Search

We propose computational empowerment as an approach and a Participatory Design (PD) response to challenges related to the emerging need for digital literacy in lower secondary education. Our approach extends the current focus on computational thinking to include a concern for how children and youth are empowered through constructive, analytical and critical engagement with technology. We argue that PD has the potential to drive a computational empowerment agenda in education by connecting political PD with contemporary visions for addressing a future digitised labour market and society. We provide a model for understanding and engaging with computational empowerment and report on the emergence of the computational empowerment agenda in a Danish context and how this agenda is reflected in the newly developed curriculum for a course on technology comprehension running on trial basis in 46 schools across Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design is an inherently complex activity. Design thinking is cognitively complex and design practice is contextually complex. This has implications for university-level design education which has traditionally displayed clear distinctions between the full-time and part-time 4undergraduate sectors, particularly in their teaching and learning strategies. However, a number of pressures and trends are evident which suggest that these two sectors are moving closer together. One of the drivers in this phenomenon is the need for students to be exposed to realistic levels of design complexity. This paper examines complexity in design and draws some significant parallels between modern design practice in general and the production of a new undergraduate course at the Open University. Both are used to illuminate design complexity. The paper suggests that some of the tools, techniques and approaches of part-time, undergraduate, distance design education might usefully be exploited in more traditional, full-time course models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the focus of product design has shifted from exclusively commercial to sustainability and social concerns, design education in this area has endeavoured to keep pace. Victor Papanek's book Design for the real world, crystallised many of the systemic social, economic and environmental concerns into an argument for change through eco-design, inclusive design and, in business and corporate contexts, a triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic factors. Simultaneously, design has developed and evolved participatory and co-design approaches, with high-profile consultancies such as IDEO proving that early involvement of designers with ‘wicked’ social and environmental problems is possible. This position paper revisits Papanek's agenda for industrial design, and examines the link with participatory approaches, and existing socially responsible design agendas and examples. Identifying eight critical features of socially sustainable product design, this paper suggests that Papanek's original agenda for socially responsible and sustainable design has been partly fulfilled and must be developed further through the changed role of the designer as facilitator of flexible design solutions that meet local needs and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Value in collaborative design research and practice can be understood fundamentally as relationships, materials, processes, contexts, and outcomes that are subjects of and for negotiation. We argue for conceptions of value that move beyond traditional 'outcomes' based measurements to reimagine and rearticulate value itself as co-created, emerging from negotiation, relationality and immersion in specific contexts. These understandings of value, we argue, are not rooted in or always knowable through designers' experiences, even as designers participate in creating them. Using case studies from our research we suggest that value in design collaboration emerges as a question: value to whom, and to what end? We propose that addressing these questions ethically through co-design requires actively engaged, grounded work with collaborators based in three principles: being present for the work, participant making, and co-creating capacity for collaborators to 'go off and do their thing'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-design is sometimes limited to a study of stakeholder involvement in different stages of the design process, or the way in which designers (and others) work together in different types of settings. We argue that such preoccupations are limiting. Rather, we propose that a wider perspective should be taken to describing and understanding the value of design, one which, on the one hand, takes a realistic view of the short term contributions of some activities, but on the other hand emphasises the medium- and long-term intangible contributions to communities of practice and societal needs such projects make. A model is presented and explained using the outcomes from Project Spectrum - concerned with the design of a tailorable, interactive space for children with an autistic spectrum disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]