Shifting Identity
A Preliminary Model for Navigating in Social Sustainable City Development View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Canan Akoglu, Anne Corlin
Migration to Europe has increased over the last 40 years. Migration and mobility are inevitable in this century; these bring a variety of opportunities, advantages as well as challenges. Like in many countries, in Denmark, this change brings a mixture of different aspects where people with different cultural backgrounds, values, and ways of living need to live together in society. The current policy in Denmark promotes ´the mixed city´ as a model for solving the emerging social and environmental problems; it refers to the city as a place of dense populations where all neighbourhoods contain residents from across social, cultural, and economic spheres. With this perspective, this paper focuses on how design can play a role in expanding communities in deprived neighbourhoods as well as how designers/architects can enter as active partners in socially sustainable city development. The paper presents the conceptual framework of social frictions, the framework of social city models, and the role of the designer in order to analyse two student projects as cases in a masters programme as part of a two-year collaboration between the programme and youth clubs in a city in Denmark. The analysis of the two projects in connection with the discussion of social frictions, social city models, and the role of the designer/architect results in a preliminary model that consists of three main elements presenting the shifting role of the designer/ architect that we argue can support navigating in socially sustainable city development.
Caring About the User’s State of Mind: Exploring the Online Health Information Seeking Behaviors of Rare Disease Caretakers View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachael Paine
Human search for information is an instinctual act. Search is a problem-solving, goal-oriented behavior. With the rise of the computer, searching has quickly manifested itself into a digital activity. Searching the internet for information is a ubiquitous act. In some situations, there are information-seeking circumstances where a user’s need for information is of extreme importance, such as seeking medical information. This research concerns the experience of rare disease caretakers who search online for health information. This research investigates the user’s emotional state while searching online to develop frameworks for designers. Findings suggest that searching for health information for rare disease caretakers is an emotionally charged activity. Rare disease caretakers often rely on community resources to aid in the stress of their situation. Over time through researching, users become self-made rare disease experts. After a pilot focus group study, data were collected from interviews and observations. Data were systematically analyzed using methods of grounded theory. The categories that emerged were researching, engaging with community, becoming the expert, and state of mind. Connections were made to the guiding theories of the study: Leventhal’s Common-sense Model of Illness Representations and Wilson’s Model of Information Behavior. This dissertation contributes to the field of UX by offering a proposed set of guidelines for designers to follow when designing health information websites. It reveals the necessity of designing for specialized user groups who have often been underserved. Information gained from this study suggests the need for future research in information-seeking behavior, UX, and online community participation.
Featured Which Kind of Chineseness Is Sold Where? : Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Group Identity of Chinese Industrial Designers View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dan Mu
In the long history of globalisation, China has faced a growing detachment and contradiction between its capitalist identity and its cultural identity. And industrial design, as a field inextricably linked to the industrialisation process and inextricably linked to its cultural and aesthetic context, prominently embodies this contradiction. However, in China, designer identity research in industrial design is still in its early stages. Nonetheless, China's rising economic and cultural status necessitates a precise theoretical and empirical definition of this group. China's industrial design research is now more focused on practical innovation, and no systematic and comprehensive study of industrial identity exists. This research is based on ethnography, combining case studies, interviews, and observation to explore the situation of independent Chinese industrial designers and designers working in big companies' design departments. Overall, the goal of this study is to investigate the reality of the situational evolution of identity in the context of globalisation by looking at the history and current state of Chinese industrial design from the perspectives of design, manufacturing, and business. It also conducts multidisciplinary integration research on Chinese designers' national identities in the context of nationalism, such as design history, group identity, and business.
Data Visualization of Cultural Heritage along Suzhou Canal: A Case Study of Gusu Prosperous Map View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shengdan Yang, Yan Huang
The Gusu Prosperous Map painted by Xu Yang depicts the urban cultural scenes in Suzhou city in the Qing Dynasty and embodies abundant cultural data that deserve digital preservation. Given the goal of constructing a national cultural park, this paper proposes a development of a digital mapping method to present the cultural sites. Taking the Gusu Prosperous Map as the case study, this research uses the data visualization and GIS-based mapping to explore the historical data and insights in the traditional painting. This study categorizes the tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and collects the cultural data of their spatial, temporal, functional and perceptual characteristics. A digital map on GIS is made to highlight the spatial distribution of different sites and show the coupling of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Form prototypes are created for tangible cultural heritage and the perceptions of the intangible cultural heritage are analyzed. Matrix and choropleth graphs show the correlation of cultural data from spatial and temporal considerations. This study presents a digital method to visualize the cultural data and demonstrate the value of the historical sites. The mapping framework transforms cultural scenes in the painting into digital visuals, which could serve as a reference for landscape design and city planning.
When Designers Become Entrepreneurs: PLACE, the Programme for LASALLE Creative Entrepreneurs View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Clara Fernandes
Design education faces many challenges; now, more than ever, the need for multidisciplinary approaches is evident. Design students need to bring crucial and timely issues to their curricular projects. However, such projects fade out once students graduate and ideas with high potential fall flat, never to be more than great ideas on paper. The Programme for LASALLE Creative Entrepreneurs (PLACE) is an initiative of the Faculty of Design of LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore to support design students to turn their big ideas into sustainable and socially-engaged start-ups. Through a mixed-methods approach, we surveyed students from the different programmes available in the Faculty of Design (N=275). Then, we interviewed the graduating tenants who successfully launched their businesses during the programme's first year (N=3). Currently in its second year, the programme's preliminary results already hint at high entrepreneurial consciousness among design students with socially and sustainably engaged projects. Our paper will present the programme's initial results and possible effects on social and sustainable engagement through education. University incubators are viewed as a fading trend, as universities grasp onto technological projects to get funding from third parties, whilst PLACE looks at the problem through a different lens. The programme seeks to empower young designers eager to challenge social and sustainable issues. Our results show a deep connection between this generation of design students with social and sustainable matters. We highlight how such programmes can improve the quality of the students learning experience and allow them to create value beyond their ideas.
