Progressive Strategies
Is ‘Green’ Personalization Possible? : Re-materializing and De-individualizing Consumption Through Design View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Iryna Kuksa
Personalization can play a variety of roles across different fields of knowledge and industries. It can add value to user experiences through delivering more meaningful services, but it can also contribute to social divide and promote unsustainable consumption practices. Personalization can be desirable but expensive to implement, or it can contribute to a state of being continuously nudged, in order to push the users to express specific purchasing behaviors. To understand the role of personalization processes and practices across disciplines, I interviewed ten renowned academic and industry experts to identify specific manifestations of this phenomenon, its positives and negatives, as well as its future developments. My analysis suggests that although personalization is sold to the user as desirable, the growing awareness of the negative effects of global warming facilitates the move from person-centered design and consumption to a more sustainable way of life defined by the concept of 'society as a user'.
For a Smart and Green Urban Design: Nature-based Design for Future Habitats - the AURA Research Project View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ivo Caruso, Guilherme Nicolau Adad, Iole Sarno, Susanna Parlato, Alfonso Morone
The paper reports the purposes and the progress of the AURA research project concerning the so-called Nature Based Solutions (NBS) and cross-disciplinary perspectives for future cities. Specifically, Design plays the role of coordinating experimental processes, through the ability to visualize complex processes and generate environmental-conscious solutions. The AURA research project is carried out in partnership with two private high-tech Companies, the Botanic Research Unit of the Department of Science and Technology of the University of Sannio and the Industrial Design Research Unit of the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples “Federico II”. The project is financed by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and it focuses on testing solutions aimed at experimenting with technologies and advanced production methods (parametric modelling, 3d printing, digital sensors, open access, widespread and on-demand manufacturing) for the development of artefacts and systems capable of bringing together aspects of sustainability, hybridization characters with natural elements and control and mitigation of environmental risks. The research experiments new possible model in which different digital technologies cooperate with botanical elements capable of purifying the air. In particular, the research develops and prototypes urban furniture systems integrated with vegetal components and digital sensors to define operating models that can be defined as "smart&green"; i.e. capable of putting sustainable and responsive urban reactivation functions into a system which, considering the city as a complex habitat from both a biological, cultural and social point of view, is capable of proposing a new fertile relationships between human settlement and the environment.
Inter/Multi/Transdisciplinarity in Design Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rodrigo Morais, Rodrigo Hernandez Ramirez, Carlos Rosa
Through a systematic literature review, this study starts from how design education should be intended to educate inter/multi/transdisciplinary future professionals. From a pragmatic knowledge perspective, it is considered that design education must be based on three pillars: (a) basic skills; (b) knowledge through practice and active reflection; and (c) transdisciplinarity and entrepreneurial skills (Ramírez; Morais; Rosa, 2020). The theories and applicability of design are becoming increasingly relevant in how they can contribute to and collaborate with diverse fields of science. The main goal of this research is to show that design is a normative science that should be key to understanding the growth of concrete reason. Since that, its teaching must emphasize its essential competencies, coherence, and relationships with all fields of knowledge. This proposal uses an applied nature methodology with a descriptive-applicative goal, a qualitative approach, and speculative procedures that traverse the categories of action, participation, experimentation, causality, and generation to arrive at a research about design and design education itself. Results demonstrated here are achieved through four significant types of design instruction: (a) Intrinsic Project-Based Learning; (b) Co-Creative Project-Based Learning; (c) Cross-Project Learning; and (d) Inter/Multi/Trans-Cross-Project Learning. It demonstrates a pedagogical approach to providing inter/multi/trans-disciplinary experiences in design teaching/education that can incorporate all areas of knowledge within a higher education school. These projects offer an interesting approach to education based on project-based learning and a future of learning through design-based learning that targets diverse areas of knowledge.
Designing a Mixed-age Playground based on Children's Imagination View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Didem Kan-Kilic, Melek Demir, Tayyebe Babaei
Children's social play has generally occurred between children of varied ages or between individuals of dramatically opposing ages. We should thus monitor social play among mixed-age groups of children if we want to get a deeper understanding of the benefits of children's social play. The purpose of this study is to extract an imaginary playground from children and to design a playground for children of various ages. This study analyzes how to design a playground for mixed age children and, how children may learn from one another on this playground, what are additional advantages of mixed age playgrounds, and also how playgrounds impact children's creativity. We believe that mixed-age playgrounds benefit both younger and older children by encouraging peer learning. We also think that playgrounds constructed by designers who rely on children's imaginations may have an impact on their creativity. Karşıyaka Child Protection Center in Izmir, Turkey, was chosen as a case study. Initially, children's playground preferences were surveyed, and found that same-age play allows children to collaborate fully and equally. Nevertheless, mixed-age play has benefits in terms of acquiring skills, cultural information, and leadership. After evaluating the questionnaire and visiting the site several times, mixed-age playground was designed for mixed-age children in Karsiyaka Child Protection Center. We recognized that we should pay attention to the placement of distinct play places that have the essential potential for visual and auditory interactions, and to design playgrounds for different ages by considering play stages in the same design field.
Democratizing Food Access: Implications for Food-Agentic Technologies among the Food Insecure View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ann-Marie Conrado
Numerous communities across America struggle with limited access to fresh produce and affordable, healthy foods, fueling a crisis in obesity and corresponding health complications. The conditions that give rise to these ‘food deserts’ are the product of commodified social, political, and economical structures that entrench barriers to access. To identify the challenges and opportunities to intervene, we conducted semi-structured, ethnographic interviews, in-home visits and shop-alongs with individuals from identified food deserts. The ingenuity and resilience of our participants in accessing food while addressing cost constraints and navigating logistical barriers was both insightful and impressive. These findings highlight numerous strategies for the planning and purchasing of food with broad implications for emergent food-agentic technologies, particularly in the aftermath of a global pandemic reshaping social and economic practices. This paper shares strategies deployed by the food insecure to optimize food access, meal planning and budget constraints with corresponding design implications for a variety of technologies. Findings also highlight shopper archetypes informing meal planning and purchasing behaviors, that upend conventional approaches to shopping app design. Understanding authentic behaviors around access to food holds the key to designing alternatives that leverage the promise of technologies to democratize food access and nutrition beyond economic and geographic barriers. The benefits of technology have not accrued equitably, while efficiencies currently afforded by online shopping are less relevant to the food insecure. Our aim is to highlight new opportunities to align technological capabilities with human need and catalyze innovation in support of the greater good.
