Conference Agenda

Saudi Arabia's design ecosystem has expanded rapidly with many early career designers starting their own studios and companies. Despite their creativity and technical expertise, these early career designers face a number of challenges in developing their businesses. This paper, part of larger PhD project, explores the key challenges early career designers face across various geographical regions of Saudi Arabia (i.e., Riyadh, Dammam, Jeddah, Jazan, and Tabuk/Yanbu) in the development of their design start-up company. The paper focuses on the skills and knowledge required for effective design start-ups in Saudi Arabia, including marketing, business development, and client relationships. While conventional design education often prioritises technical skills, many “soft” skills needed to run a successful design firm are potentially overlooked. This research aims to address this gap by examining the major challenges faced by designers in the Saudi Arabia design ecosystem whilst identifying the key skills needed to flourish. The main objective of this research is to examine what early career designers believe are the essential skills for developing a successful design business. To gather insights, the research conducted semi-structured interviews with novice designers in five cities across Saudi Arabia. Participants were asked about the skills and knowledge they felt were necessary for business growth, specifically focusing on the question, "What knowledge/ skills do you need to achieve a successful business?" A thematical analysis of the data identified common trends across different regions and different design disciplines.

Much of what surrounds us today has been designed – the furniture we use, the clothes we wear, the systems we interact with, and even most of the food we eat. While design enables considerable progress, it has inevitably also led to the exploitation of resources, overconsumption, pollution, and destruction. Designers play a vital role in shaping the future and must assume responsibility for the impact their work has on the world. Transitioning from a throw-away to a circular consumer culture presents a promising way towards a more sustainable future. However, for this transition to occur, circularity needs to be integrated early into the design process – not only as an afterthought. Therefore, designers need to develop mindsets that allow them to apply circular principles in their everyday practice. When equipped with such knowledge they can better contribute to a more sustainable future by reducing the destructive impact humans have on the planet.

Prior work has focused on developing methods and tools that foster circular mindsets in designers. The Circular Strategies Wheel, a framework that has been developed in collaboration with Danish Design Center (DDC), is such a tool. This framework leverages three lifecycle stages of products and materials: 1) The start of life phase, 2) The product life/use phase and 3) The end-of-life phase. However, like many others, this tool requires facilitation and is not easily scaled when targeting designers, creatives, and makers in large communities. Thus, in this study, we investigate different methods to disseminate circular strategies among designers, supporting their work of transitioning towards a more circular practice, and thereby influencing their design approaches in a scalable manner.

We hypothesized that self-guided design journals are a viable alternative to facilitated workshops for distributing circular strategies among designers in makerspaces and fab labs. To test this hypothesis, participants in this study were introduced to 18 circular strategies through either a facilitated workshop or a self-guided design journal. After leveraging these strategies in a design project of their own choice, participants were asked to self-assess their knowledge. Analysis of the findings showed no significant differences between the self-guided design journals and the facilitated workshops, suggesting that both methods are similarly motivating and suitable to help foster circular mindsets among designers in makerspaces and fab labs. This insight is encouraging as it suggests fewer resources might be needed to foster mindsets. However, the workshop significantly increased participants’ self-assessed knowledge about circular economy as well as their level of confidence in their own ability to apply circular strategies in their future design practice, suggesting that facilitated learning still offers additional benefits.

The design of products explicitly for shared usage remains underexplored, and design methodologies have not been altered to today's rapid societal changes.

A world facing challenges such as environmental pollution, social inequality, resource scarcity, changing regulations and consumer behaviour is in growing need for innovative solutions. Sharing goods can be one of those venues that lead to a more sustainable future. This understanding, combined with technological advancements, has in recent years, contributed to its rapid expansion. Research has primarily examined its advantages, and disadvantages, often focussed on its economic and ecological implications, but its design methods have been underexplored.

In most cases, products in sharing initiatives are not designed for shared use. Most recent developments are currently found in mobility, e.g., Uber, Poppy, and Lime, though still facing challenges around sustainability, vandalism, and its social impacts on their contexts. Products are designed and then shared, often without considering their adaptability and inclusiveness within diverse communities of sharing systems. There has been little to no development of methods for creating physical products specifically with sharing in mind.

This research proposes a methodology for designing physical products specifically intended for shared use with the research question 'How can we design for sharing' emphasizing adaptability, product-service system, community-centred, psychological ownership, etc. By bridging the gap in current design practices, this approach aims to reshape how products are conceptualized for circular, shared, and durable economies.

As product design education evolves, the focus has shifted from creating tangible objects to delivering comprehensive product-service systems. Achieving a truly human-centred approach in student practice requires rethinking how we educate future designers and engineers. This paper examines the development of a European Low-Tech Hackathon, where students worked within a specific context of human and technological constraints. The Hackathon challenged participants to create solutions with a minimal technological footprint, aligning with sustainability principles and the core values of Low-Tech. It offers a unique lens through which to explore how technological education must adapt to contemporary demands for product and service innovation.

The Hackathon’s outputs were primarily service-based product concepts, each featuring a notable physical touchpoint that responded directly to the local community’s needs. The Hackathon approach demonstrates how inclusive design practices can be integrated into educational models to build an understanding of inclusivity and user-centredness. As “outsiders” to the community where the Hackathon was held, the students worked in multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary teams, adding complexity to their process. This outsider status highlighted the need for deep engagement with unfamiliar environments, prompting participants to question assumptions about resources, needs, and requirements. Ultimately, they developed solutions rooted in the specific human, social, and environmental contexts they encountered, using the lowest and most appropriate level of technology necessary to meet those needs.

In addition, this paper explores the relationship between “dumb objects”—simple, non-technologically intense items—and smart systems. While much of contemporary design education focuses on the complexity of smart, interconnected products, the Low-Tech Hackathon presented a counter-narrative, showing that simple, accessible technologies can effectively solve complex problems, especially in underserved or resource-constrained communities. This reinforces the principle of appropriateness in design: choosing solutions that fit the context rather than defaulting to high-tech approaches. The action of choosing the appropriate technology to respond to specific needs carries a reflection process directly related to the role of technology in our lives and the need to develop educational frameworks that encourage techno-diversity.

This Hackathon format illustrates a streamlined educational approach that empowers students to tackle real-world challenges without overwhelming them with the complexities of high technology. By prioritising simplified, context-appropriate solutions, the Hackathon allows students to engage with ecological, human-centred, practical challenges in a manageable framework. Through this experience, students are encouraged to critically assess their assumptions about resources and technology, preparing them to engage with both the practical and ethical dimensions of design.

In advocating for hackathon-style learning experiences, this paper highlights the potential of such approaches to foster empathetic and ecologically focussed, human-centred design thinking. These experiences can drive a shift away from techno-solutionist interventions, guiding students toward contextually appropriate, sustainable, and human-driven outcomes. By embedding this model within design curricula, we can create a more inclusive, transdisciplinary, and responsive design education that meets the global challenges facing the next generation of designers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been embraced in design education and practice communities, and there is now an interest in creating learning experiences which are informed by this new paradigm. Encouraged by institutional support for principled “continuous improvement” and “innovation” which could appropriately integrate AI for teaching, learning and assessment, we explored Vizcom, an AI tool that enhances sketch-based image generation and integrates with CAD and digital workflows. We wanted to understand the patterns of transition between students’ past design and AI experiences into Vizcom. Our interventions took place in two Product Design modules (classes) —one undergraduate (UG) and one postgraduate (PG) —both focused on transitioning from sketches through to CAD or physical models. Vizcom was introduced in computer lab sessions, offering students exposure to emerging digital tools, and they were asked to then complete tasks related to thir project work. Analysis reviewed student outputs from the dedicated Vizcom, sessions, their exhibition work (from UG intervention 1) and a survey of particpants of intervention 2. Results showed that it was different for students to move beyond superficial experiences within short timescales, and relatively few (10/50) carried it through inot their project work. Of those that did, there was evidence of integration of the tool. The survey may suggest those students less confident about their rendering skills were more likely to be impressed by vizcom, and that there was a correlation between positive perception of vizcom and agreement that it should be used in educational settings.