She Ji-The Journal of Design Economics and Innovation最新文献

In this viewpoint article we discuss the challenges to achieving sustainability transitions from the perspective of theories of design and of technology. We first introduce the environmental issues that face industrial civilization, noting the differences in viewpoints concerning whether planetary limits are largely insurmountable or if they may be alleviated through human ingenuity. We then give an overview of theoretical perspectives on the nature of technology and of technological change and innovation before discussing the implications of these theoretical perspectives for possible approaches to sustainability transition. In particular, we note the importance of the maturity of technologies and the challenges of increasing technological complexity. We then introduce a selection of theoretical perspectives on the nature of design, before discussing the implications of these, especially the knowledge requirements in identifying feasible transition steps, and the inherent conflict between different viewpoints on planetary limits. We emphasize the risk of fixation and the importance of trade-offs. We conclude by proposing a five-fold set of actions.

Professors today struggle with unreasonable workloads and a work management format antithetical to high quality research and teaching. Recent studies show that many professors suffer from high levels of stress, anxiety, and exhaustion, and several studies report high levels of burnout. The reasons for this situation are not yet fully understood. In this article, I discuss the current academic work management format as a key motive that hinders the well-being of professors and the quality of their work. To understand this issue, the article explores the concept of deep work in relation to academia. It examines the contrasting circumstances of deep work and the continual and disruptive mode of communication required by the hyperactive hive mind. Work based on instant digital communication tools takes a hidden toll on the ability of professors to manage their attention. Instant communications among academic staff members disrupts the deep work required for engagement in research and teaching. To obtain the best possible results from faculty, we should manage attention as a scarce and valuable resource. To do this requires redesigning the management of academic work, a project outside the remit of most academic professionals—or the professors subject to the demands of the hyperactive hive mentality.

Despite progress in recent decades, many crucial challenges to the eradication of extreme poverty remain intractable. Development interventions often fail to deliver sustained, transformational outcomes to households and communities. The field of design has demonstrated its capacity to deliver designed artifacts that enhance the livelihoods and well-being of people living in resource poor communities, but it remains unclear how its tools can contribute to interventions seeking multidimensional and transformational development outcomes. We present insights from two case studies, conducted in Kenya and Uganda, where a service design approach was applied to the design of two development interventions: a clean cookstove and fuel system, and an innovative insurance product to help farmers cope with climate variability. In both cases, experience mapping, archetype construction, and prototyping served to reveal individual needs, capacities, and values, and enabled the translation of this information into design features for the interventions. Using Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach as an ex post analytical frame, we show how these devices could guide designers seeking to deliver transformational development outcomes when co-designing services that aim for environmental sustainability and social well-being among low-income communities.

In 1988, I published an article on the criteria for quality in communication design. This article revisits the issues I raised: performance, rather than style, should be the determining factor in assessing quality. Today, 34 years later, I shift my focus to the current drive for simplification, to ask how this affects design processes by ignoring the complexity that characterizes human interactions with communications. Methods conceived as mechanical recipes and the promotion of quick working strategies reduce the fitness of methods and processes as the way to confront complex commercial, cultural, and social problems. The discussion touches on design practice and design education. It includes examples of design projects to support aspects of the argument. Designers should become more responsible agents, professionally, socially, and environmentally. This requires an optimal use of research-based decisions in design. The end of the article is an invitation for reflection and action.

This article explores the idea that democratic technology development in public governance can be enhanced by adding an experiential dimension to it. Our work is situated in the context of an appathon organized by the Dutch government to initiate the development of a Covid-19 contact-tracing application. The appathon stimulated a multifaceted debate on technology design and societal values, and raised a crucial question: how can design methods enhance democratic technology development? To answer this question, we first identify three main democratic values (i.e., citizen participation, collective decision making, and critical engagement) that underpin three influential design methods: participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design. Next, based on design theory, we argue that these methods can bring three experiential qualities to democratic technology development: ownership, contestation, and imagination. We then situate this theoretical reflection in a reflexive thematic analysis of publicly available discussions that took place during the appathon. This makes it possible to identify opportunities to deploy participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design to engage citizens in political decision making directly and experientially. Based on our analysis, we highlight how abductive design reasoning may help iteratively deliberate sociotechnical challenges when using participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design. Ultimately, this paper explicates the role of design methods and practices in political participation.

Although artisanal crafts and craftsmanship are in high demand globally, the benefits artisans receive are often negligible. The rules of the open market also make it difficult for them to compete. A number of Indian enterprises have introduced innovative organization models to catalyze social change and support artisans’ wellbeing by involving them more directly in the organization. Based on a review of literature on social entrepreneurship and organization design using a design thinking lens, and three case studies on craft enterprises in India, we find that artisans cannot be empowered separately from their communities. Further, any design intervention seeking to bring about social change through artisan participation must be grounded in an in-depth understanding of local context, artisans’ needs, and market dynamics. We contribute new knowledge about the crucial role of the change maker in successfully transforming a design intervention into a sustainable enterprise, and propose an original framework for designing innovative organizations based on effective participation and empowerment of the artisans producing goods for sale.

This article reviews Perspectives on Research Assessment in Architecture, Music and the Arts: Discussing Doctorateness. Its editors’ aim is to establish a framework for applying the concept of “doctorateness” to the assessment of practice-based doctoral research in art and design fields. The book’s principal claim is that the purpose of practice-based doctorates is to uphold and maintain art and design practitioners’ values. I review each chapter and I evaluate the chain of inferences that lead from scoring the thesis to doctoral education’s purpose. I conclude that the authors’ argument undermines the research-teaching-study nexus.