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DIY Bus: Exploring Boundary Objects in Participatory Design Research
No full textInequity in access to public transport is created when infrastructure and services are created for the default \u27generic user\u27. Policy formulation for large populations is driven by statistical analysis and data-driven models that often do not account for marginalized user groups, like women. A participatory approach to policy formulation can give a voice to the tacit, unrepresented needs of these groups. This research aims to evolve a comprehensive, context-sensitive participatory design research toolkit for public transport that helps in requirement capture of user aspirations and tacit knowledge. Building prototypes together helps in bringing out experiential knowledge of the participants. The prototype building toolkit serves as a boundary object that helps in tangible expression and facilitates conversations. The participatory workshops helped generate new insights into the women participants\u27 lived experiences, and served to give a tangible form to the abstract concepts in their minds. The group discussions brought many tacit needs to fore, giving voice to their unarticulated thoughts. The built prototypes embodied the participants\u27 aspirations for better, safer public buses
Materialization of the Future: The Demarcation Line between Prototypes and Demonstrators
No full textThis paper describes the evolution of the concept of ‘design demonstrator’ in the field of industrial design which has been influenced by technological advancements and the increasing complexity of design problems. It compares it with the concept of ‘prototype’ from the perspective of the future conjecture. While both concepts aim to represent the designer’s imagination, there is a difference between them: unlike prototypes, demonstrators are conceptual in their focus and are used for communication purposes rather than evaluation (Bobbe et al., 2023). In design research, prototypes and demonstrators are used for the opposite goals: converging and diverging the research area respectively, which is crucial for ‘designerly’ 2nd order cybernetics approaches, research THROUGH design and research AS design (inaccessible, inwards) (Chow and Jonas, 2008). The study of demonstrators began with obtaining by the authors personal experiential knowledge through making a demonstrator for a client. The introspective reflection on it together with the analysis of an established set of demonstrators allowed them to narrow down the area of interest and formulate a working definition of a demonstrator as at least a partially physical one-off design object that facilitates the interests of designer, client, user, and technology, and communicate them to the audience in an interactive way. The authors suggest using the design practice perspective to study the conceptual nature of demonstrators and explore them as practice in line with associative, speculative, and critical design. This lens outlines the next direction of the research related to the aspect of ‘materialization of the future’
Material meditation: Experiencing craft as an extension to soma design
No full textThis exploratory paper applies a mindful practice to crafting as a method for exploring material qualities and building on the relationship between maker and material. We expand on the method “material meditation”; soma design inspired auto ethnographical reflections on interactions with materials, along with the resulting texts. We discuss the emerging qualities, potential use, and implications of the method, showing how it was used to surface and reflect on properties material, situational and relational
Prospective films: When a strategic vision meets the diversity of human experience
No full textThrough the medium of corporate vision videos, foresight has become a vehicle for companies to communicate on their vision of the future. These films are of strategic importance and should be both watched and designed with awareness of such purposes. Mobilized on an action research project in the mobility sector, our design team accompanied a company towards defining and formalizing their vision of the future mass transportation system. A filmic analysis served as a basis for recommendations, which helped us story-boarding a prospective film meant to spotlight the diversity of human experience rather than conveying a standardized perspective of user interaction. This exploratory paper accounts for this analytical and generative study and proposes a four-category typology of corporate vision videos
Ways of seeing design research: A polyphonic speculation
No full textWe present six speculative designs that all explore the challenge of representing the broad corpus of Design Research in the form of an interactive data repository. We describe the development of the ideas, identify common themes, and highlight two related challenges: (i) The challenge of reflecting the diversity of Design Research in a repository; (ii) The challenge of capturing context(s) during the Design Research process. We argue that these challenges constitute a ‘causality dilemma’ that is inhibiting the Design Research movement. We offer insights into potential responses to the dilemma, signpost opportunities for future work and reflect on the value of ‘polyphonic speculation’ – dialogue between design researchers speculating through design on a common topic – as a design tool for probing complex challenges
Spaces for friction? Using the concept of free space as a starting point for sustainable and desirable futures
No full textFree spaces can serve as a blank canvas for the projection of desires and the exploration of possibilities – but these spaces can also create uncertainty or friction due to the potential for various interpretations and outcomes. This friction can be exploited – because it generates questions that help to reflect on our actions in design teaching, theory, and practice, and can thereby generate new ways of thinking. In the context of the great challenge in design – designing in the context of the emerging climatic catastrophe of the Anthropocene - these exploratory questions can be of major importance. Therefore, this paper uses the metaphor of empty space to outline, in three arguments, how the image of empty space can influence our thinking about design in the context of sustainability
Design implications of feeling playful: Play moods + atmospheres in dialogue
No full textBased on a research project Play Stories the aim of this paper is to explore how a combination of theories about play moods and concepts of atmosphere can enrich the field of play design. The paper explores pairing through two design experiments. It shows how play’s atmospheric qualities insist that designers attend to how these moods emerge, and the shifts that happens when the moods emerge. The contribution of the paper is: Atmospheres help us understand the dynamic of moods, and we therefore have to design for several moods; atmospheres show us the multiple elements that can configure when designing for several moods; and atmospheres orients us to emergence, and show the importance of designing for fluency, which does not mean that the design itself has to be fluent. The focus on atmospheres hints at ‘the space intentionally left blank’, the ineffable and felt qualities that always evade precise description
Anticipating the futures of the gender dimension in research: Storying entangled practices and bodies
No full textIn recent years, scholars have been increasingly urged to address a gender dimension i.e. sex and gender impact in research. In this study, we explore scholars’ explicit and implicit views about the future of implementing gender impact assessment (GIA) in research. We do so by analysing a series of co-design workshops in which participants anticipated possible futures regarding the use of a GIA checklist. We conduct a narrative inquiry of participants’ stories consisting of the personas and scenarios created at the workshops. Our analysis reveals silenced viewpoints and tensions for adopting GIA, while unveiling quite stereotypical bodies and practices in the academic world. Based on our findings, we claim that storytelling approaches help create a safe space in which participants can express discomfort and conflicts playfully and with humour. This study contributes to advance co-design futures-making by accommodating plurality of voices when discussing sensitive topics such as gender equality
Conversations with the body of the other: A three-step dialogical process
No full textEmbodied design ideation methods rely on subjective —first-person— experiences of the designer to bring new ways of designing into being. Shifting the embodied design ideation method to the body of the other, we propose a three-step process that makes the experiences of a dancer accessible to a designer for the ideation of remote intimacies. To support the access to the dancer’s experiences, we facilitate embodied, dialogical exchange over three phases: i) observation of embodied explorations between the dancer and a set of tangibles, ii) analysis of phase (i) visual documentation, and iii) a semi-structured interview with the dancer, using phase (ii) outcomes, incorporating drawing as a form of reflection. This reflexive process reveals the ways how incorporating tangibility, ambiguity, and care into a conversation with the body of the other allows us to open a space of possibilities
Embracing digital offboarding as a design challenge
No full textMost services we will use or rely on in the future will either contain a digital component or be fully digital. Given the multitude of pressures that are currently reshaping the public sector, great efforts are underway to increase the range of digital public service offerings. Design research and design practice currently contribute to the development of innovative digital public services. In addition, designers support the onboarding experience for people working in public administrations and the members of the public who benefit from or depend on these. This paper argues that we need to explore the needs and implications of digital offboarding – a concept currently not included in the development of digital public services. The author shows why digital offboarding will assume increasing meaning in an ageing society that is more and more dependent on public service provided digitally and through AI