Improving Education
Safety in Mind, Safely Designed : Enabling Safety Hierarchy Driven Product Development Processes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Efe Kutuk
Product liability is long neglected in industrial design (ID) education despite the exponential growth of new consumer product releases. This subject is covered in engineering, law, and business schools however, not much in industrial design. According to Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), in 2021, national estimate of injuries treated in emergency departments due to malfunctioning or defective consumer products is 11,738,091! In a conference last year, a workshop done for peer educators and ID professionals to measure the awareness of product safety. Findings were as predicted - focus was heavily on aesthetics and functionality. After reviewing multiple curriculums and speaking to several ID faculty, it became apparent that product safety in ID education is either not covered at all or briefly mentioned by a few. How can we create awareness to this matter in the ID education? How can we convey the message without being discouraging yet rather motivating? How can we educate the future generation of industrial designers to advocate for ethical practices and to design with product safety in mind? Eventually aiming for less product recalls due to the design defects. In this paper, several different methodologies to implement product safety hierarchy into the industrial design curriculum are explored. Workshop conclusions, survey results, and student projects of a studio exercise on injury prevention are shared and discussed. The long-term goal is to educate industrial design students in a way that they would proactively consider product safety hierarchy during the ideation and design development phases.
The Evaluation-creation Cycle Knowledge Producing Strategy for Research Practice Partnership in Architecture
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fathi Bashir
There has been a growing interest in the recent years about theory and practice integration. Nevertheless, the researchers’ aim of inclusive theory-based and practice-based knowledge producing remains a difficult task to achieve. Many researchers argue for a closer collaboration between researchers and practitioners now universally known as research-practice partnership (RPP), as a relevant approach for bridging the knowledge gap between research and practice. Yet, it has been argued that creating successful collaborations is challenging. Authors point out that one of the most pressing challenges to creating successful RPPs is the lack of operational mechanism. This study proposes the evaluation-creation cycle (ECC) as operational mechanism for RPPs. The ECC has already been tested in several design-based research projects conducted by the master-doctoral collaboration at Wollega University, Ethiopia. The study aims to critically review the ECC structure including the methods and the practices involved, as well as its performance as inclusive theory-based and practice-based knowledge producing strategy operating within the framework of RPPs. The study draws on empirical data from students case-study work to illustrate how using the ECCs lead to not only advancing design knowledge but also improving the practices of design education and the quality of design research.
Design as a Messenger: A New Way to Design through Food Waste View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stella Femke Rigo
In response to the growing awareness and responsibility of the environmental impacts we generate and the consequent interest in the development of sustainable materials, the figure of the designer takes up the challenge and undertakes new design approaches. In particular, waste, mainly food waste, is transformed into resources through sharing practices and new designs. This attitude transforms the method by which designers conceive and implement their designs, introducing an ecological and ethical perspective to design. What kind of awareness can design create? The paper presents the results of a thesis developed in Ecology Futures in the Netherlands, which then became the basis for doctoral research on the application of design methods in the education and awareness phase of future designers. The project, "Design as a messenger," investigates and understands the development of new sustainable materials produced from waste, and seeks to convey impacts through installations and interactions with people within outreach events. The goal of the master's thesis is to empower a broad audience to self-produce possible reuses and recycling of waste materials and thus gain productive access to knowledge that becomes open and shared. Design as a messenger is a materials cataloging project with the writing of a cookbook that allows for a full understanding of the potential of materials and what they originate from, dividing them into macro-categories: waste material, processing, material output, and cataloging by types.
