Advancing Interdisciplinary Understanding
Transdisciplinary Research, Collaborative Innovation and AI Tools: New Challenges for Design?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Margarida Ferreira
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a high buzzword across many industries. For some, AI could be the solution to world problems. For others, it is a terrifying technology that could destroy society by making many professions and skills obsolete. Worldwide, ongoing conversations exist between designers, innovators, futurists, educators, and developers about the impact of AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Digital Technologies such as VR, AR, and MR. Questions about how AI will transform design realms arise frequently. However, AI potential and challenges are still to explore. For the more optimistic, AI holds much potential for the design world, seen as a powerful, innovative tool, leading to an ‘augmented intelligence’ that will allow the optimization and speed of design activities. Furthermore, new design spaces and business opportunities will occur, building on innovative relationships between customers, products, and services and relying on new interactions, creative practices, and strategies. The KBAI project presented in this paper will support this reflection and contribute to this line of inquiry. As a collaborative applied research project carried out in a transdisciplinary mode, it had as its main goals and challenges the development of an innovative co-creation dynamic, the establishment of a common language and base of understanding and a management tool for business supported by AI potential. The KBAI I&Di process and outputs, prototyped and tested by three different groups of users, brought new light to these issues and new digital products that become smarter and have higher levels of knowledge management, functionality, and empathy.
Innovation and Transdisciplinary Dialogue in Fashion Design: Research Design and Challenges for a New Product for a Medical Disorder
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Inês Camaño Garcia, Banu Hatice Gurcum, Ana Margarida Ferreira
Fashion plays a dual role by intertwining innovative design with an impactful social component, revealing itself as a creative expression and a source of social innovation. Although intimate fashion has evolved considerably in recent decades, child intimate fashion has followed a different path. As part of an ongoing PhD work, the need for a new line of research in adolescents´ intimate fashion is highlighted through a case study on faecal incontinence (FI) medical disorder. There is a consensus that FI affects the quality of life of children and families, impacts healthcare systems, and contributes to a decrease in the psychological well-being of these adolescents. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art, and the research design anchoring on a transdisciplinary dialogue, as a basis for developing an innovative and fashionable product which could increase the quality of life at the age of adolescence.
Into the Field: Empathy at the Center of Teaching in Design
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cátia Rijo
This article delves into the difficulties encountered in the realm of education, particularly emphasizing the teaching of design and the importance of thinking with a specific emphasis, regarding the transmission and acquisition of skills by students in design curricular units relating to soft skills, such as empathy, and the ability to work as part of a team, observation skills in the field and critical analysis of contexts. More specifically, by explaining the case study of a design project, under the theme "Designing Our Cities", focused on the urban context of the city of Lisbon, a reflection is made on how design practice, with a teaching approach and the transmission and acquisition of knowledge, consolidated outside the classroom, can contribute to a better —and more comprehensive— training, providing students with more operative tools in design, and consequently more effectiveness in the long term. In this way, we intend not only to understand but also to analyze how the transmission of knowledge in the field of design, with a practical application through project development in a real context, can not only provide students with more tools but also create new opportunities for the development of urban spaces and consequently open space for innovation in the communication and identity of places. The paper presents initiative projects on the essence of a community, as well as connecting with, and understanding, the individuals who constitute each neighborhood.
