Increasingly, Design Thinking's influence reaches beyond the confines of traditional design disciplines and expands its role in connecting domains and integrating resources. This study focused on the changing role of design researchers involved in interdisciplinary research projects, following a Research-through-Design (RtD) approach. The research setting for this study was a project on the design and evaluation of digital solutions in the context of dementia. This study applied process research methods to provide a holistic view of the dynamics between actors from different domains as well as an understanding of the role of design researchers within the complexity of the larger system of an interdisciplinary RtD collaboration. Findings at the organizational, process, and product levels emphasized the following three changing roles for design researchers in interdisciplinary RtD: (1) a mediator role, (2) a sensemaking role, and (3) a role in improving processes by applying research artefacts.
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Increasingly, Design Thinking has influence beyond the confines of traditional design disciplines and expands its’ role in connecting domains and integrating resources. This study focusses on the changing role of design researchers involved in interdisciplinary research projects, following a Research-through-Design (RtD) approach. The research context for this study is a project on designing and evaluating digital solutions in the context of dementia. Based on process research methods this study provides a holistic view on dynamics between actors from different domains and an understanding on the role of design researchers within the complexity of the larger system of an interdisciplinary RtD-collaboration. Findings on organizational-, process- and product level emphasize on three changing roles for design researchers in interdisciplinary RtD: 1) A mediator role, 2) a sensemaking role, and 3) a role in improving processes by applying research artefacts.
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In this paper we explore the influence of the physical and social environment (the design space) son the formation of shared understanding in multidisciplinary design teams. We concentrate on the creative design meeting as a microenvironment for studying processes of design communication. Our applied research context entails the design of mixed physical–digital interactive systems supporting design meetings. Informed by theories of embodiment that have recently gained interest in cognitive science, we focus on the role of interactive “traces,” representational artifacts both created and used by participants as scaffolds for creating shared understanding. Our research through design approach resulted in two prototypes that form two concrete proposals of how the environment may scaffold shared understanding in design meetings. In several user studies we observed users working with our systems in natural contexts. Our analysis reveals how an ensemble of ongoing social as well as physical interactions, scaffolded by the interactive environment, grounds the formation of shared understanding in teams. We discuss implications for designing collaborative tools and for design communication theory in general.
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Deciding what kind of smart cities do we, as a society, want is not only a political question but also a matter of envisioning possible futures. The speculative narratives that designers produce to support their imagination are called "Design Fictions." We share SUBMERGED, a cross-platform project that combines game design, interactive narrative, and urban exploration with the objective of empowering citizens to produce their design fictions. Following a "Research through Design" practice, we describe our process for creating SUBMERGED, we synthesize some critical insights from our experience, and we urgently call for a dialogue between semioticians and design researchers on these topics.
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Research through design allows creating a dialogue with the material. It uses making andreflection on action as a generator of knowledge. Our aim is to explore the opportunities and challenges of smart textiles. The Fablab is our set up, a place that allows us to combine the hackingscientific-, and design community. It stimulates collaboration and the knowledge exchange needed for the development of smart textile systems. A collaborative prototyping workshop for medical products combined two worlds. The textile world in Saxion aims at incorporating conductive materials into textile structures and functional- / 3D printing to create systems for applications such as flexible heating systems and wearable technology. We combined this with the world of Industrial Design at TU/e, focused on the design of intelligent products, systems and services by the research through design approach. The collaboration between these different disciplines accelerated the process by reducing the resistance to the new and skipped the frustration on failure. Article from the Saxion Research Centre for Design and Technology published in the book 'Smart and Interactive Textile ' (pages 112-117), for the 4th International Conference Smart Materials, Structures and Systems, Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy, 10th-14th June 2012.
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This investigation explores relations between 1) a theory of human cognition, called Embodied Cognition, 2) the design of interactive systems and 3) the practice of ‘creative group meetings’ (of which the so-called ‘brainstorm’ is perhaps the best-known example). The investigation is one of Research-through-Design (Overbeeke et al., 2006). This means that, together with students and external stakeholders, I designed two interactive prototypes. Both systems contain a ‘mix’ of both physical and digital forms. Both are designed to be tools in creative meeting sessions, or brainstorms. The tools are meant to form a natural, element in the physical meeting space. The function of these devices is to support the formation of shared insight: that is, the tools should support the process by which participants together, during the activity, get a better grip on the design challenge that they are faced with. Over a series of iterations I reflected on the design process and outcome, and investigated how users interacted with the prototypes.
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Workshop paper Taking an embodied perspective, we report on the design of two interactive products aimed at empowering people with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder in coping with challenges of everyday life. Our Research-through-Design study combined theory with hands-on co-design work and in situ user observation, in close collaboration with clients and their professional caretakers, constructing experienceable prototypes as tangible anchors for reflection. Reflection resulted in guiding principles addressing the design potential of designing for Embodied Empowerment, centering on the client’s embodied-being-in-the-world.
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From the article: Research through Design projects in the health domain often involve collaborations of design and healthcare researchers. All partners have their own ideas and expectations with regard to what they consider valid ways to support their work. The evidence-based approach that dominates healthcare research differs from the ways that are common in design research, in which more iterative approaches are applied with focus on developing solutions to fit to the users and their context. The question that we address is twofold: a) How do differences in grounding approaches manifest themselves in projects where design and healthcare researchers collaborate? And b) How do project teams deal with these differences? We analyzed the grounding practices within ten Dutch research projects that address the development of e-health applications to support people as they grow older. All projects are collaborations of design and healthcare researchers and practice partners. We applied a multiple case study research approach in two series of interviews, with a cross-case interpretation after the first series of interviews to direct the second series. Differences in grounding approaches in the projects manifest themselves on four themes, each representing a spectrum: time, structure, control and position. These differences provided challenges, but were also used to strengthen the project.
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As smart solutions for healthcare (eHealth) are becoming increasingly widespread, apps and other digital devices may effectively complement various forms of psychotherapy. We point at children and adolescents in psychological therapy as a yet-underserved public for similar solutions. Moreover, a shared design sensibility between interaction designers, game designers, and therapists is still lacking. The Games 4 Therapy initiative was launched to address this problem space through practical design explorations. We illustrate its design research agenda, we call for more attention to children and adolescents as important recipients of digitally-mediated psychological therapies, and we offer actionable concepts and game design tactics for interaction designers and psychotherapists. Finally, we discuss our findings by "thinking through" a selection of conceptual design explorations, pointing at the characteristics and tactics we identified in our sketches.
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In this paper we investigate how a combination of "speculative" design methods can be used to generate theoretical understandings for dynamic, colour-changing fabrics for garments. Specifically, we combine a first-person, autobiographical, research through design (RtD) approach that draws strategies from speculative design. We call this approach alternative presents, inspired by the work of James Auger, and explore it as a way to generate theoretical propositions for dynamic fabric that emphasize the lived experience over technological innovation. The contributions of this framing are twofold. Firstly, we offer a theoretical contribution to the literature on dynamic fabric. Secondly, we make a methodological contribution for how autobiographical design and RtD can be oriented speculatively to generate intermediate knowledge, with particular emphasis on social-technical aspects.
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