specifically, how may we be able to co-design employee experience through a service prototyping approach? The theoretical purpose is to reflect on whether implementing service prototyping to employee experience may represent a fertile design research topic. The study presents a qualitative analysis with a Participatory Action Research method, partnering with an Italian bank\u27s HR department and involved employees. Specifically, the paper is built on an experimental project that applies Employee Experience Design and Service Design Prototyping methods to redefine working habits in evolving contexts. Findings show the importance of employee experience prototyping in activating behavioral changes by triggering awareness-raising mechanisms in individuals. Additionally, the lengthy process of changing working practices and routines within organizations can be approached effectively by co-designing employee experience models and iteratively testing and evaluating them. The paper aims to show the potential benefits of exploration for design research in applying prototyping to employee experience design
Role of Physical mock-ups in the Ideation phase: A thematic analysis of the Pedagogic approach
No full textThe study aimed to understand the role of physical mock-ups in the ideation phase while designing building components for the selected regions of extreme weather conditions in India. A thematic analysis was conducted to identify the emerging themes from a set of student projects that represented the initial ideas using sketching and physical mock-ups during ideation. Today the use of physical mock-ups is limited to evaluating ideas that are already developed using sketching. Prior research promotes using physical mock-ups as an effective tool to generate new ideas, as it supplements the designer’s incorrect mental models and enhances the creativity and functionality of the ideas. Also, focusing on physical mock-ups when used along with external representations like sketching and role-play should result in better positioning and instructions in contemporary Product Design education. The first part of the paper describes the stages involved in the design of the research study, which followed the Sketch \u3e Mock-up \u3e Sketch (SMS) ideation process. The second part of the paper describes the six-phase thematic analysis to examine and analyze the data to develop themes from ten student projects. The third part of the paper describes the five emerging themes and findings to highlight the importance of physical mock-ups in the ideation process, along with other forms of external representations like sketching and roleplay
Process as prototype: exploring complex knowledge exchange in the production of low-cost buoyancy aids in Zanzibar through the participatory design of a ‘workflow system’
No full textThis paper reports on an investigation into the role of experiential knowledge in growing capacity for producing low-cost buoyancy aids with soft goods manufacturers – tailors – in Zanzibar, set within complex knowledge exchange collaborations under academic-industry partnerships. In this study, the makers\u27 practice of tailoring and their local environment knowledge had a formative role in designing a prototype ‘workflow system’ for local, small-batch production of low-cost rescue throwlines as part of a wider community-led water safety programme. The study builds on a previous phase of the research that identified limitations with a human-centred design (HCD) approach to the creation of opensource instruction manuals for low volume production of rescue throwlines. We propose that the previously incumbent HCD approach through its problem-solving procedures obscured the importance of the local makers’ participation in the problematisation of the manufacturing process. By foregrounding the local makers’ knowledge of the whole manufacturing process, from sourcing materials in the market to making and testing the products, this study aimed to investigate how the local makers would devise and develop their own methodological approach to making the rescue throwline, examine what the findings would suggest for the design of the throwline, and explore how this knowledge might be exchanged with other collaborators in the project. A further and longer-term aim is to support the development and impact of local capacity building in end-to-end drowning prevention management by demonstrating the importance of experiential knowledge in existing local communities of makers. A participatory making approach informed by design thinking underpinned the design of the study. An experimental participant-led approach to the generation of data draws attention to the different positions and types of knowledge negotiated. The study elucidates some of the barriers for exchanging this critical experiential knowledge with collaborators and exposes challenges for creating new social infrastructure within the community concerning drowning prevention. It concludes that managing complex knowledge exchange in prototyping in the Zanzibar context requires an iterative methodological approach to the co-construction of knowledge centred around the experiential knowledge and skills of the users of the ‘workflow system’
The prototype-evaluation choreography
No full textPrototyping and the acquisition of knowledge through evaluation are essential elements of the design process. However, both prototyping and evaluation are mostly studied separately. Moreover, prototyping and evaluation both suffer from conceptual confusion caused by the coexistence of many different perspectives brought forward by different disciplines. Multidisciplinarity is needed for innovative breakthroughs, but appears to be challenging. The goal of this paper is to offer a roadmap of possibilities to overcome these challenges and to build bridges between different perspectives in such a way that prototyping and evaluation can be structured, positioned, planned and executed coherently instead of separately. In this roadmap, the possible directions for the WHY, WHEN, WHAT, HOW and WHOM of both prototyping and evaluation are presented. The roadmap functions as a canvas, in which horizontal and vertical alignment of the different elements is crucial. Both a prototyping and an evaluation strategy must be carefully planned and aligned with each other. The presented roadmap assists in that process in such a way that multiple perspectives can strengthen each other. Only when choices about the WHY, WHEN, WHAT, HOW and WHOM of both prototyping and evaluation are made explicit, they can be discussed, communicated and learned from. In the end, prototyping and evaluation are like two dance partners that dance best if they harmoniously dance together. The choreographer designs and plans the dancing steps of the two dancing partners in such a way that a harmonious, elegant and inspiring dance is the result. The presented prototype-evaluation choreography in this paper helps the designer to be the choreographer of the prototyping and evaluation part of the design process
Using machine learning as a material to generate and refine aircraft design prototypes
No full textIn this paper, we explore the role of machine learning (ML) as a design material in prototyping new aircraft designs. This will be increasingly significant in the future, as new industry looks to meet the emerging demands of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). With increasing budget constraints, regulations and lengthy certification processes, traditional aerospace companies invest the majority of their efforts in prototyping incremental improvements of their existing aircraft designs. Many such prototyping efforts focus on producing (e.g. rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing) and evaluating (e.g. modelling and simulation) to optimize designs. The investment to explore different aircraft designs pales in comparison. The public release of ML software presents an opportunity for aircraft designers to prototype novel designs with little financial investment and at a faster rate. Our design-led research uses Stable Diffusion, a text-to- image ML software, to prototype such designs. Our findings show how the software can behave in two different ways; generate a variety of prototypes and refine prototypes towards a makeable object. Based on our findings, we recommend designers looking to introduce ML into their design and prototyping process to maintain opportunities for the software to influence the prototyping direction, as opposed to using it as a means of producing many prototypes
