We wish to include top quality, original, speculative, provocative, evocative and/or innovative contributions in this book from the global design research community. We are looking for contributions that will fit under one or more of the following headings:

What is design research?
•    The Nature and Process of Design Research (including the history of design research)
•    The Purpose of Design Research (i.e. about / for / through / generative / formative / evaluative)
•    Research Approaches (ontology and epistemology)

How do we embark on design research?
•    Formulating Research Questions
•    Conducting a Literature Search and Review
•    Developing a Research Plan

How do we conduct design research?
•    Asking Questions (e.g. novel sampling approaches)
•    Data Collection Methods (e.g. generative / formative / evaluative)
•    Analysing Information
•    Ethical Issues

How do we communicate design research?
•    Writing Techniques
•    Writing for Your Audience
•    Publicising Your Research

Examples of design research
•    Case Studies – How We Embark on Design Research
•    Case Studies – How We Conduct Design Research
•    Case Studies – How We Communicate Design Research

In the first instance, we wish to solicit contributions from interested authors in the form of a one page summary (circa 300 to 400 words) by Monday 7 May, 2012. We wish to celebrate the plurality of design research and also the wide range of conceptual, methodological, technological and theoretical approaches evident in contemporary design research.  We wish to receive contributions from the vast array of disciplines in and around modern design praxis including, but not limited to, the following:

Industrial design
Product design
Visual communication
Typography
Interaction design
Fashion design
Social design
Jewellery design
Design theory
Hacktivism
Filmmaking
Design ethnography
Journalism
Social sciences
Life sciences
Engineering
Manufacturing
Business
Computing
Architecture
Critical design

We would especially like to receive contributions that view themselves as inter-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary, and / or anti-disciplinary in nature.

For more information please contact the editors:

Professor Paul Rodgers and Dr Joyce Yee
Northumbria University, School of Design
{paul.rodgers@northumbria.ac.uk; joyce.yee@northumbria.ac.uk}

]]> http://www.designdictator.com/iridescent-publication/feed http://www.designdictator.com/design-transitions-project http://www.designdictator.com/design-transitions-project#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 08:41:07 +0000 admin http://www.designdictator.com/?p=1018 I am currently working on a project with Emma Jefferies (@dremmajefferies), ’Design Transitions’ which seek to capture and share inspirational stories of how design companies practices are evolving. We are on the hunt to capture new and untold stories from across the globe in order to compile it into a book. We are looking for practices who are challenging the traditional notions of designing and are operating in new design spaces.

If you know of design companies with inspirational practices and their stories not been told yet we would love to hear about them – all you need to do is comment on this page.

Follow us on our journey through @DesTransitions twitter account. We are also working on a website that will soon be up in January 2012.

The 2nd Nordic Service Design (renamed Service Design and Innovation conference) conference website was launched last month. I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s conference held at AHO, Oslo last year and am hoping to attend again this year at Linkoping, Sweden. The deadline for full paper submissions is on the 19th of June.

’The topic for this year’s conference is ExChanging Knowledge. ServDes invites contributions from researchers and practitioners that wish to contribute to the development of a knowledge base on service design, and openly discuss challenges of the field’.

Just got back from the First Nordic Service Design conference in Olso. See my previous post. Here are a few pictures from the workshop session ’Challenges in Digital Service Provision’. It was a joint workshop between myself, Teresa Sarmento from ESAD and Lars Georg Teigen, Johan-Christian Høgåsen-Hallesby from Second Brain.

I really enjoyed the conference, it felt like the most ’designed’ experience of a conference I have ever been to — which is apt as it is a conference on Service Design. I was very impressed by the fact that when I arrived at the hotel, a welcome package was waiting for me in my room — saving me the trouble of needing to register and pick up my conference pack. The organisers also thought about what to include in the pack, a tongue-in-cheek response to that fact that its very dark and damp in Oslo at this time of the year. So, they included a pair of ’swims’ galoshes which are shoes that you wear over your nice shoes to keep them from getting wet. They also included a reflective band that can be worn over your wrist to ensure that you are seen in the dark. Qin Han was right in saying that ’cards’ are the new black of the service design world. A pack of service touchpoints cards was included in the package which was produced by the At-ONE project.

I’ve also included some pictures from the conference dinner, or shall I say do-it-yourself social cooking event! They held the meal/cooking at the School of Gastronomy, somewhere in Oslo..and got the participants to cook a tapas dish. I’ve never seen so many people in a kitchen before — it was organised chaos. But it worked brilliantly — everyone had a go, some participated more, some hang back and chatted. And the best thing was, everyone enjoyed themselves! It was a brilliant idea! I might steal it…but probably wont work in England due to the ridiculous Health and Safety regulations. Too many people, too many sharp objects and wine in the vicinity.

This was the first dedicated service design conference that I attended and was useful in terms of the issues discussed, as well as observing who was turning up for these type of events. Not sure if this is true…but Simon Clatworthy mentioned that this could be the first dedicated peer-reviewed service design conference. It was also interesting to observe that the number of designers from a viscomm/graphic design background is equally represented compare to product/interaction designer. There was also a paper stream looking specifically on visualisations in service design. The conference has also help clarified thoughts about skills and audience of a service design programme. It seems that many other institutions are at that stage where they are deciding whether or not to develop a specific MA programme in service design.

The issues that was discussed seem to revolve around the areas of understanding the heritage of service design, what can be learn from other forerunners like Participatory Design, Interaction Design etc, to the more predictable areas of methods and tools. There was also a strong branding presence in relation to the design of services. Most of the case studies presented seemed much more business orientated than social projects, which I found surprising seeing that there was a heavy Scandinavian presence where I would expect more social aspects of service design to dominate.

One last word - the next Nordic Service Design Conference will be held next year at Linkoping University, Sweden. I’ll post the link when the call for papers becomes live.

1. We are becoming an urban species, as by the end of 2008, more than half of the world’s population will live in cities (source: United Nations)
2. By the end of 2012, network sensors will account for 20% of non-video internet traffic (source: Gartner)

Where is this data coming from?
— networked devices (e.g. mobile phones)
— networked buildings (for new buildings)
— networked vehicles (e.g. embedded GPS)
— networked infrastructure (e.g oyster card, RFID cards)
— networked institutions (e.g. government data like census information )
— networked people

Being able to harness this vast amount of data offers massive potential to the inhabitants of the city. What could access to these data mean? Potentially it could offer:

— More awareness (for e.g. using Google maps to find out local services and shops)
— More control (for e.g. finding the least polluted route to work)
— More choice (for e.g. using Camvit to plot alternate routes around the urban landscape)
— More convivial (knowing who your neighbours are through localised networks)
— Richer experiences (for e.g Chritian Nold’s work on emotional maps which asked participants to record their feelings of a place onto maps, anchoring subjectivity to places so that it could experienced by someone else)
— New creative possibilities of urban spaces (for e.g. Tom Armitage’s work on making the Tower Bridge in London, ‘Twitter’)
— Visualising every single potential of a space

An open networked urban environment will offer a local, on-demand and actionable information for individuals. How can this be achieved? Greenfield suggests embedding networks in all public objects that will have an open API (Application Platform Interface) to enable open access and allow the data to be used in anyway imaginable.

An open access networked environment has inevitably a downside too. Greenfield was careful to present these negative aspects in order to highlight what he considers to be design challenges must be addressed. He warned against:
— Seduction of data visualisation. Visualisation is only as good as the quality of the data. Data should be not be used to deceived and manipulated.
— ‘The big sort’ where technologies can intensify the divide between the poor and the networked.
— Attack surface possibility. How much potential vulnerability does a system have? There will be a need for a greater better sense of security awareness.
— Emergent behaviour (behaviours that wasn’t designed into the system). A glitch in the system, especially in a network is difficult to trace.

Whatever the challenge, Greenfield hopes that it will be tackled with knowingness, awareness and most importantly, with compassion.