Conference Agenda

As designing with vulnerable users becomes more prevalent, we need to establish societal and policy guidelines to ensure that such practices adhere to ethical principles to protect both participant and researcher. Vulnerable participants include racial and ethnic minorities, people with additional physical or cognitive needs, elderly individuals, and children (Rios et al. 2016). Many research papers would advocate that design research should be conducted with end user groups to ensure that solutions developed meet the needs and expectations of those most impacted by the issues (Sanders and Stappers, 2008, Mulvale et al., 2019, Shore et al., 2018, Carroll et al. 2021). This approach, however, may not always be ethical or appropriate in design projects at undergraduate level. Along with many of the standard ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable groups (such as Person-First, respect, language and communication, presence of guardians, advocates, or carers etc.) (National Disability Authority, 2006), there are also several additional considerations when developing design solutions. Many design projects never reach fruition or may take several years to develop to a functional design. This is even more likely when projects are set within academic institutions involving student projects that are short-lived and not always focused on the implementation of final designs.

Including vulnerable participants in design projects must be beneficial to participants beyond the goals of the project, otherwise alternative methods should be employed. This will allow for an elevated level of trust with participants to continue to engage in design research and testing. Many vulnerable groups may initially be very excited at the prospect of design solutions that can improve their quality of life. They may be very willing to engage in projects as research participants or as co-designers. However, there is a risk that these participants may invest in these projects with great expectations but end up with very little in return. A major ethical concern is that they may feel used and exploited and let down as projects are abandoned or fail to reach the marketplace or indeed reach the marketplace without addressing the original user needs.

This paper explores several case studies of undergraduate product design projects where vulnerable participants have been involved in the design process at various stages and to varying degrees. A case study analysis follows a description of these projects and key findings are discussed. The discussion then unpacks key questions such as: when is it appropriate to involve participants? What are the most useful methods to work with participants? When are alternative methods of research and testing sufficient? How can expectations be managed? And what is the payback for people to participate? The paper concludes by proposing a guide for how and when to involve users as participants in the Undergraduate design process.

Our main intention is designing a sustainable future together in Europe and around the globe while respecting design ownership with the help of co-designing with people from so called foreign cultures and by learning from other cultural codes and minds. This is a question about cultural education in cultural appropriation and provenance in design.

This paper will showcase design methods for co-designing and cross-cultural design processes to educate students and partners from industry in respecting design codes. We are using the elements of edu-care (Scone) related to our knowledge archives for a sustainable academic future.

Regarding the designing – working – producing – and living conditions, the SDGs give us all an orientation for the future. This paper focuses on four SDGs: the SDG No 9 proposes, ‘Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation’. With help of design case studies from students, we are also showcasing SDG 17 – ‘Partnership for the Goals’, not only in Europe. This could give all a perspective on a healthier world through cross cultural co-designing. SDG No 5 ‘Gender and Equality’ and SDG 12 about ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ are supported by our question about cultural appropriation in the design business, and reference the politically relevant focus, selected by UN for the year 2023.

‘Cultural appropriation’ (Savoy) originally relates to art robbery. It is not only a debate taking place in fashion design since the designer Isabel Marant was criticised, for making profits while using ethnological significant patterns of indigenous people without asking permission. But cultural appropriation in a ‘positive way’ is also the remembrance and ‘revalue’ of techniques / hand crafted techniques, which run the risk of being lost. This knowledge represents our ‘cultural mind’ (Assmann) and our knowledge archive for the future. How we might use this valuable knowledge archive is showcased, using co-design and cross-disciplinary learning. By combining new knowledge connected to rituals, cultural behaviour and old techniques with the technological aid of digital tools of our 4th industrial revolution we can enter a post digitalisation ‘industry 5.0’ era.

Based on the case studies and literature review, this paper discusses different techniques and interactive co-design on different media levels, with stakeholders from different countries in a respectful way. Regarding the question of cultural appropriation and ‘provenance in design’- seven (7) elements meet the needs for a future circular sustainable economy using cross-cultural co-designing.

Questioning the SDGs 9, 17 and 12 with co-designing and cross-cultural design projects during the study-programs in Europe, we could trigger more interactive, cross-cultural projects with this paper. In the 2nd step this paper could help to get more financial support for these kind of project.

Given the contemporary upheaval of climate and war refugees around the globe, the cosmopolitan scale of architecture and its increasing caregiving agenda can not be ignored. How could the first design assignment for students embarking on an architectural education, integrate this critical context already from the outset? This question seems especially pertinent because one tends to mainly remember the first and last experiences that mark learning processes. The primacy effect indeed ensures that one will not soon forget the very first design assignment that kickstarts an architectural education trajectory.

For new students, our school organises a ‘starters afternoon’ as an introduction to our education in architectural engineering. During those 3 hours, students work in groups of 4 on their very first design project. And as we want to introduce co-habitation on a cosmopolitan scale in design education from the very start, we ask them to a work on an emergency shelter. We challenge them to design this with a model on the scale of a ‘Playmobil’-figure. Only basic materials are provided, primarily wooden sticks, plasticine, rope and paper.

Intermittently, and also at the end of the workshop, all models are collectively reviewed with students and tutors from different architectural fields (eg. construction, theory, design). Here, fundamental architectonic elements of design such as form, function, and construction, are put in dialogue with societal debates around social inclusion, justice, human dignity and care. The 'shelter model assignment’ introduces thereby care as an important value, already during the first contact of young students in their training as an architect.

This workshop is now also further developed as a STEM assignment for even younger scholars in secondary schools. This will introduce these youngster at the age of 16 or 17 to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics with a design experience that interlaces technical decisions and solutions with urgent social and societal considerations and co-habitation.

With the service sector’s dominance in the world economy, we have witnessed the development of service design as an emerging field. Not only do design programs offer courses on service design, but there are universities offering undergraduate and graduate programs specific to this field. However, the professional development of service design and its alignment with other design disciplines is still in progress. With this perspective, we aim to take a snapshot of current service design offerings at the university level to discuss their impact on the future of industrial design education. We systematically analyzed the courses and programs of the first 50 design universities with design schools listed on QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022: Art & Design. There are 19 universities offering a total of 82 courses and 12 programs related to service design. Service design courses and programs are more common at the graduate level. The analysis of service design course descriptions shows that the skillset and knowledgebase identified by these programs are not highly unique. Their pedagogical goals are aligned with delivering human-centered design, design research, design thinking, and design strategy content central to industrial design education. Further integration of service design in industrial design programs might mean a decrease in the high-fidelity model-making capabilities of industrial design graduates and an increase in visualization skills for the communication of systems. Every industrial design program must assess and align service design based on existing course offerings to avert redundancies in a competitive resource environment.

Designing for disability is a very specialised area where designers need to consider parameters that make the intervention socially inclusive, functionally impactful, user-friendly, and widely acceptable. Assistive devices and technologies play a very prominent role in the rehabilitation of people with disabilities. Using these in concurrence with the available treatment procedures helps people with disabilities in achieving independent living. However, designing assistive devices for children with special needs is a challenge, particularly since these users are incapable of providing adequate feedback concerning usability, usefulness, etc. This requires a holistic approach to address the nuances that contemplate the growth of the child, attributes that cater to their daily routine, emotional factors, social interactions, etc.

This paper investigates the adoption of the participatory co-design approach with multi-users involved in the rehabilitation of children with special needs, such as the rehabilitation centre, the therapist, the special educator, and the parent, beyond the child. A customizable assistive device for training children in various motor skills considering the native context, abilities, and needs of children, was designed and tested as a part of this study. This work showcases how the participation of the rehabilitation centre rather, than just one stakeholder, influenced the design intervention. Other than eliciting requirements and affirming the needs of children, feedback on the prototype from multiple users and stakeholders of the rehabilitation centre proved to have high coherence, as they have a common understanding of the target audience.

There have been increasingly significant efforts in exploring various design approaches for user-centric designs. Participatory, user-in-the-loop, co-design, customer-centered design, etc. are undertaken by multiple research groups, and evidence has been gathered from the literature to prove that the resultant design effectively brings out users as the key focus. Along with the inclusion of end users, there have been studies where multiple users and other stakeholders are involved in different facets of the design. While several avenues in robotics, game design, etc. have been ventured using co-design approaches, the design of assistive devices in resource-constraint settings for children with special needs is a relatively less explored territory.

The benefits of extending the co-design approach, from only an individual, i.e., the user to multiple users, i.e., the entire institute, is empirically found in this paper. This approach paved the way for exploring scenarios where the device could be extended to other users or target groups and understanding new requirements from these groups within the same system. This work highlights how building a strong foundation between the institute and the design group can impact the design process and act as a platform to undertake the design of several other interventions in the future, and outlines a different take on the participatory-codesign approach in designing assistive devices for children with special needs in resource-constraint settings, as an exemplar for building collaborations at a systematic or institutional level rather than at the individual level. This ‘multi-user-centric design’ approach as an extension of the ‘user-centric design’ could be leveraged by different communities in designing solutions for special needs.

The state of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the engineering industry is troubling. The UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in Europe at just 8%. The Royal Academy of Engineering reports that although 26% of engineering students identify as BAME, only 6% of professional engineers are non-white. This paper will detail the creation of a module in the Mechanical Engineering course at Imperial College, designed to systemically improve EDI in the engineering industry by empowering students taking the module to become champions for EDI.

Galvanised by the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a group of students from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial College wrote an open letter in their university’s newspaper inviting their department to adopt several specific EDI-improvement measures. The ensuing discourse between staff and students led three students to propose a summer research project, with the goal of designing an elective module focused entirely on EDI in engineering for undergraduate students taking the course.

While UK chartership competencies specifically require engineers to understand diversity and equality issues, many students, including those who designed the module, felt the industry lacked sufficient understanding of EDI and dialogue surrounding these issues. Therefore, this module aimed to fill this gap in engineering education and empower students to affect change as graduates in the engineering sector.

The initial module design was developed through liaising with academics with relevant experience in EDI, outreach charities and relevant teams within Imperial. The aims of the module were to encourage students to think in the context of global society, develop an appreciation for EDI issues, and gain practical experience in initiative coordination to improve EDI in engineering. Students would be introduced to the key issues related to EDI through seminars delivered primarily by expert guest lecturers in the autumn term, and in the spring term, use their knowledge to design an initiative to improve an identified EDI issue within a chosen workplace or institution. Students would also keep a logbook, recording their learning using reflective practice. The module was designed to be completely coursework based.

The student project laid the groundwork and justification for such a module to be added to the curriculum. The implementation of the module into the curriculum required a few modifications to the initial proposal for logistical, financial, and pedagogical reasons, including removing the requirement for students taking the module to action the initiatives they design, ensuring grades were not dependent on external parties.

Although several other departments and institutions have created modules attempting to address EDI issues through societal engagement, this module’s concerted focus on empowering students to become EDI champions in engineering makes it one of the first of its kind offered as part of an engineering degree in the UK. By detailing the process of creating this module at this conference, we hope to inspire and serve as a springboard for the creation of similar modules in other university engineering courses.

This paper discusses how MATLAB software was integrated into the research and design process by capturing and visualising data to inform a 4th-year capstone undergraduate industrial design product development project. Examined within the project framework are perspectives on; data use for design projects from the literature, data collection, understanding project data, designer alternate skill set, using data to justify design direction, associated data capture technologies, data-driven changes of state for UIs (User Interface), and a proposal that designers need to have a data practice paradigm. As technology rapidly embeds into almost every aspect of society, data is produced and captured at a diversity and scale previously unparalleled. Tools and systems to capture and assess such data simultaneously are being democratised, bringing new understandings, and accessibility to systems for testing hypotheses more efficiently, either with sensor-based open-source hardware microprocessors or commercial data-capturing systems. Designers developing smart products, smart system proposals, and IoT devices need to integrate these data capture and assessment tools into traditional product development and research processes. This is especially significant in projects where subtle technical innovation and application of new technologies, “technology epiphanies”[9], or natural user interfaces (NUI) are present. These themes are critical to designers at present; engineers, data scientists, and computing scientists apply data analysis techniques to design problems previously in the product designer’s training skillset. Having an applied understanding of such processes would permit designers to regain control over domains slipping into the grasp of allied product development disciplines.

Although Design thinking originated as a process to solve wicked problems such as environmental issues and inequality (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992), the approach tends to focus on a conventional linear growth paradigm rather than a sustainable transition with nature at the core.

Design thinking arose in a time (mid 90s - 00s) when climate and environment did not receive the same attention as in recent years. We believe that Design thinking still has its justification as a process tool, however, the authors are convinced that the tool can be strengthened if we focus more on materials and early use of prototyping, and if the process is supplemented with a consistent focus on natural interdependencies and systems thinking. We will address and discuss this as a perspective to re-balance the Design thinking process in the current context, where natural recovery and green transition should be highest priority. Design thinking emphasizes research as the first step of defining a relevant problem. This can typically be in the form of ‘empathizing’ (Ideo, Stanford), ‘discovering’ (Double Diamond, British Design Council) or ‘finding’ (5F, VIA University College). That is, with a human-centered focus. In this paper, we discuss ways in which systems thinking can serve as an entrance point to a re-balanced Design thinking process model with nature in the center.

In two projects we have employed systems thinking at different phases in the design thinking process. One project has used systems thinking throughout the whole process with an intensified focus on the solution. The other project has used system thinking specifically in the initial phases to find and re-frame the problem through system mapping. The focus in the paper is to evaluate in which ways and to what extent system thinking has contributed to the process.

In this paper we use interviews with participating students from both projects as a foundation for our discussions. The projects are respectively an internal project with local students and an external project with multiple international partner universities and students. We present the two projects, the participating students, and the partners involved together with the insights from the interviews.

The local project Design for Change is a three-week project with 48 students from the 5th semester specialty ‘Entrepreneurship and Innovation’. The GPA Map the System is a 10-week long learning experience offered in collaboration between Humber College, Otago Polytechnic and VIA University College for students to build key competencies for sustainable development (Rieckmann, Mindt and Gardiner, 2017) through activities focused on systems thinking and mapping.

Systems thinking allows us to reorient our thinking from being entity-focused (a product, a local problem, a specific person) to include multiple entities (products and services, multiple problems, multiple stakeholders), their interrelations, the dynamics of the system, and very importantly the different scales of the system (Hunt, 2020)

Based on the insights from the two projects, this paper discuss the didactic approaches to system thinking, the potentials and challenges in connecting it to design thinking processes and summarize with recommendations.

Students of today should learn and see a need for change and recognize the importance of a shift towards a more sustainable business world, design and engineering is an important piece of this equation. The phenomenon of design and engineering is claimed to be in the complex domain. In the complex domain long term plans are not predictable and the methods used to lead this process should be agile and cope with the emergent nature of the phenomenon. Short sprints pulled from a backlog is one of these methods and could therefore be argued to be relevant for teaching design and engineering students. In attempt to learn and practice this method the teaching of UiA’s design and engineering course at master level is using this method directly in the teaching. Combined with the principle of “one piece flow” the students must every week prepare homework for their class, then followed by a relevant classroom teaching and ending the day with a 3-hour graded sprint. The sprints are done either as an individual task or as a group task, depending on the learning objective. The students report about less waste and higher learning effect an impression also shared by the teachers. Let us sprint toward a sustainable future.

The current and future workforce need to be multi-skilled, adaptable, collaborative and creative in finding new solutions to problems. Importantly, they need a good understanding that there needs to be market desirability, technical feasibility and financial viability for the new solution to be a commercial success. Engineering students are highly skilled in technical feasibility, business students are highly skilled with commercial/financial viability and market desirability understanding. What if both of these groups were brought together? Could the skills for a more skilled future workforce be developed? Increase the quality of solutions being developed? Increase the numbers of student business ideas being taken beyond their educational studies? An 8-week program was run between (Engineering Design Department - Omitted for review) and (Business School - Omitted for review) at (University - Omitted for review), to explore collaboration opportunities between business students and engineering students with the aim of building skills of future workers, increase the quality of final solutions being developed and increase the numbers of student businesses ideas being taken beyond their educational studies.

The program paired 6 groups of business students working on a range of product or service based business concepts with an engineering design student mentor. The role of the engineering design mentor was to provide advice and guidance on the technical feasibility and viability of the business students product design concepts. Further to this, the engineering design mentor was then tasked with assisting the business students in developing a minimum viable product (MVP) prototype, which would enable the business students to better communicate their concept.

Feedback from both student mentors, and business students was positive. Business students reflected on the benefits in developing skills in what it may be like to work with a consultant, and became more aware of the implications of technical feasibility on their product offering and business model. They also gained a better appreciation of time and costs in developing the MVP. Student mentors saw benefits in developing skills in client negotiation, communication and in project scope setting, and were exposed to managing changing client requirements, as the business students refined their concepts in line with market research gathered, focussing on customer desirability.

This project was financially backed by the (Business School - Omitted for review), and student mentors were paid an hourly rate to a maximum budget of 30 hours of support. Interestingly, feedback from student mentors suggested the experience in itself was invaluable, and in some cases, they went above and beyond the allocated budget of 30 hours as they saw the benefits to their own personal development. Of the six student teams supported, four went on to engage with external support services for developing their ideas further after they graduated. From this four, two registered businesses, and two continued to explore ideas at idea stage out with their university studies. The outcomes of this research are lessons learnt for future implementation of pilot projects of this nature.

Due to the examination-oriented education system in Hong Kong, there is a lack of innovative education. Based on the market research, the current creativity education products do not contain significant elements such as cultures, historicals or traditions that help develop students' creativity.

According to the Hong Kong Intangible Culture Heritage Office, bamboo crafts provide the citizen with a sense of identity and continuity. Bamboo craft is one of the famous traditional techniques in Hong Kong's culture, which are involved in different designs in our daily life such as cookware, containers and building techniques. Besides, there are some items that occasionally appear in seasonal festivals or funerals such as bamboo theatres, offerings and lion-dance. The know-how is provided with enlightening and culturally-identified elements and knowledge to the future generation such as the maker’s mind and design process, that contribute to their personal development and lead to preservation of the Hong Kong traditional crafts. Furthermore, passing down craftsmanship is passing down knowledge which is the essence of education. Possible opportunities are identified for educating bamboo crafts for future generations in order to cultivate students’ creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Creative education is a process for training students’ creativity and problem-solving skills, it helps them enhance their personal development leading to conduce to their future careers and quality of life. The creativity and innovation industries have become the future trend in Hong Kong's development in order to improve worldwide competitiveness (Legislative Council Secretariat, 2015). Alison(2019) indicated that cultural differences start to emerge in the very early stage when we are children, and those differences play out in all sorts of subtle differences in the way we think, reason and act. Student is one of the stages of children that are easy to integrate into different cultures. The purpose of this study is to develop techniques for using traditional craft learning and teaching materials to improve students' cultural and creative abilities and to inherit traditional Hong Kong handicrafts.

How can we teach empathy to design students? How might we encourage them to consider people beyond their own perspectives? Can Product Design students be empowered to make a positive change in the life of another? Here we propose a way to start the conversation, using matchsticks.

This project challenges universities to beyond the obvious ethical and social issues framed around sustainability, and asks Undergraduate Design Students to engage with a demographic that is typically underrepresented both in society, and in design intervention; prison inmates.

In order to encourage a more empathic approach to Design, working in collaboration with HMP Loudham Grange, First Year Product Design Students at Nottingham Trent University were set a 2-week Design Project that challenged them to improve life within the confines of a prison cell.

Within Prison systems, knowledge is currency. Those with creative ability, have an asset that can be utilised to improve their personal quality of life in addition to being used as a bargaining tool. This often leads to conflict within the system, as debts and inequality are created by those who can and those who cannot.

Matchsticks have become a fundamental part of this system, as the combination of their simple construction power, and the unlimited time to think within a prison environment, enables inmates to come up with creations of beauty and functionality.

If knowledge of how to construct with matchsticks could be democratised, agency to create could be given to all those willing to learn, reducing conflict. This project looks at ways this knowledge can be shared throughout the prison and takes a true Human Centred Design approach.

Over the course of 2 weeks, student groups were tasked with creating products that improved quality of life within a prison cell, utilising matchsticks, and construction techniques available to inmates. Guided by an expert Prison Officer, students collaborated to generate visual, wordless guides that would enable any inmate to generate their products.

Overall the project was a success, with a number of innovative outcomes being produced, and assumptions challenged. This result was confirmed via an end of project questionnaire with students commenting that the experience was immersive, with designing from the perspective of a prison inmate being a “truly different experience as a user”.

In addition to encouraging empathy and a human centred design approach, this project gave students the opportunity to reflect on the role of the designer, giving space to contemplate on their own purpose and role within the design industry. Typically university projects are driven towards work like experience and portfolio building, meaning projects are often commercially motivated. This project allowed students the opportunity to work outside of their commercially driven comfort zone, and presents them with a real world opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of others.

This paper addresses the evaluation of the quality of a ‘Design-for-Do-It-Yourself’ framework by running a series of experiments and using questionnaires for both numerical assessment and open questions. The ‘Design-for-DIY’ framework was established in previous studies, as part of a scenario in which the professional designer facilitates laypersons to design for themselves. The scenario considered (a) a counter direction to today’s distant human-product relationship in the mass-production context, (b) the layperson’s innate capability and desire to create, (c) the designer’s responsibility (the product being the mediator between industry and consumer), as well as (d) anticipating the great potential of novel making tools and (e) the availability of online information.

The experiments concerned twelve designers who were asked to develop a DIY project for laypersons, to facilitate them in designing and making their own radio receiver.

The research questions addressed in undertaking the Design-for-DIY experiments centred on the quality and usability of the Design-for-DIY framework as a method and tool to support the designer in establishing a DIY project for the layperson. The experiments concerned six runs, each conducted by a different pair of collaborating designers. In doing the experiments, each pair of designers were assigned to the task of running a ‘Design-for-DIY’ project’ by using a set of tools for support: The Design-for-DIY framework (presented as a board game, sketching tools, of paper, glue, tape, radio electronics (for indicating the size of the components).

The range of experiments themselves and the questionnaires subsequently completed by the twelve participants have generated both numerical data on a Lickert scale (graded responses to closed questions) and written recommendations (from observation and answers to open questions).

The experiment concludes that the framework does address the different design tasks and design abstraction levels, it offers freedom to design your own path as a designer, and it addresses the iterative and pedagogic character that was required. According to the participating designers, the framework provided structure, guidance, information and references, and served as a checklist that helped fulfilling the task. The overall structure, with its successive cycles, was new to them but the stages to pass through were intuitively familiar to them, given their design education and experience.

Responsible Design does not appear to be well integrated within Graphic Design in higher education. Students and graduates' experience is likely to be client-focused requirements of a business to deliver financial rewards without addressing the current environmental crisis, pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.

The aim of the study presented will be to provide a better understanding of the current awareness among student and recent graduate graphic designers of responsible design and how to integrate it within current professional practice.

Graphic designers have been involved in the evocative presentation and rhetoric around the phenomena of ‘greenwashing’, where sustainability is accounted for through one specific aspect of the design and production, but the overall environmental impact of product development is not clearly addressed. This puts a graphic designer in a difficult position, between satisfying the client's requirements and aspirations and their own professional values.

Graphic Design effectively delivers the message of a product or service’s value to a targeted audience. Advertisement invests heavily in profiling their target market to understand their language, culture, values, and motivations to predict purchasing decision-making and behaviours.

This paper will present a survey of the current professional values of a sample group of Graphic Design students, and recent graduate, and their understanding and experience of Responsible Design in education and industry.

Specifically: 1) what are their current professional values? 2) do they understand what is responsible design within Graphic Design? 3) what is their experience of the industry’s approach to Responsible Design?

The outcomes of this study will be incorporated into teaching resources that will be made freely available to other educators and industries.

Sustainable design is becoming a common practice since there is a global interest in protecting the environment and enhancing the health and well-being of human beings. However, sustainability is a complex issue. The relationship and balance between environmental, economic, and social demands during the design process require an understating of systems, environment and human behavior, and business perspective. Consequently, there is a need to provide engineering students with design knowledge and tools for sustainable design. One tool is persuasive design since this approach is used to influence the users’ behaviors and decisions. The change of behavior of consumers might have a significant impact on waste, contamination, energy and materials consumption, and other sustainability indicators. This paper presents a list of strategies for persuasive design and a pedagogical model to introduce them to engineering design education. The pedagogical model focuses on the application of persuasive design for sustainable design and its ethical dimension.

Integrating sustainability in design activities remains a challenge, as sustainability is a wicked issue, that is, complex, multidimensional, with no ideal solution. To achieve the integration of sustainability in design activities, the involvement of different stakeholders is absolutely necessary as such activities intersect Science, Economics, Politics and Human Behaviour, among other spheres of society. For decades, the third sector has contributed to re-appropriate social challenges and empower citizens to collectively propose solutions to different unsustainability crisis. In France, the ‘popular education’ model proposes different methods to deliver solutions based on the practice of ecological ethics in the design process. We have selected some case studies to demonstrate such integration (ecodesign, climate change and opting-out workshops). This article will make explicit the ecological ethics concerns otherwise implicit from each case study.

Popular education is considered an alternative education paradigm focusing on improving the current social systems. Aiming on a logic of ‘reflection for action’, it puts together practitioners, thinkers and decision makers to emancipate the role of all stakeholders in building better societies. Its activities often take place outside of traditional education institutions, democratising also the space in which those reflections and actions take place. Often implicit in the logic of the ‘popular education’, concepts like 'commons', 'third-place' and 'milieu' seem to relate to the basics of ecological ethics. However, as ‘popular education’ activities are growing (in number and in power) we question the ecological ethics they carry themselves today.

With a nearly chronological path, the field of Design for Sustainability has evolved from a technical perspective (product centred design), to reflection on different socio-technical approaches (human centred and nature centred design for example), and to systems and from insular to systemic reflections and solutions.

In parallel with the evolution of the popular education model and the field of Design for Sustainability, ecological issues have become more evident and mature in the scientific literature, enabling scientists to merge the field of Design to with strong sustainability apporaches. Design for Strong Sustainability requires the integration of direct and indirect stakeholders to ensure the adequacy of the design to the milieu. This type of design is about making sure that technical systems will respect the planetary boundaries while enabling the co-habitation of all the stakeholders (nature, humans and infrastructure) within a defined geo-political space. So, we assume that the practice of Design for Strong Sustainability in ‘popular education’ contexts carry a particularly strong component of ecological ethics.

We will explore such assumptions using three original pedagogical activities that currently complement educational programmes: an ecodesign hackathon involving students in design from engineering and artistic perspectives, a workshop on ‘renunciation’ (opting-out) where participants learn how to go 'mourn' and opt-out, and a Climate Fresk, where participants reflect on climate change.

The output of the paper consist on the analysis of different pedagogical design workshops that take into account an ecological ethics approach. This analysis will help us to strengthen the relationship between pedagogical practices and ethics involved in strong sustainability design pedagogical activities.

Education in digital fabrication design is characterized by an active learning environment in which ideas are developed into prototypes. The manner in which design activities are carried out, the subject matter that is learnt, and the kinds of outputs are all impacted by this environment. Available information concerning sustainability practices and how affects students’ learning and skill acquisition is scarce. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to use a course to evaluate learners’ sustainability practices and educational experience in a digital fabrication class.

The course was designed for first-year university students. It covered the fundamentals of design and digital fabrication, the design of physical items, including electronics design, embedded programming, as well as 3D and 2D design. Throughout seven weeks, students were encouraged to create and implement their own ideas by designing and building a physical prototype that interacts with its surroundings. They learned how to develop basic interactive prototypes by employing mechanical, electrical, and software components. Students worked in teams of three or four members, and as part of their learning, they were required to document their process on a weekly basis. The online documentation and the final design prototype were the main deliverables of the course.

The course examined in this study implemented explicit and detailed sustainability requirements as evaluation criteria that included: reusing components, choosing adequate and sustainable materials, building instead of buying, and easy to reuse project components. Based on data collected from students’ documentation, produced prototypes, course grades, and a pre and post-course self-reported survey, sustainable practices and learning aspects in the sustainability courses were analyzed. The survey focused on the following four scales: self-perceived skills, confidence, motivation, and enjoyment, each represented by five technological dimensions of instruction, such as 2D and 3D design, electronics, programming, and use of tools and devices in digital fabrication space.

Results showed that high-score design outcomes produced by the students included sustainability elements based on the use of materials and processes of the digital fabrication laboratory. Students were concerned with assembling and disassembling reused components, as well as reducing generated waste and emissions, which was found to be critical for effective and sustainable digital fabrication practices.

Generally speaking, findings showed that sustainability as a process and sustainability about the final prototype should be addressed differently. This requires timely actions on sustainability by both students and instructors. Intervention programs should be aware of these sustainability issues affecting digital fabrication design, without compromising design education iterative prototyping and learning.

The Amperstand Studio is an undergraduate multidisciplinary social design studio focused on working with outside partners and stakeholders to solve large scale and complex social problems. This case study presents a one semester project with undergraduate students from graphic design and industrial design. Students worked with medical experts, aeronautical engineers, and human computer interaction experts in three countries to understand and design a strategy in reducing the death and amputation rate from venomous snake bites in Western Africa, specifically Sierra Leone and Guinnea. In this region over 24,000 snake bites annually cause over 3,600 deaths, 4,600 amputations, primarily affecting children and farmers. The road conditions and intense rainfall in this region often lead to intensely long travel times. What in a developed country would be a 30 minute to 2 hour drive, could easily be an 8-48 hour trip over washed out roads. Due to this, snake bitten passengers are transported on the back of a motorcycle. The design problem is if the snake bite victim does receive anti-venom, which costs $6,000 per vial, within one hour the patient will likely lose a limb, and after 6 hours the victim will likely die.

In this paper we discuss how students defined and found approaches the partners had not considered. A rapid design process which could be efficiently implemented was absolutely necessary as the stakeholders were looking to save lives as soon as possible. The students employed an in-depth research study including interviews with experts and users, which helped them understand the needs of a wide range of stakeholders. Through this process they provided systematic design options that went well beyond the partners initial focus on a drone delivery system. Instead of jumping to only a complex and highly expensive drone system to help address this issue, students proposed a series of solutions, which included a step, leap, and jump. The step solutions were able to be acted on immediately, with leap solutions addressed within a short period of time, and jump was a solution which would need additional funding, but would offer a wider range of solutions and included the drone delivering the anti-venom.

The key contributions of the paper center around how design thinking can lead to a more comprehensive range of solutions in complex and large scale social design problems, providing stakeholders with a variety of options which can be implemented in appropriate stages. This project is currently in use in Western Africa.

Visualisations provide an accessible way to unveil new patterns or promote new perspectives on data. Data visualisations can also aid in highlighting the context and scope of social issues and is a compelling way to disseminate research findings to the general public. This paper presents an interactive exhibit displayed at the 2022 Accelerate Creativity and Innovation Festival, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The exhibit utilised participatory and interactive visualisations, prompting visitors to share their experiences regarding trust and respect in maternity care. This case study demonstrates how a design research team effectively utiliaed participatory visualisation activities to educate and engage museum visitors on sensitive topics in maternity care and inequities in postnatal care. The use of these activities allowed for an inclusive experience, encouraging visitors to actively participate, reflect, and contribute to the conversation. Additionally, it allowed the research team to disseminate and validate their findings.

According to an estimate by Children of Prisoners Europe, there are 2.1 million children in Europe with a parent in detention. Despite this alarming number, children of prisoners remain invisible to the general public. Children of Prisoners Europe describe a child with an incarcerated parent as a double victim. Beyond the loss of a parent, these children face stigmatization, trauma and stress. The effects of parental detention impact the emotional well-being, physical well-being and personal development of the child. Children with detained parents are innocent, but carry the sentence too, they are three times more likely of mental health problems, and five times more likely to end up in prison than other children. The impact of these children on society is underestimated.

Scientific research shows that a good relationship between the child and the incarcerated parent results in less recidivism. So by supporting and guiding children with imprisoned parents, the number of prisoners will decrease in the long run, the mental health will increase, and the amount of recidivism will decrease because both children and parents are taken into account. However, designing for children in precarious social situations requires a specific approach. Unheard and unseen in a world made by adults for adults, they are reliant on their environment. The whole system of actors and actants around them should be included and addressed.

On the one hand, this paper reports on a design research that applies a systemic design approach to tackle social issues, providing insight in the complexity of the context. On the other hand, after mapping the context, the major challenge lies in translating the output towards a design solution, in order to shape a product-service system that empowers children with imprisoned parents. Thus, obtaining autonomy for children with incarcerated parents based on the levers of trauma, attachment and resilience. The paper focuses on the transition from systemic sensemaking to the design of a product-service system by employing an outcome map, allowing the designer to advance from the analysis to the possibility space.

The process applied in this research is about supporting children with incarcerated parents as a case study. Qualitative research was applied to understand the context of children with imprisoned parents in the analysis phase. The data collection methods supporting this research are literature research, observations, in-depth interviews with psychologists and prison staff, cultural probes, brainstorming sessions, focus groups and user tests. This paper contributes to the design field by evaluating outcome mapping as a possible bridge between the analyses and the idea generation.

This paper reflects on alternative approaches in design education and how it can shift to include current discourses of post-Anthropocentrism, through a review and reflections in current design education. While design is still considered a human-centered field and practice, many theories challenge human-centered approaches, such as non-Anthropocentric and post-Anthropocentric discourses that place nonhumans in a non-hierarchical order with humans. So far, with the exception of a few design courses and workshops from some universities, post-Anthropocentric approaches are not included in the current design curriculum. Therefore, there is still a need to address how design education can deal with the Anthropocene itself, and how post-Anthropocentric approaches can be introduced to students. While the foundations of industrial design education relates to craftsman traditions, for the last 50 years, it has been shifting to several directions. As Atkinson (2017) states, we are in a post profession era, and the definitions of “design”, “designer” and “professions” have become more fluid. Buchanan (1988: 66) discusses a misunderstanding that design education should follow the design practice, and states that “when properly understood and studied, design provides a powerful connective link with many bodies of knowledge. Design integrates knowledge from many other disciplines and makes that knowledge effective in practical life”:

Dutton (1987) writes by exploration, that the student is not guaranteed to be a “better designer”, but “he/she has definitely begun to be a designerly thinker”. As Oxman (1999: 120) states; “if we are design educators, we must find means to supplement traditional pedagogy by educating the designerly thinker as well as the maker of designs”.“Designerly thinkers” emerge not only from designing the best possible objects at school/creating near to perfect products but from learning to develop their own methodologies while designing (Oxman, 1999; Curry, 2014). According to Findeli, design education must exceed what design is today, as the design profession can not stay as it is (2001). It is the academy’s ‘responsibility to imagine the future profile of our professions’ (2001: 17). Accordingly, the paper reflects on how design can shift to other directions with current discourses, reflecting on post and non-Anthropocentric discourses and design education. It reflects on how post-Anthropocentric approaches could be introduced in design education, to educate designerly thinkers and to challenge traditional pedagogical methods in design.

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Curry, T. (2014). A theoretical basis for recommending the use of design methodologies as teaching strategies in the design studio. Design Studies, 35(6), 632-646

Dutton, T. (1987). Design and Studio Pedagogy. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 41(1), 16-25.

Findeli, A. (2001). Rethinking design education for the 21st century: Theoretical, methodological, and ethical discussion. Design Issues, 17(1), 5-17.

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