Conference Agenda

As designers of all disciplines are increasingly expected to engage in complex problems, involving social, cultural, technological, and economic issues that reach beyond their own known boundaries, so our students’ educational experiences should evolve to better equip them for these challenges. Generating a meaningful response to global issues both big and small requires the knowledge and skills of diverse teams, harnessing the contribution of distinct disciplinary expertise within the context of multidisciplinary practice. Over recent years our department has embodied this ambition through delivering integrated cross-course projects within 1st and 2nd year Degree level study. In extending our multidisciplinary approach beyond existing cultural boundaries we aim to foster practices of more inclusive and responsible innovation through structured engagement via the Collaborative On-line International Learning (COIL) program, established with the aim of bringing together international partners to support shared students learning experiences from across diverse cultures.

Specifically, this study reports on the delivery of a global partnership project between UK and Indian institutions, with the aim of engaging students in cultural exchange and the exploration of responsible innovation beyond their existing designing experiences. Referencing the UN Global Sustainability Goals as boundary objects between these two cultures the project enabled students to respond to design challenges in mixed teams, exploring and meeting the goals from different cultural standpoints.

In evaluating the project’s success as a deep learning experience, a series of comparative studies were conducted with all participating students before and after the project’s delivery. In measuring the extent of the projects impact upon core design values the authors recorded student responses to prompt questions regarding (a) their awareness of global issues (b) the students’ sense of collective agency within their extended community (c) their confidence in applying methods that extend beyond existing reference points (d) their understanding of complex problems and the connectedness of decision making to broader issues. Results from the studies were gathered and thematically analysed to identify patterns and any defined changes in students core design values resulting from their engagement in the projects.

WHAT ABOUT

Within the scientific cycle of design / historians and design theorists, likewise other teacher in ‘Gestalt-theory’, we have to take the element of ‘time’ as significant creating factor, with consequences to the ‘quality of education’ – in relation to SDG No. 4 (by UN).

At the one hand we, as teacher and researcher, have to demand about more time to integrate new research findings into the lectures, in re-writing the readers, scripts. But we cannot ignore, that the daily business as teacher and researcher not offers the necessary time, to evaluate innovative, new research findings of design historians, art historians and archaeologists in Europe over the last decade. At the other hand, the factor time within the historical perspectives, that new field studies and research results showing a different contextualization of an object than before (case study: ancient time) has great impact in the interpretation of these objects, and for modifying the art historian documentations and lectures, scripts.

This paper aims to show - with the help of a case study of the significance of ‘New images in the age of Augustus’ - to act with different media and materials in time, had consequences in a new interpretation and contextualization in design- and art-theory. It is demonstrating, we have to demand for more time for interdisciplinary discussions together in Europe and encouraging the teacher, not even to take time but show courage and confidence to re-design their lectures.

AIM AND INSTRUMENTS

Our main intention, as interdisciplinary working researchers in creative and anthropological relevant disciplines, is formulating a sustainable future together in Europe and working together with financial support, but as well with enough time for discussing research findings together, for evaluation in a profound way and in a free space for creativity and new ideating sustainable solutions – learning from an every time evaluated (design) history.

Case studies about art-history of the roman time will be analysed about the antique circle of sculptures and communicating medias – case studies in the subjects of dress codes, product languages, ‘media languages’ – to come to new interpretations and new contextualisation. Essential benefit will bring, the comparison in ‘reading’ in different media, with evaluation the lectures in Gestalt-theory, art- and design-history, and finally design didactic: Questioning ‘old’ and ‘new’ experts literature about a research facts and experiences within field studies (in exhibitions with three dimensional objects and at the field of archaeologist) matters today as pedagogical and design didactical benefit for the students. This is more essential during the digitalisation phase and a time of missing physically experiences. Experts rounds of multispecies collaborations, like archaeologist, scientist of art in discussing with design theorist are beneficial to share, discuss and evaluate our design education experiences. These truly interdisciplinary activities are to sharpen all Gestalt theoretical courses in the nearby future und supports responsible innovation. This paper aims to sum up the research findings, to formulate together the key factors in re-designing courses and scripts of Gestalt-theory – ‘time’ as one core element.

The burden on the healthcare system is growing as medical treatment advances, the aged population increases, and people’s health awareness improves. eHealth is one of the prospective strategies to cope with this situation which has great potential to open up new avenues to the health system. Despite tremendous progress, the development of eHealth tools is fraught with difficulties. There is a paradox in that there are a variety of eHealth tools accessible on the market, but their market penetration is now substantially lower than investors anticipated due to their low acceptance. It may result in a waste of effort and resources. The sustainable development of eHealth tools can be categorized as one of the wicked problems in the twenty-first century as it is morally repugnant for the planner to address and has spread across the board. Due to limited evidence on optimum leverage points, the waste is likely to endure. The use of top-down approaches and the tendency for research to concentrate on technology rather than service delivery from users’ perspective are part of the main challenges for current eHealth tool development projects. Healthcare providers are trained to provide evidence-based care for patients and have expert knowledge of evidence-based practice in a specific area. Their knowledge is, to some extent, exclusive, which may be one of the reasons why many eHealth tool development projects continue to use top-down approaches. Therefore, it is crucial to empower healthcare providers with design skills and mindset. On the other hand, the roles and responsibilities of designers in the twenty-first century have been controversial, as many farsighted designers assert that we are at a turning point of transforming design from an expert-driven process focused on objects and services within a taken-for-granted social and economic order towards design practices that advocates design-led societal transition toward more sustainable futures. To foster the transformation, design education should cater to all abilities. Health CASCADE is one of the European Union-funded multidisciplinary expert networks with the goal of delivering the rigorous scientific methodology to secure co-creation as an effective tool to fight public health problems. Imparting the knowledge of co-creation in public health to healthcare providers has the potential to tackle the above challenges by empowering them with design skills and mindset in an appropriate way. Knowledge of co-creation may help to alleviate the gap between design and healthcare, meanwhile providing an added value of participation to increase trust. This paper illustrates a curriculum development process partnered with healthcare providers aiming for delivering knowledge of co-creation in public health to healthcare providers who are responsible for designing eHealth programmes on the national primary health care support platform, 1177 Vårdguiden - Stöd och Behandling in Sweden, and the reflection on the course. The curriculum co-creation practice and the course reflection contribute to the notion of empowering healthcare providers with healthcare design abilities.

Human-Centred Design (HCD) has become a key component of design teaching over the last thirty years. Central to HCD is the concept of design empathy, and many techniques and tools have been developed in order to encourage and help designers to gain a greater understanding of the specific difficulties, desires and behaviours of their target users.

Bournemouth University (BU) Design and Engineering students have long been encouraged to make use of HCD techniques as part of their creative design process. However, their work alongside the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) in developing products aimed at Low-to-Middle Income Countries (LMIC’s) has highlighted shortfalls in these techniques, which are often more suited to designing for the elderly or disabled rather than users from an unfamiliar cultural, social or economic background. Furthermore, an Empathy Quotient survey of level 6 Design and Engineering students at BU indicated that empathy levels were no higher than the national average despite years of exposure to HCD methods.

After a collaborative project in Tanzania during which local partners were introduced to using HCD tools to encourage design empathy, the authors facilitated an ideation project using postgraduate Design and Engineering students from BU. This paper explores the issues in improving design communication and empathy across cultural barriers. Using data obtained from the UK students the authors investigate the perceived value of empathic tools, whether modern and emerging technologies could offer ways to bridge the cultural empathy gap, or whether in-country upskilling in design methods offers a more sustainable solution.

Toward the common goal of sustainable consumption experiences, effective and efficient education methods and expertise can vary a lot in Finland and in Asia reflecting relevant characteristics. The goal of“Finland-Asia Network for Sustainable Experience Design Education” (SEDE-FAN) project is to build the network of higher education institutes in Finland and in Asia so that successful efforts in Sustainable Experience Design education in Finland and in Asia can be shared. Also learnings acquired in not-so-successful trials in such educational endeavors can also be communicated. In this way, the knowledge and principles underpinning such educational methods and expertise can be collected, stored, exchanged, retrieved, reused and enhanced through SEDE-FAN.

This paper will report the findings of the first year efforts in the SEDE-FAN project where two institutions in Finland, one in Singapore and one in Korea have conducted sustainable experience design eduction efforts. Particular focus will be placed on how different education contexts are related with respective sustainble experience design education efforts.

Discussions on how to reflect cultural and regional contexts as well as educational intent in sustainable experience design education will be included.