Design Research

"In a form of a critical anthology, this book interlaces an ensemble of seminal articles by leading figures in the theory and practice of digital design with a series of original theoretical texts. It develops a meta-theory of the emerging interactions of media technologies and design in architecture. This theory is promoted as a foundation of transformations in design methods as well as a basis for the evolution of new forms of design thinking.

The development of an explication of emerging concepts in the form of a new taxonomy is an important contribution in any form of discourse analysis. Theories of the Digital in Architecture attempts to develop such a conceptual orientation for the growing impact of the integration of digital media technologies in design. It locates these conceptual structures within a historical perspective that identifies the coming into being of a new epistemology of the digital in architecture."

"This work focuses on a case study currently being undertaken in an indigenous community in Malaysian Borneo. The community is of the Penan culture; a nomadic culture that live in and from the rainforest. The people in the community descend from the nomadic Penan, but since they have settled, their lives are different. During preliminary explorations (Reitsma et al., 2013), we discovered that there was a tension between the different generations as to the level of connectedness to ‘Penan identity’. The elders are very proud of the traditional Penan identity, the youngsters are not very interested in this part of the culture since the rainforest, and the life that is connected to that, has never been of the same importance in their lives. Interestingly, the elders see technology as a means to interest the youngsters of the community to learn more about the traditional culture. It was decided through interactions between the community and the designer, that technological designs would be created through which the contemporary Penan identity would be explored. The outcome of these explorations would then be exhibited at an indigenous peoples’ research event, to introduce the contemporary perspective to Penan identity to the surrounding cultures. This event was chosen, since part of the reason why the youngsters seem to disconnect from their cultural background, is that the Penan culture has a negative image among the other cultures. Introducing an exhibition to those other cultures is seen by the community as a positive way to draw attention to the Penan culture.

We introduce this case study as an example of practice-based research to explore the cultural context by making things together with the cultural group aiming to explore. We see our work as valuable inspiration for other projects involving explorations on the cultural context of cultural groups because in such projects there is a chance that designer and the community do not speak the same language and thus introducing a need for reliance on other ways of exploration, such as the ones we propose. By making things together, space for reflection is created, that might be difficult to create with reflections focussing solely on spoken accounts. Working with the community, rather than on a community reflects the humble understanding that outsiders (the designer) are not necessarily experts on the culture and that input from the community gives a richer representation of the cultural context. Even though, this project focussed on creating an exhibition for an indigenous people’s research event, we see the potential of applying similar processes to projects aiming to curate cultural contexts for venues such as museums.  "

"Following, a Sample of Links to Research Tools:

-Analyze Data
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/data-analysis

-Communicate with Colleagues
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/communication

-Stay Current With Research
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/staying-current

Conduct Linguistic Research
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/linguistic-research

-Take Notes/Annotate Resources
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/annotation

-Transcribe Handwritten or Spoken Texts
http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/categories/transcription

(Note: This site apparently is a library of information regarding research tools with links to its resource (including name and date regarding person submitting the information).  Posted here are just a few examples from the site for Academia.edu Readers to determine if it is worth approaching/accessing.)"

"There exists a routine in most people’s lives wherein they
wake, work, and sleep with few activities in between those
main moments. During this routine, typical behaviors occur
wherein the participants are completely numb to the activities
that they are completing each day, they are so used
to doing them that they no longer are aware of their movements.
Work and everyday life is so typical that people feel
the need to exercise to offset their lack of movement, their
typical actions. Assuming this situation, we seek to explore
how everyday bodily attention and movement can be challenged,
and made aware. If there is a possibility that we can
make people aware of their full body movements, we can
therefore create the tendency for people to become more explorative
in their daily lives. We explore concepts of the
body-mind disconnect, introduce elements of curiosity and
examine unawareness of body.
We developed a process of research wherein we conducted
initial research observations, a series of low, mid and high fi
prototypes, body movement workshops, and cultural probes
to examine how people experience bodily awareness."

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

""Short Treatise on Design: Design is the art of bringing enchantment to everyday life through form. But there is nothing magical about that enchantment, nor even artistic: it is the concrete result of a certain number of technical procedures specific to each designer’s task. Designers make projects. And because they make projects, the effect they seek to achieve is not limited to the conception of objects. It also implies an exhaustive vision of the world, extending even to include the dream of its future. Each one of a designer’s creations is an anticipated fulfilment of that dream. All the world has to do is follow... or not?

Podcast (radio broadcast): http://soundcloud.com/stephanevial/court-trait-du-design-sur (fr)""

With the introduction and incorporation of novel interactive technology in product design, products are increasingly designed as facilitators or mediators of interaction.This perspective opens the way to a specification of this focus, namely designing products as a motor of socio-cultural activities and events. Here the product’s form and behavior should, more than ever, be designed with the intention to engage people in a form of contact with each other. In this paper we present an educational project that aims at designing a meeting event on the festival ‘a camping flight to Lowlands paradise’.The project is based on the Design Movement approach, where products are designed for, and as part of, a Choreography of Interaction; in this case as part of a meeting event at Lowlands. In this paper we show how a product design originates from the creation of a social cultural event. Moreover, we show the effect of designing products from a choreographic perspective and with focus on people’s body language and dynamic interplay.

""¿Cuál es el papel del diseñador en lo popular? ¿Puede un diseñador diseñar cosas populares, o es tan solo una aspiración pretenciosa?
Entendiéndolo como la manifestación estética de una sociedad en sus objetos de uso cotidiano, en este artículo se aborda el tema del diseño popular a partir de un estudio de caso el mueble de peluquería. Donde se busca entender, al menos en principio, varias características que pueden hacer de algo un algo popular. Partiendo de lo general a lo específico en un contexto local (Bogotá), se busca que el tema pueda ser retomado y profundizado en otros tópicos, planteando interrogantes que inviten a la reflexión en torno al mismo.

Ana María Ruiz, Jae-Whan Kim Park y David Perugache""

By paraphrasing Oliver Sack’s famous book title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, I wish to strike a note of ambivalence for this reflection on my ongoing doctoral project. I will present and try to disentangle some of the issues that have affected the work, and hopefully contribute to the discussion on doctoral education in architecture, particularly practice-oriented programs.

"The purpose of this article is to consider whether disabled persons’ user experiences and user innovations could benefit in developing individual accessible environments. Furthermore, user-centred concept design approach is examined as a means for solving complex problems and mediating the results. As arisen from the original user study, innovative disabled persons are considered here as lead users of accessible environments that take into account various challenges faced by societies due to the rapid ageing of the population. The article describes design drivers for individual accessible domestic environment and concepts based on them presented as visualised scenarios. The authors aim at providing valuable information on users’ individual requirements for various stakeholders in the development of pleasurable and individual accessible housing and related products and services.

Keywords. Accessible design, accessible housing, disabled users, lead users, user experience, user innovation.
"

To elucidate the “fine grain” of consumers’ relationships with the .material world, this article considers users’ perceptions of plastics. .For some writers, plastic signifies modern supremacy over nature; .and for others, a fugitive and protean postmodernity. However, this .article suggests that consumer perceptions of plastics are more physical .and affective. While consumers sometimes do appreciate plastics’ .potential for technical mastery, there are very strong indications that .this “theoretical” or “cultural” knowledge always is accompanied .by knowledge of materials gained through direct physical interaction .with them. This direct interaction, in turn, has affective consequences, .which may be expressed in terms of a strong liking for or .dislike of a material. At the extreme, it may be integrated into an .individual’s psyche in the form of sexual fetishism. .This article builds on social-historical studies of plastics, and .studies in the sociology of technology and in the history of design. .It draws on studies of consumption in sociology and anthropology, .and on the work of psychologist James Jerome Gibson and others, .to integrate these cultural, sensorial, and explorative aspects of our .relationship to materials. Such an integrated view sheds light on .our relationship to the materiality of new plastic objects, as well as .identifying particular elements of our relationship to plastics during .the life of objects that are implicated in their disposal. .