Digital Commons Network^™

Translational Design: Enabling Impact In Complex, Multi-Stakeholder Research Projects Through Design, Rowan Christopher Page, Rosie Hornbuckle, Leah Heiss, André Nogueira

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Translational research converts the knowledge generated through basic research into tangible innovations, solutions, and interventions that directly impact people and the planet. As universities increasingly seek to maximise research impact, the applied, action-oriented, epistemology of design is well-positioned to support translational research. Successful translation requires strong communication and collaboration between different disciplines, industry partners, policy, and research end-users. Multi-stakeholder collaborations foster holistic approaches, leading to more effective and contextually relevant solutions. Designers are well-positioned to facilitate complex entanglements, integrating the needs and values of diverse perspectives. However, the emerging role of design as an enabler of translational research needs to …

Design Sketching And Visualization, Futures & Research, Bryan Howell, Janwillem Hofftjzer, Mauricio Novoa Munoz

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design sketching in analogue, tablet, and immersive technologies, combined with artificial intelligence, is rapidly evolving and is primed for reinterpretation and further contextualisation. Discussions about analogue and digital sketching, live and online education, traditional and emerging visual contexts, generative and explanatory visual knowledge, emerging technology and methods, and the visual power and speed of sketching with artificial intelligence have seeded the ground to reassess our relationships with the role of sketching, and visual knowledge. The “Design Sketching and Visualization, Futures & Research” track welcomes visual or written research papers from industry professionals and academics on three topics: 1- Analogue and …

Service Design And Circular Economy In Hybrid Retail Design, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Katelijn Quartier, Christina Breed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper serves as a pilot study exploring hybrid (physical and digital) retail design within the context of the circular economy, and it examines the prerequisite of the hy-brid retail environment in facilitating customer engagement with circular economy practices. Utilizing an exploratory qualitative approach, we collect primary data through semi-structured interviews with an SME retail brand and ten of its customers. Additionally, we conducted observations of both the physical store and its social me-dia. This contributes to the limited existing literature on hybrid retail design within the context of the circular economy, particularly in the fashion industry. By bridging two …

Co-Diagnosed: A Multi-Disciplinary Workshop Reimagining Cultures Of Care For Medical And Mental Health, Valerie Greer, Emily Johnson, Virginia Pankey, Jack Burton

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper focuses on places of healing for co-diagnosed patients who suffer from both mental and medical illnesses. Comorbidity is recognized as a growing concern yet there is little prece-dent in the healthcare industry for designing spaces that respond to needs of patients who re-quire hospitalization for medical conditions, and who simultaneously suffer mental health disor-ders. To explore this problem, we created a workshop to engage healthcare providers, adminis-trators and healthcare architects with undergraduate and graduate students in art, architecture, visual communications and urban design. Our goal was to identify issues that must be ad-dressed through the lens of patients …

Enabling Regenerative Transitions: What Can Design Offer?, Michelle Alina Miller, Alexander Baumber

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Transition design first emerged as a provocation to designers to apply design theory and practice to enable societal transitions, including transitions toward sustainability. This raises questions around the roles that transition design can play in sustainability transitions and the specific capabilities that designers can draw on. This paper seeks to answer these questions via a transition design case study project in agricultural sustainability. Specifically, the project focuses on the growing interest in regenerative agriculture in New South Wales, Australia from 2017 through 2023. Within the case study, the researcher as designer-practitioner works as a change agent, taking part in collaborative …

Towards Active Aging: Investigating Innovations Within Intelligent Communities, Gabriela Branco, Manuela Quaresma

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Intelligent communities can nurture environments conducive to fostering positive and meaningful relationships among the elderly. This systematic literature review examines the role of these communities in the aging population’s social relations. Through the review of studies and interventions via the Scopus database, we investigate how some innovative approaches are positively impacting the quality of life for the elderly. We identified examples of initiatives, technological solutions, and a social project successfully implemented in communities to strengthen older adult support networks. The contributions of this article lie in providing a comprehensive view of how smart technologies are shaping support for the senior …

A Framework For The Agency Of Sketching, Annemiek Van Der Wal, Janwillem Hoftijzer, Martijn Haans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Previous scholars have advocated the significant value of sketching in design process-es. This paper first explores how design sketching functions as an agent for design, building on insights derived from both theory and practice. Interviews with professional designers in the field reaffirm the functions and importance of sketching. Not only for designers themselves, but also for their clients and consumers. Given the value of sketching and the variety of stakeholders involved, this paper then aims to structure the affordances of design sketching in a practical framework. Considering that af-fordances must be discoverable and perceivable in order to be effective, this …

Past, Present And Future Of Design Ethics, Helle Vesti, Linda N. Laursen, Christian Tollestrup

DRS Biennial Conference Series

With the ever-more present climate crisis, resource shortage and the expansion of AI, the core question of the ethical aspects of our development of new products and solutions becomes unavoidable. But which topics are commonly discussed in design ethics literature and how has it evolved? To answer this question and to understand the existing underpinnings and foundation of ethics in design, we adopted a structured literature review searching literature across 42 renowned scientific design journals. A systematic search revealed 1177 academic publications relating to the topic. After filtering and reviewing the titles, abstracts and keywords of these publications, a total …

Making Space Online: Situating Complex, Intersectional Identities, Dori Griffin, Brooke Hull

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This co-authored visual essay explores our process of making space for ourselves online within the complexity of our intersectional identities. Individually, we’ve appropriated mainstream social media posts to share marginalized experiences, generate meaningful connections, and merge our personal and research identities. On Facebook, Griffin shares her experiences as a cis-female, invisibly disabled, neurodivergent design educator. On Instagram, Hull shares their experiences as fat, queer, trans non-binary design student. Together, using tools with low barriers to entry, we document how design educational praxis affords our marginalized voices access, or not, within physical and virtual design education spaces. As white authors, we …

Harnessing Information Visualization As A Vehicle For Translational Design, Joli Holmes, Matthew Blanco, Todd Linkner, Estefania Ciliotta Chehade, Paolo Ciuccarelli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers are often positioned as mediators or interpreters, working between disciplines and stakeholders to frame and address problems. This quality is particularly desired when a product transitions from one implementation to another. Translational designers assist this process through critical activities such as navigating differing domain knowledge and balancing conflicting values or cultures between stakeholders. We argue the primary outcome of translational design is not necessarily an artifact but the translation of knowledge across disciplines for decision-making. Our research explains and shows how information visualization can translate meaning within a group of experts familiar with the same topic and between a …

Faculty Wellbeing In Corporate Academia: A Critical Examination And Reimaging Of The Curriculum Vitae, Aaron Ganci

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Faculty wellbeing is declining among US higher education faculty, and burnout is becoming increasingly common. This study examines the role of design artifacts, namely the curriculum vitae (CV), within this dynamic. The CV has succumbed to interconnected social forces, including neoliberalism and inclusive democratization, fundamentally altering its design and the connected faculty experience. To better understand if design action might improve faculty wellbeing, this study employs a transformative research design to examine how the CV might be reimagined to promote positive transformation and improved wellbeing. This mixed-method qualitative study utilizes a novel bend of interviews, participatory co-design activities, and a …

Advancing Design With Generative Ai: A Case Of Automotive Design Process Transformation, Yi Li, Yeye Li, Wei Yan, Fan Yang, Xuanxuan Ding

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Generative AI has greatly enhanced the production of digital content and has had a significant impact on the creative activities of designers. However, generalized generative AI falls short of designers' expectations in semantic understanding and image generation, and thus been poorly used in specific design domains (e.g., automotive design). This paper aims to explore the integration of generative AI into the design process, focusing on the generation of automotive design. We deconstructed the process of automotive design through user research, extracted the needs and pain points of designers, and transformed them into fine-tuning tasks for generative models. We trained three …

Show Me What You Mean: The Case For Easy-To-Use 3d Visualizations Of The Built Environment, Noelyn Stephens, Juan Salamanca

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Visual communication, particularly realistic visualization, has been found to be effective for facilitating constructive discussion on issues related to the built environment. Here, we make the case that a browser-based, intuitively designed 3D visualization interface could widen access to such approaches increasing opportunities for co-creation. Using this type of easy-to-access tool could allow community members to own the process of creating a shared vision for their city.

The Power Of The Pen/Pencil: Developing A Design Sketching Syllabus To Help 1st Year Product Design Students Communicate Effectively, Paul Kennea, Richard Malcolm, Francesco Luke Siena, Joseph Stewart, Allan Cutts

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Digital, immersive, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have propelled technology-focused design to the fore. Due to our technology-driven society and growing demand for technology literacy, the perceived need for traditional/analogue skills is being overlooked/underappreciated. Within product design (PD) education, students are increasingly embracing digital design tools to communicate, overlooking traditional/analogue tools. Subsequently, students are increasingly designing within the remits/restrictions of digital tools. This presents numerous challenges, including overreliance on computer aided design tools, perfectionism through corrective tools available with digital sketching platforms, and the complete disregard of quick concept generation in favor of AI. The power of the pen/pencil is …

Guiding Design Students To Sound-Driven Design From The Base Camp Of Semiotics, Rosana Sanz-Segura, Eduardo Manchado-Pérez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The lack of knowledge in the field of sound-driven design lags our educational efforts to teach BSc students about the role of sound in current design process methodologies. Teaching programs rarely include subjects dedicated to creating a coherent experience using data-to-sound strategies, sound informativeness, or the interactions that users have with product sounds. Understanding sound at the same level as other sensory cues prepares students to enrich the usability, attractiveness, and communicative qualities of products, services, and systems. This contribution aims to provide an integrative and multidisciplinary perspective of sound-driven design through the adaptation and application of the ‘Design Framework …

Indicators For Evaluating Service Design Inclusivity In The Healthcare Sector: A Review Of The Literature, Marco Petazzoni, Sabrina Bresciani

DRS Biennial Conference Series

To foster a culture of inclusive care and patients-centred solutions in the healthcare sector, being able to assess the inclusivity of services is an essential step for enhancing the design and improvement of services. What are the key indicators of inclusive service design in the healthcare sector? Based on insights from the field of the built environment, a thematic analysis of the literature on service design in the context of healthcare, psychology, and public service design is conducted. Indicators extracted from the literature are structured into four categories: physical, sensorial, cognitive, and psycho-social, and according to two phases: service design …

Mapping The Evolution Of Design Research: A Data-Driven Analysis Of Interdisciplinary Trends And Intellectual Landscape, Andrea Vian, Gianluca Carella, Daniele Pretolesi, Annalisa Barla, Francesco Zurlo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, research in design, more so than other disciplines, has to develop self-awareness to adapt to the inherent complexity of the contemporary world. This requires the use of big data as comprehensive self-descriptors, along with tools borrowed from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate knowledge that researchers in this field can integrate with their own expertise to guide their research activities. We consider a large-scale set of about 170000 design-related scientific publications and leverage natural language processing, machine learning, and data visualization to explore and capture the evolution of the design community. We identify …

Hidden Scientists/Hidden Creatives, Con Kennedy

Conference Presentations

This presentation discussed how the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were integrated into an existing graphic design module delivered on the BA in Visual Communication Design in a joint project with the TU Dublin School of Art and Design, School of Biological, Health and Sports Sciences
 Sustainability and Research Hub
Research, the Ethics and Integrity Office. The project explored underrepresented women in science and graphic design.

Wild Joy: An Exploration In Queer Spatial Dynamics, Kipper Thomas Reinsmith

Masters Theses

What does it mean to feel represented in a space?

What does a trans space look like?

How can we queer our interior spaces?

Our world is crafted by the many designers that have come before us. These systems, products, and spaces are built upon assumptions of the bodies that will use and occupy them—namely cisgender, able-bodied, straight folks.

Designing and creating objects as a trans person is an act of radical nature. To take up space, to design for trans luxury, for the sake of beauty, for joy itself, feels counterintuitive to the narratives we’ve been served: that of …

Counter-Archives In Digital Spaces, Patricia Belen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As evidence of human activities and time periods, archives are invaluable resources for research and the historical record. Digital, public archives are powerful sites of memory and discourse. The New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Collections platform has provided over 900,000 prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and more on their public website. Recent calls for museums and heritage institutions to confront their legacies of colonialism have led to scholarly and activist work in the area of counter-archives that address inequalities and empower excluded voices. Counter-Archives in Digital Spaces (https://counterarchives.com) is an interactive website that explores history and visual literacy …

This Is For You: A Handbook For Design Students, Gabriel Drozdov

Masters Theses

This Is For You is a handbook for design students. It is a collection of stories, projects, and conversations on the subjects of design, code, and teaching. The book’s first part, “Learning,” contains stories about the experiences that shaped me as a designer. The second part, “Making,” summarizes the projects that taught me how to design. The third and final part, “Sharing,” is a series of conversations with the people that helped me along the way. In collecting and publishing these resources, This Is For You is an attempt to create an open-source example of what a career in design …

Here—There, Glikeriya Shotanova

Masters Theses

Here—there explores the nature and ways of gathering, proposing an alternative path to organizing a cultural center. Divided into three acts (Act One: There, Act Two: Here, and Act Three: Together), it touches on the topics of collective knowledge and the importance of its accessibility to the local communities. How do we organize communities in a way that operates as a body, and how do we use industrial spaces as a bridge between knowledge and those who carry the knowledge? Due to alienation in societies, the decentralization of creative communities, and the inaccessibility of real estate to younger generations, there …

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

Variations On Noise, Clinton Van Arnam

Masters Theses

Variations on Noise is a three-part collection: an index, a set of interviews, and a perspective on a working practice in graphic design and sound.

If noise is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, how do we define it and use it as a catalyst for dissonance and change? As a designer, I use noise algorithms to generate pseudo randomness and break up repetitive textures. As a musician, I use noise to create scores and performances that challenge our perception of what is comfortable and uncomfortable.

Seven interviews with designers, artists, musicians, and a Tibetan monk offer ways to approach the …

Organic Chemistry In Virtual Reality: Bridging Gaps Between Two-Dimensional And Three-Dimensional Representations, Scott Vayakone

Masters Theses

The traditional two-dimensional representations in organic chemistry education highlighted the lack of depth and interactivity, impeding student learning, engagement, and comprehension. By emphasizing on the limitations of conventional educational materials, the research advocated for integrating Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, which enhance organic chemistry visualization. The main objective was to bridge the gap between two and three-dimensional perspectives, offering a more dynamic and interactive learning experience. The thesis aimed to assess traditional teaching methods in organic chemistry—lectures, textbooks, and laboratory exercises. It also aimed to identify their challenges in conveying complex molecular structures and reactions effectively. Additionally, …

Ai In Graphic Design: Here To Help Or Replace Us?, Christian Jovan Rodriguez

Masters Theses

Artificial intelligence is becoming more commonly used in the creative space. With the implementation of AI, it has provided many benefits to working design professionals making their workflow more efficient. AI has also proposed a potential threat to the careers of graphic designers by reducing job opportunities in art and design. This thesis will expand on areas where artificial intelligence is impacting the fields of art and design. Possible use cases will be expressed throughout, for example graphic designers eventually having to adapt and implement the use of AI daily to promote creativity and speed up workflow. After completing this …

Good Taste No Waste: A Solution For Managing Food Waste In Newly Independent Young Adults, David Eppinger

Masters Theses

Consumers are the biggest contributors to food waste in the United States and in other developed countries, though most of them don’t realize it. American young adults living independently for the first time lack education on responsible food management in the areas of planning, preparation, and preservation. This lack of skills results in excessive waste of food, money, and energy, and leads to significant damage to the economy and the environment. Ample research exists identifying this issue and the changes that need to be made, yet effective visual solutions have not yet followed. Through a comprehensive topical survey, along with …

Elementary Art And The Pride Program: Discovering Effective Practices For Enhancing Accessibility To Curriculum And Instruction For Students Who Are Severely Impacted By Autism, Kara Lynch

Art 895 Research Papers

In this case study, I use my position as the school’s art teacher to examine the challenges faced, while in the art room, by students who are severely impacted by autism. Our elementary campus has created a PRIDE program that comprises students in grades K-5 who are severely impacted by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and other disabilities. This case study considers how educators can provide better access to curriculum and instruction for students who are severely impacted by autism. It also examines the importance of understanding this population’s needs to achieve a higher rate of success in the art room …

The Ai Effect: Rethinking Design Workflows For Enhanced Productivity And Creativity, Israel Adeleye

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming how designers work with computers. This thesis explores the developing relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and design processes, focusing on how it impacts the creation of digital experiences. This study examines the impact of AI on design, highlighting how AI can improve efficiency and creativity alongside ethical challenges and the need to preserve human uniqueness in digital creations. It investigates AI's effects on design workflows, creativity, and the designer's evolving role through interviews, content analysis, case studies, and surveys. The aim is to understand AI's influence on designer productivity, innovation, and …

Automated Cinematographer For Vr Viewing Experiences, Zihan Wu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

As the virtual reality (VR) industry continues to evolve, the question of how to effectively capture VR experiences for an audience remains a challenge. The predominant method of showcasing VR applications through first-person recordings lacks cinematic interest, failing to capture other viewpoints and the essence of the moment. Meanwhile, manually setting up cameras and editing videos requires technical expertise on behalf of the user. In this paper, we propose the use of machine learning (ML) to automatically select the most compelling predefined viewpoint in a VR environment, at any given moment. Our models, trained on actor motion and voice volume, …