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.