Description

Talking Circles offer an opportunity to meet other delegates with similar interests and concerns. Delegates self-select into groups based on broad thematic areas and then engage in extended discussion about the issues and concerns they feel are of utmost importance to that segment of the Research Network. Participation is open, encouraged, and supported.

How Do They Work?

The Talking Circles are grouped around each of the conference themes so discussions can focus on the specific areas of interest represented by each theme. 

How to Begin:

Allow members of the group to briefly introduce themselves. 

The facilitator should encourage open dialogue and ensure a collegial and respectful conversation. 

Starting Questions to Assist Discussion

Talking Circle: Who are we?

What is the territory, or scope, or landscape of this thematic area?

What are the burning issues, the key questions for this theme?

What are the forces or drivers that will affect us as professionals, thinkers, citizens, and aware and concerned people whose focus is this particular theme?

What are the future directions (in research, in theory-building, in practice) for this thematic area?

Theme 3: Designed Objects

On the nature and form of the objects of design.

Living Tensions

• People and Artifacts – exploring uses and usability
  
• Design Narratives – stories and sense making in the design process
• Cultural Studies – difference, diversity, and multiculturalism in design
• Embodied and Disembodied – ethnographies of design
• Material and Immaterial – mediating ideas and materials 
• Function and From – the politics of Industrial design
• Sociology of Design – decorative arts, folk movements, and communities of practice
• Science and Technology in Design – critical analysis of techno-determinism
• Media Ecologies and Object Orientation – designed artifacts and processes as learning experiences
• Co-designed Process and Objects – designing with users and communities
• Close to Customers – design as dialogue
• Universal Design and Access – measuring participatory design systems

Theme 4: Visual Design

On representation using mediums of the visual communication.

Living Tensions

• Media and Mediation – singular and universal visual grammars
  
• Viewpoint, Perspective, Interest – designer as agent or advocate 
• Negotiating Authenticity and Authority – power of continuity and change
• Forms for Communicating Design – photography, film, animation, graphic design, and typography
• New Media and Digital Aesthetics – the evolving avant-garde
• Modeling and Representation – graphic, symbolic, logical, and mathematical
• Synesthesia or Crossing Representational Modes – language, image, space, and medium
• Fine Arts – illustration, photography, film and video
• Visual Economies – advertising, marketing and logos
• Information Systems and Architectures – interface design, digital, software, and social media design
• Public and Professional Understandings – the role of the designer as communicator
• Copyright, Patents, and Intellectual Property – proprietary and the commons, commercial and in the public domain