Community Views
Academia as a Multidisciplinary Creative Generator: Project Case Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yifat Reuveni, Shoshi Bar Eli
This project is based on a four year process of integrating design and business courses, forming a repertoire of lessons and workshops that allow for redefining the purpose and future of academia as a multidisciplinary creative generator. The project is based on experimental teaching, description analysis of processes and outcomes, addressing questions of problem framing, multidisciplinary, and perception of best practices. As part of CLEVER research (creative economy), we have demonstrated how effective partnerships between multiple actors may provide a practical roadmap to implement tools in both territories (business and design), to improve the quality of academic products and enhance the involvement of actors involved. The strategies used throughout the process proofed visibility of best practices to benefit any business, design, or social organization. Training included institute principles of design in entrepreneurial courses (R/D, niche markets, human centered perspective), as well as the use of business tools in design projects (clear path from concept to production; market surveys; delivery phases; financing skills; IP). As a result, we have gained perspectives on reducing failures, managing change, using resources efficiently and building adapted, replicated solutions to effectively address complex and interrelated challenges. Statements such as "designers are not held in high regard in the business world" and "businesses don’t know how to achieve significant advantage by applying design" led our study to highlight the need in paradigm shift for building an effective academia, for business and design growing potential in social resolutions, to chart action for results at a global platform.
Exploring Multidimensional Aspects of Green Product Design and Its Potential Impact on the Environment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nuri Başoğlu, Sertaç Yilmaz, Eda Corbacioglu
The increase in population, technology, and consumption have been assumed to be leading to a rapid intensification in environmental problems that seems to cause global warming. One of the ways of diminishing the effect of those environmental impact is snowballing the usage of sustainable products. Conception of product design and underlying technological changes, societal tendencies, lifestyle of individuals, and governmental implementations might be touching every person in terms of environmental concerns and reaction. Understanding people’s potential environmental behavior needs a multi-dimensional approach to the whole problem. In this a study, user attitude towards green products preference and behavior is examined by employing a multi-stage qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis considering more than hundred parameters. Various soft factors have been found to be influential that might be considered and woven into the design of products by product managers.
Mending Our Ways: Changing Design Approaches to Maintenance and Repair
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rudi Meyer
Wear, tear, break-down, and failure are the inevitable consequence of use, nevertheless repair and maintenance have hardly figured in academic design discourse, at least until very recently, nor indeed, in histories of technology. The emphasis in these, overwhelmingly, has been on innovation and technological solutions that are purported to promise ways to overcome the consequences of the over-consumption of ever more limited resources. It behooves designers to consider seriously, perhaps for the first time, repair, and maintenance in design strategies, and to plan for reuse and repurposing in their approaches to products. It is true that there are calls to “design for repair”, renewed efforts to reuse or recycle both materials and design objects, and, in a move that recalls the adhocism of the 1960s, there are experiments in repurposing design artifacts, in and of themselves, or as part of a new constellation of objects. Repair is integral to the life of a design object, prolonging its life is one key to sustainable design, and in-depth discussions translated into practice promise to be fruitful for at least in some measure addressing ecological sustainability.
Shifting Ground: Art and Design Action for the Engagement and Empowerment of Migrant Citizens View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Antonio Gorgel Pinto, Paula Reaes Pinto
This paper stems from a community-based art and design project entitled Shifting Ground, which was developed in 2019 and involved newly arrived migrants, as well as second-generation migrants, now living in the city of Cedar Rapids, USA. Based on the participants’ cultural heritage, the project addressed the creative process as a vehicle for dialogue and as a means of finding a sense of place in the new culture. The initiative started with a ludic interaction with the migrant citizens, followed by two ceramic sculpture workshops, and ending with an exhibition that brought together the participants and their families, some local artists and representatives of public authorities. The research focus mainly on the used methodology for the development of the co-creation work with the participants, particularly on the notion of action as a way to interact and develop the ceramic sculptures, as well as to promote the participants social and cultural integration. In this context, the concept of action is analysed as a central characteristic of the artistic practice in question and by its performative dimension, which is considered as a political tool for the empowerment of a dislocated community. In order to deepen the notions of practice, action, and performativity, some theories are taken into account, such as Hanna Arendt’s concept of action, Louis Althusser’s notion of practice, and J. L. Austin concept of performativity.
