9 research outputs found
Bridgette Engeler (Innovation and Ideas Series)
No full textDesign and innovation can be seen in everything we do in our world, from medical devices and engineering, to policy and logistics. Design has considered and prioritised human needs for a long time but design that is good for people isn't good for everything and doesn't always take into account the overall well-being of our planet and our ecosystems. Listen in as Bridgette Engeler, senior lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Swinburne discusses how design and innovation need to look beyond the current human-centered approach and start focusing on ways to meet the needs of a changing population without going beyond the limits we know our planet has
Untapped Opportunities: Investigate and develop the key skills that drive innovation excellence
No full textUntapped Opportunities: Investigate and develop the key skills that drive innovation excellence.
Interactive panel session
Facilitator: Bridgette Engeler, Senior Lecturer, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Swinburne
Panellists: Milé Terziovski, Department Chair, Business Technology and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne and Melissa Witheriff, Australian Innovation Lead, Avanad
Towards prospective design
No full textDesign and designers must be aware of their agency in designing for next. Whether creating the next contexts or the artefacts in them, design helps people make sense of and shape multiple alternative futures. Design therefore has a responsibility to unknown futures, and to design futures-focused products and services in a continuously changing world, designers need some understanding of strategic foresight and/or a capacity for anticipatory thinking. Strategic foresight offers a tangible knowledge base that can build this understanding or capacity in designers and design practice. The focus of this paper is on introducing anticipatory thinking and foresight tools and methods into design (through professional practice and education) to explore what designers might experience and create for design projects that are specifically futures-oriented; and to analyse how futures tools and methods might benefit practitioners and students. Building futures-oriented and anticipatory capacity into design practice as well as in learning experiences may better align both the design process and its outcomes with the values, needs and aspirations of prospective thinking and action, and bring about greater global wellbeing. This conceptual paper draws on anticipation theory and futures studies, transition design and design fiction, to propose that anticipation could inform design and innovation processes, increase designer agency, and support goals such as sustainability and longevity to enable the design of products and services in a system that can deliver sustained value over time
COMBINATORIAL THEOREMS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF MODELS**These results were obtained while the author was working on a research project in the foundations of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S. National Science Foundation Grant G-19673.
No full textPortfolio of work under The Design Futures Initiative (2018-2021)
No full textBackground: Present in over 20 countries and 50 cities, The Design Futures Initiative is an international collective of creative professionals that facilitates programs and conversations on the ethical, environmental, political, and economic impact of future products, spaces, and services. In late 2018, I co-founded the Melbourne chapter to develop a participatory design research practice in the field of Urban Futures, and more specifically, to research the cultural and societal shifts needed to address the climate emergency through design and innovation.
Contribution: Since 2018, I leveraged the collective’s international equity as well as my own network to bring together general audiences and world leading thinkers such as Asia-Pacific Arup Leader Bree Trevena, world-renowned performance artist Stelarc, and environmental designer David Holmgren, co-founder of the permaculture movement. In addition, I’ve also premiered work from artist duo PluginHUMAN, and provided a platform for academics such as futurist Dr Bridgette Engeler, international environmental artist Dr Debbie Symons, and the emerging societal movement Extinction Rebellion.
Significance: This public series of participatory design research events attracted hundreds of people, and were curated, produced and presented in partnership with influential governmental and cultural organisations such as the National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne Design Week, The City of Melbourne Melbourne Knowledge Week, The Capitol Theatre, and SDNOW, an Asia-Pacific series of conferences and masterclasses about design, strategy, ethics, and futures—of which I am now an advisory panel member. The curation and production of events and works under The Design Futures Initiative has been pivotal in shaping my speculative design research practice in the field of Urban Futures. As a result of this work, I also have been invited to speak at the inaugural Future Life Conference at the Victorian Arts Centre in April 2021
The invisible scissors: Media freedom and censorship in Switzerland
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.At first glance, the very idea of analysing the freedom of the media and of researching
censorship in Switzerland seems absurd. After all, the Federal Constitution explicitly guarantees freedom of the media, and censorship is forbidden. Furthermore, this small, federal, multilingual and multicultural landlocked country in the middle of Europe is universally praised as a model of democracy. Indeed, in a country whose people have a far greater say in government than anywhere else, one could easily assume that the freedom of the media is a foregone conclusion.
Yet, in reality, this shining image is more than a little tarnished. The "Prototype for
Europe" – as the former Federal President of Germany Richard von Weizsäcker once described Switzerland – experiences the same forms and mechanisms of censorship as any other democratic country. Of course, in Switzerland "undesirable" journalists are
not threatened with murder, but critically discerning authors do risk becoming social
outcasts. Switzerland prohibits governmental pre-censorship, but the advertising
industry has on occasion attempted to shape the content of the media by means of
post-publication censorship in the form of boycotts. Switzerland is a constitutional state, yet the paragraphs of its penal and civil codes hang over media workers like the sword of Damocles. Then there are structural problems such as the lack of proper journalistic education. However one looks at it, the freedom of the media in Switzerland is officially, materially and structurally restricted.
However, most people remain unconcerned by and indeed unaware of this state of affairs. Thomas Jefferson's reminder that, "to preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to
martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement”*, has long been forgotten in Switzerland.
The Swiss appear to be basking in their country’s reputation as a place without media
problems. It therefore came as no surprise to us when, both in our quantitative and
qualitative research, many of those interviewed were surprised and even irritated at our 2 questions about possible threats to freedom of the media in Switzerland. Some people even felt that they were being personally attacked and responded along the lines that "Instead of fouling our own nest we ought to describe the advantages of our country and our democratic system". Or: "In comparison with Russia or China we are living in a paradise": It seems that only the most critical among the media personnel, media experts and media scientists are willing to pinpoint the problems faced by the contemporary Swiss media. All the others are convinced that we have the best media on earth.
This attitude of part indifference, part ignorance and part wishful thinking, was the
catalyst for our research on the freedom of the Swiss media and the potential dangers
and mechanisms which threaten it. Our findings reveal that all that glitters is not gold and that the Swiss media scene is, in some ways, reminiscent of a Potemkin village. *Jefferson, Thomas, Letter to William Green Mumford, 18 June 1799
(http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jefferson.htm, consulted 15 June 2006
