Conference Agenda

Teaching industrial design principles to engineering students at a technical university poses distinct challenges. Unlike art or design students, engineering students often approach problems with a binary perspective, expecting answers to be either correct or incorrect. This mindset complicates their engagement with design, where subjective interpretation and open-ended solutions are fundamental. This abstract presents work carried ut at a university of technology within the Industrial Design Engineering program. The aim has been to clarify the design process for industrial design engineering students by introducing structured methods for articulating subjective decisions. The goal has been twofold: to provide students with tools to self-reflect on their design choices and to establish a shared framework that enhances transparency and communication between students and educators.

Industrial Design Engineering is an inherently complex discipline, bringing together a variety of knowledge and skills. Our programme at the University of XX is rooted and located in a faculty of Engineering Technology and at the same time benefitting from the influx of knowledge from the faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences and our sister faculty of Electronic Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. Therefore our programme comprises of gamma- and beta topics, envisioned by the former marketing slogan of our university “High Tech - Human Touch”. In this context we developed an integrated full time module of fifteen European Credits for the first quartile of the Bachelor. Keeping in mind that this first encounter of the freshmen would set the standard for the rest of their studies we set our selves the task to develop an agile module that offers the scope of topics and integrates them directly in short design sprints. To aid the students in navigating the complexity of their future discipline we created a strong frame for the programme, inspired by the frame-creation method by Dorst. In line with the slogan of our university and the applied character of engineering we settled for ‘making technology available for people’ as central objective. For the students to be successful in this task, they should become ‘bilingual’. Therefore we crafted a module that ‘frames the students as future Industrial Design Engineers with both the language of engineering (=mathematics) and the language of design (=visual)’.

Memes can be seen as expressions of social discourse and may be considered both as source of information about sentiments regarding societal issues, and as a catalyst for sparking conversation. Since both potential uses have direct relevance for design processes, this paper reports on student projects that have experimented with the use of memes in both contexts. It concludes that the first use can spark inspiration and motivation among students but that its potential for reliable insights is challenged by various factors. With respect to the second use, student projects suggest that there is considerable potential for using memes as a catalyst for dialogue between opposite sides.

This paper will outline novel approaches for designers who wish to actively engage users in the creation of green spaces for health and wellbeing benefit. As such, the research strongly aligns with the conference theme of ‘Fostering Human-Centred Products and Services in Design’ and will present engagement methods that can be adopted and modified by design educators in similar contexts where health and wellbeing outcomes are prioritised.

The degradation of the natural world and accompanying resource and climate challenges are acknowledged as existential issues. Positive action is required in design education in order that new tools, methods and approaches are adopted to allow the natural world to be integrated as part of the design process. There are well-established therapeutic and health benefits in us spending time in nature, for example, improved mood and increased physical fitness. Green prescribing is increasingly recognised as an approach that involves healthcare professionals recommending nature-based activities, such as gardening, walking, or participating in conservation projects, as part of a patient's treatment plan. Planning the development of green spaces requires an understanding of synergies and trade-offs between human-nature interactions. To do this, we must understand the plurality of values, identities and capabilities of the beneficiaries that use such spaces.

Improving the ways in which visitors engage with the natural outdoors spaces is important for conservation, cultural heritage, public health, and economics. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is tasked with sustaining the population’s health, and given its significant land ownership surrounding hospitals and treatment centres, there is an opportunity to explore how best to utilise these spaces. These can add value to both the healthcare facility and surrounding community through enhanced health and wellbeing and deeper ecological appreciation. Design HOPES (Healthy Organisations in a Place-based Ecosystem, Scotland) is a transdisciplinary research project that exploits the potential of design-led thinking and making to innovate and tackle multifaceted health delivery challenges to meet urgent Net Zero goals, set by NHS Scotland, for a sustainable health and social care system. The research here reports on three innovative approaches to extracting, understanding and characterising user requirements that are grounded in local communities, and can then be incorporated in the configuration of green spaces for wellbeing. These include:

* Community information exchange: structuring the dissemination of wellbeing information and co-design sessions in town-hall style events

* Games for community engagement: abstracting sustainability and wellbeing concepts, and articulating these through playful interaction

* Creative practice for communities: setting and developing co-creative activities to generate shared wellbeing visions and values

These will be outlined and discussed based on insights from the presented case studies. The way in which these can be consolidated and integrated within human-centred design process for any environment-specific design context will be outlined. This will provide new insights for stakeholder engagement in the design process, and point to how sustainability and well-being can be prioritised in requirements capture for design educators.