In the last few years, “Design Thinking” has gained popularity – it is now seen as an exciting new paradigm for dealing with problems in sectors as far a field as IT, Business, Education and ...Medicine. This potential success challenges the design research community to provide unambiguous answers to two key questions: “What is the core of Design Thinking?” and “What could it bring to practitioners and organisations in other fields?”. We sketch a partial answer by considering the fundamental reasoning pattern behind design, and then looking at the core design practices of framing and frame creation. The paper ends with an exploration of the way in which these core design practices can be adopted for organisational problem solving and innovation.
► Analysing design reasoning in terms of abduction. ► Presenting a framework for the description of design practices. ► Investigating the creation of new frames as a key design practice. ► Describing the different levels on which design (framing) practices can impact organisations.
Knowledge from academic design research projects does not always help design professionals to actually strengthen their work. Based on a multi-case study, this paper describes how researchers view ...the impact of their design research projects on design practice and what they do to achieve this. Even in projects where impact on design practice is a stated ambition, several challenges can stand in the way, such as a lack of funding opportunities and unclarity on the needs of design practice. The paper provides tips for researchers and funding parties who want to inform design practice by research, including tips to operationalize design practice roles.
•Professional design practice as an audience is a blind spot in funding.•Involving design professionals is not sufficient to impact design practice.•Four tips to impact design practice are provided for researchers and funding parties.
Prototypes are complex and dynamic artifacts that shape social situations during product development. A ten-month applied ethnographic study of a footwear company recounts prototypes' evolving role ...in communication between three stakeholder groups. In this case study, we use Mol's “bodies multiple” theory to describe prototypes enactment as communication tools across contexts. This study finds that prototypes become encoded with information that is translated, decoded, and re-encoded by stakeholder groups. Prototypes remain the same across contexts, yet the spokesperson guiding the prototype may change. Raising awareness of prototypes role in communication, such as their ability to build confidence through socialization, can allow design teams to better plan for how information is encoded into the prototyped artifact and the messaging surrounding it.
•Applied ethnographic study of a footwear company developing a new boot.•Prototypes are communication tools to explain, gain feedback, negotiate, or persuade.•Knowledge is embodied in prototypes and translated across contexts.•Stakeholder interactions define the various project contexts.•Socialization occurs around prototypes as a means to build confidence in a project.
Tendencies in contemporary participatory design suggest a move away from engagement of limited stakeholders in preconfigured design processes and predefined technology outcomes, towards more complex ...and long-term engagement with heterogeneous communities and larger ecologies of social and technological transformation. Building on core values of participatory design, we introduce three dimensions of engagement of scoping, developing and scaling that we argue can be essential in developing a holistic approach to participatory design as a sustainable practice of social change. The dimensions foreground central aspects of participatory design research that are discussed in relation to a long-term project exploring design and digital fabrication technologies in Danish primary and secondary education.
•Assessing challenges in participatory design emphasising political dimensions.•Dimensions of participatory design engagement for sustainable social change.•Impact of long-term participatory design on digital technology in education.
Abstract
Background and Objectives
There is a lack of understanding of how older adults’ involvement and participation matters in actual design practice. This systematic literature review ...investigates existing empirical studies involving older users during the design of technologies and explores the nature and consequences of involving older people.
Research Design and Methods
Our literature review is informed by the guidelines of the PRISMA statement. We examined the included studies by means of thematic content analysis to identify the nature of older users’ involvement and existing evidence on what consequences it has.
Results
In total, 40 empirical studies published in the period 2014–2018 are included in the review. Most empirical studies involve older people from local networks, with underlying stereotypical images and at lower levels of participation. The results reveal three main consequences of involving older users: learning, adjusted design, and an increased sense of participation. Furthermore, we found that user involvement is a structured process whose outcomes are contingent on a range of premises.
Discussion and Implications
Synthesizing the results, we develop the concept of user involvement and present an analytical framework. Our results have implications for researchers and policy makers, since they throw into question the widely held assumption that involving older people inevitably yields beneficial outcomes.
As urbanization advances and policies are implemented, farmer's markets, as an important part of urban life, face dilemmas that urgently require academic exploration of countermeasures for market ...development models. This study takes Xuzhou Jiefangqiao Farmers' Market as an example, and under the guidance of place attachment theory, it integrates the questionnaire and observations, combined with SPSS software to analyze the case place site situation and sort out the factors influencing attachment perception. Extenics innovation method and Superiority evaluation strategy were used to investigate the results of the place attachment study. A quantitative conservation renewal strategy to improve the perception of place attachment of farmers' market users is proposed.
Languaging design methods Gray, Colin M.
Design studies,
January 2022, 2022-01-00, Letnik:
78
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Design methods have been integral to design studies research, with initial goals of bringing rationality and objectivity to design activities, later shifting to the creation and provision of methods ...as tools to encourage more reflective, meaningful, and socially responsible design practices. However, little research exists that describes how methods are created, what knowledge is used to inform this creation, or connects elements of methods to performance by designers. In this research note, I describe performative, codification-oriented, and presentation-oriented stances towards design methods, articulating a vocabulary that languages aspects of methods. I describe areas where this vocabulary may support design researchers, including building new design methods, informing descriptive accounts of methods in use, and supporting the creation of a theory of method.
•A vocabulary that informs researchers' engagement with design methods.•A set of performative, codification-oriented, and presentation-oriented stances towards design methods.•Opportunities for researchers to create new methods, describe methods, and build a theory of method.
Searching for inspirational stimuli is an essential step in the initial stages of the design process. However, there is a lack of information on what designers search for during such a phase. There ...is no distinction between what student and professional designers use as inspirational sources or idea generation methods. We present the results of a questionnaire involving 103 student and 52 professional designers on their reported preferences for inspirational approaches. Students and, to some extent, professional designers seem to give an exaggerated importance to a restricted number of approaches, when they could take advantage of a wide range of available resources. Further results have uncovered possible research directions for the exploration of alternative stimuli for inspiration during ideation phases.
•Survey on the most preferred inspiration sources and methods designers use.•Student designers prefer to use images over objects, and the latter more than text.•Professional designers prefer to use equally more images and objects than text.•Student designers show preference for mainly only one method, Brainstorming.•Professionals have a slightly larger array of preferred methods than design students.•Student designers show preference for mainly only one method, Brainstorming•Professionals have a slightly larger array of preferred methods than design students.
Despite the increasing interest in bringing together the fields of sustainability transitions and design research, the ways transition design connects to earlier theories on design action have not ...been extensively studied. By using Buchanan’s (1992; 1998) ‘four orders of design’ and Young’s (2008) ‘complexity in design’ models as a framework, this article provides an empirical example of how to examine transition co-design dynamics. With a case study of a national sustainable development strategy creation in Finland, we argue that design does not only contribute to transition processes instrumentally but also from attitudinal and intellectual perspectives. Designing for transitions blends existing forms of design work for success, and it offers new agencies for design in supporting governance of highly complex policy processes.
•An empirical study on designing for transitions at a high-level policy process.•A new analytical framework to examine transition co-design dynamics.•Designing for transitions blends existing forms of design work to succeed.•Design for Transitions offers new agencies for design in governance and policy.
Abstract Large organisations are designing complex technology-based tools for their staff to use. In busy workplace environments, it can be difficult to get user input about a design. This paper ...describes the designer and user interactions in one such organisation, gaining insights that could be useful in other similar settings. The findings are based on a set of interviews with designers and researchers within the organisation. The paper identifies the current practices and constraints involved in understanding and capturing users' needs and discusses potential solutions.
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