Design Studies最新文献

This Case Study paper presents the first exploration of Speculative Design as a participatory democracy method for navigating the future of ageing in Malaysia. Speculative Design in the context of Global South is emerging, but without much data on how it is applied within different socio-economic conditions from the Global North countries. This Case Study considers the challenges and opportunities of employing Speculative Design as policy identification and development method from the context of Malaysia, a Global South country with its own unique characteristics. The paper concludes by suggesting that the novelty of Speculative Design as a policy-design approach in Global South countries, such as in Malaysia, requires the right selection of provocations and culturally familiar content to ease introduction of the methodology. Also, the efficacy of this approach as a participatory design application would require further enculturation within targeted communities, as well as sustained engagement through Champions.

Participatory design (PD) is a signature element of good design practice. However, enabling effective participation is often difficult to realise. This article highlights the value of applying psychoanalytic approaches to spatial thinking to better understand the deeper complexities and dynamics of the space-psyche relationship, and the challenges in the spatial thinking process that can inadvertently alienate participants in PD. Lacanian psychoanalysis is used to highlight how participants' lack of access to imagined space compromises their ability to establish a reciprocal relationship with space. The paper contributes to critiques of PD by exploring the relationship between spatial thinking, power, and agency in the PD process through Lacanian psychoanalysis. The paper argues the space that imagination seeks to access should not be gated or guarded by the designer's gaze, and that careful work is required to prevent such foreclosures from occurring.

In product development, designers employ techniques to overcome creativity barriers and most stimuli proposed take the form of texts and illustrations. To facilitate the application of external stimuli and enhance their benefits, this paper proposes the use of physical models. The hypothesis is that these can enhance the designer's creativity more efficiently than other forms of stimuli. The influence of physical models on ideation sessions was evaluated and the outcomes were compared with those obtained applying informative cards. The results reported herein show that physical models can improve the capacity of designers to generate more creative solutions, because they promote a better understanding of analogy sources and encourage communication between the members of the design team.

Designers face challenges stemming from the complexity and uncertainty in sustainable design. Drawing from the theoretical perspectives of dialectics and design process, we argue that a dialectical process of framing design issues and approaching design challenges can be an important but less explored element in the process of designing sustainable products. In the research setting of designers from five new sustainable design ventures, we explicated three sets of dialectics across the dimensions of social value, temporality, and development space. We further identified different synthesis strategies employed by participating designers for resolving design challenges. On the basis of empirical findings, we propose a framework for dialectical thinking and synthesis modes. We argue that the conceptual prompts provided by the proposed models can help designers articulate the process of problem framing and explore the various recombination and possibilities that emerge during synthesis.

While multidisciplinary collaboration is increasingly considered as a prerequisite for innovation in design, it is unclear what has been studied and what to investigate next. To address this, we conducted a systematic literature review on multidisciplinary design collaboration, focussing on what has been found, and how these studies have been implemented. Following a PRISMA approach, 17 papers were selected for a critical review. A co-occurrence analysis found that the selected literature covered five themes centred on communication, all highlighting the importance of shared understanding in multidisciplinary design collaboration. Further analysis revealed biases and differences between the methodological approach followed in the studies. For future research, we suggest investigating two under-explored areas of design collaboration: distributed work and digital/service-oriented design activities.

The notion of ‘publics’ has emerged as a frame for rethinking the relationships between design practices and the communities affected by design. This paper explores two facets of the intersection of design and publics. First, we examine the notion of designing for public interests with an understanding of publics as multiple, conflicting and varied. Second, with reference to the Australian context, we reflect on different ways design communities can identify and support the formation of publics as a pivotal next step to more effectively serve its own interests and values, including the urgent enactment of social change. Our discussion identifies four sets of tensions that we offer as provocations for constructive and ongoing engagement by the design community at large to inform the process of designing for our own publics.