Digital Commons Network^™

What If Data Protection Embraced Foresight And Speculative Design?, Arianna Rossi, Régis Chatellier, Stefano Leucci, Rossana Ducato, Estelle Hary

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Due to rapid technological advancements and the growing “datafication” of our societies, individuals’ privacy constitutes an increasingly explored speculative space for regulators, researchers, practitioners, designers and artists. This article reports two experiences at a national and an international data protection authority (i.e., the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés - CNIL - and the European Data Protection Supervisor - EDPS - respectively), where foresight methods and speculative design are employed in policy-making with the goal of anticipating technological trends, their implications for society and their impact on regulations, as well as the effects of existing and upcoming laws on …

Transilience: Assemblage And Relationality In A Complex Urban Setting, Radhika Roy

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Social change is experienced profoundly by adult youth in India, especially in cities like Delhi with large rural migrant populations. This youth is a generation in transition, with aspirations and experiences that are different from their communities of origin. However, their perceptions of their world have rarely been documented qualitatively, in their own voice. My doctoral research, titled Transilience, which means ‘to leap across’, is a practice-based reflection on my work as a social designer within this milieu, and specifically focuses on how adult youth perceive themselves and their context, to explore ways to reframe the way social design practitioners …

Supporting Design Research On Taboo Topics, Isabel Prochner

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design research and practice deal with many new and underexplored topics that may not have previously been discussed. Yet, many of these topics are still some- what taboo, meaning they can miss out on attention and critical exploration and may not be adequately addressed. This DRS2022 Conversation explored the range of barri- ers faced by design researchers interested in or currently working on taboo topics and how these barriers might be addressed. The report summarizes the discussions during the session, which focused primarily on respectful boundaries and dialogue between researchers and participants. It also highlights key questions and dilemmas facing …

Biodesign For A Culture Of Life: Of Microbes, Ethics, And Design, Rachel Armstrong

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Scientific advances at the turn of the new millennium brought radical new insights into just how microbial our world is and the extent to which microbes influence our lives: from notions of the body (human microbiome); to their distribution in our living spaces (microbiome of the built environment); playing an integral role in ecosystems services in our cities (urban microbiome) and are fundamental to biogeochemical cycles—our world is irreducibly microbial. This paper asks what it means to dwell and design in such times and proposes an ethics for biodesign: which employs the insights and tools of the biotechnological age to …

Design As An Agent Of Narratives: A Conceptual Framework And A First Exploration In The Context Of Inclusive Paediatric Mobility Design, Cara Shaw, Farnaz Nickpour

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Although much of human experience is qualitative, front-end design documentation typically defaults to quantification which can abstract, dilute or lose meaning and reasoning with regards to lived experiences. Narratives are a well-established channel for gathering rich qualitative insights around individual and collective experiences, perceptions and values. However, the potential to advance the role of design beyond simply an embodiment agent for dominant narratives - to an agent for uncovering, interrogating, speculating, and scaling a diversity of narrative ‘classes’ and ‘statuses’ - is yet to be fully explored. This paper proposes a conceptual framework positioning design as an agent of narratives …

Method Of Mapping Interdisciplinary Research And Practice At The Intersection Of Biology And Design, Veronika Kapsali

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ubiquitous, multi-meaning terms used to describe new ideas, finding etc, presents a significant barrier for cross-disciplinary discourse especially between the arts and sciences. The research presented in this paper tackles the problem of terminological disharmony specifically within the process of contextualising creative design practice informed by biological science and/or its applications. The study is implemented in three stages; lexical semantic theories and methods are applied to corpus-based investigations to assess the scope of biologically informed disciplines (BID) terminology; results are analysed using statistical and qualitative methods and mapped against known academic domains; the resulting map is evaluated via the analysis …

The Politics Of Metadesign, Christian Nold

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This is a conceptual paper that explores the notion of metadesign which is premised on redesigning design itself. It interrogates the claim that metadesign is ‘open’, ‘fluid’ and ‘democratising’ by analysing its literature and practices. The paper makes two arguments. First, that metadesign is a theoretical power grab that prioritises language at the expense of material design which separates it from other design approaches. Second, that metadesign currently does not offer conceptual tools for observing and analysing the politics of real-world metadesign. If metadesign wants to be a democratising force, then it needs to question its legacy of transcendent language …

Ontogenesis As A Model For Design Processes, Otto Paans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The technical rationality (TR) and reflective practice (RP) paradigms have heavily influenced thinking about design and design cognition in the 20th century. This paper concisely highlights some of the features and limitations of these paradigms. In particular, it develops the suggestion that we require a new “root metaphor” or leading set of concepts to develop our thinking about designing beyond the work of Donald Schön. Building on this assumption, this paper examines some useful aspects of selected concepts developed by Gilbert Simondon, in particular the notion of ontogenesis. Furthermore, it is argued that Simondon’s thought helps us to connect epistemology …

Learning From Creative Biology: Promoting Transdisciplinarity Through Vocabularies Of Practice, Larissa Pschetz, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Joe Revans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Transdisciplinary ways of collaborating are considered essential to support new approaches to tackling societal and environmental “wicked” problems. But how can collaborations take place in ways that reach this envisioned state? In this work, we look for cues of transdisciplinarity in the experience of those with a successful track record of working across disciplines. We interviewed 38 practitioners and researchers working in “creative biology”, an umbrella term that we use to address work that incorporates biology-related methods and research outside purely scientific realms. The interviews provide insights into how language can be used to support strategic shifts of positionality and …

Design For Public Policy: Embracing Uncertainty And Hybridity In Mapping Future Research, Lucy Kimbell, Liz Richardson, Ramia Mazé, Catherine Durose

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Addressing contemporary public policy challenges requires new thinking and new practice. Therefore, there is a renewed sense of urgency to critically assess the potential of the emerging field of ‘design for policy’. On the one hand, design approaches are seen as bringing new capacities for problem-solving to public policy development. On the other, the attendant risks posed to effective and democratic policy making are unclear, partly because of a limited evidence base. The paper synthesises recent contributions in design research, policy studies, political science and democratic theory which have examined the uses of design for public policy making. Mapping out …

‘Making The Dust Fly’: (A Case Study Of) Design Research Promoting Health And Sustainability In Addressing Household Infections, Emmanuel Tsekleves, Collins Ahorlu, Andy Darby, Roger Pickup, Dziedzom De Souza, Daniel Boakye

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Global health crisis, such as antimicrobial resistance, threaten planetary health, as they have a direct impact on the environment, as well as to humans and animals. Personal and environmental hygiene form the best and most natural ways of reducing home infections and hence the need to take antibiotics. Despite this our understanding of cleaning in the home and interventions on home cleaning are limited. In this paper we present a project, which combined design research with environmental microbiology, to address this issue and to co-design sustainable cleaning interventions for human and planetary health. We focus on the design of a …

Reframing Advanced Manufacturing Ontologies Through An Exploration Of Ductus, Lewis Urquhart, Andrew Wodehouse

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ontologies of manufacturing and making have received closer attention in recent years thanks to a renewed interest in materiality and questions of form-emergence and form perception. This work argues that the hylomorphic ontologies dominant within advanced manufacturing can be challenged through the introduction of a “ductus” concept, which relates to the traces left by unique material interactions and energy transferences as artefacts are fabricated. Drawing on multiple strands of scholarship, this paper develops a new ontological model integrating material-process relationships and end user experiences with the ductus of the making process at its core. This model is illustrated and elucidated, …

Improvisational Design Dialogue: Exploring Relational Design Encounters As Means To Dismantle Oppression In Design, Brendon Clark, Nicholas B. Torretta

DRS Biennial Conference Series

To explore dismantling oppressive power relations in design, we bring to fore design encounters through the lens of relationality and improvisational competence. This paper is based on the premise that, if we are to move toward decolonizing design, design(ers) needs to re-think the organization of the design encounter and how we as designers practice participation in such encounters. We emphasize the improvisational nature of turn-taking in dialogue amidst asymmetric and dynamic power relations, with design’s commitment to generating resources for future practices, and decolonization’s commitment to re-configure power structures. After problematizing the design encounter from a power relation perspective, we …

Thinking Outside The Bag: Worker-Led Speculation And The Future Of Gig Economy Delivery Platforms, Ben Kirman, Oliver Bates, Carolynne Lord, Hayley Alter

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Gig economy is presented as disruptive, technologically driven, and forward think-ing. Design is explicit in this framing, through use of slick apps to reduce friction and simplify experience for customer and worker. However, this framing is often driven by the platforms, and does not fully recognize the actual experience of work. In this paper we report on a collaborative design process on developing concepts for the future of gig work from a worker-centric perspective. This explicitly does not involve the platforms as stakeholders and uses design fiction as a tool for workers to ex-press fears, joys, and the aspects of …

Storing Cultural Archives In Synthetic Dna: An Integrated Prospective Design Investigation, Emily Groves, Romain Talou, Andrea Schneider, Nicolas Henchoz

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As cultural institutions digitize their archives, they become more accessible and versatile. However, there are significant economic and environmental costs to maintaining large databases over time. Synthetic DNA is an emerging technology that can store data at high density, with almost no energy, for thousands of years. Yet, as technical advances bring DNA storage closer to everyday use, little has been done to understand how we will interact with the technology and accept it into society. We developed an integrated prospective design approach to investigate these challenges. This included participative workshops, narrative building and the design of three tangible DNA …

Deep Products Via Undisciplined Stewardship: Towards An Environmentally-Led Design Pedagogy For The 21st Century, Fernando Galdon, Ashley Hall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers are envisioning new typologies of products aiming for instance to ex-tract CO2 from the environment or creating products from landfill waste, in this context a fundamental question arises; what could be a philosophical framework for a subtractive practise in design? In this paper the notion of Deep Products is introduced by building from notions of Deep ecology, Deep Design, and steward-ship. This theoretical proposition addresses the design of products from a life-cycle perspective through contemporary notions of subtraction-by-design. The model presented transitions design to a model demanding extended projects considering every aspect of the life-cycle of products, from inception …

From Wine Tasting To Materials Sensorial Perception: A Framework For Materials Experience, Niki Boukouvala, Spyros Bofylatos

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper puts forward a novel approach to study material experience leaning on the wine tasting protocols. The framework proposed in this paper aims to help new (biofabricated and non-biofabricated) "growing" and "living" materials make a good name out of themselves by deploying all their unique sensorial qualities in a more poetic manner. We believe that adopting wine tasting philosophy and techniques in the field of (aesthetic) materials experience and the synthesis of a materials experience lexicon will enable the commercialization process of new materials. We identify three layers of the material experience and point to how adapting the wine …

Designing Digital Health For Hip Osteoarthritis Self-Care In Brazil: A Study On Patients’ Socioeconomic Profile And Media Preferences, Sara Goldchmit, Katarina Tsuzuki, Marcelo Queiroz, Nayra Rabelo, Walter Ricioli Junior, Giancarlo Polesello

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Digital health has a great potential to promote predictive, personalised, preventive, and participatory care while also reducing in-person visits to medical services. Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent joint disorder and a leading cause of disabilities worldwide. Health literacy is crucial to cope with pain and mobility limitations. However, in the Brazilian context, trusty information about OA is scarce, inadequate, or non-existent in the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS). Knowing the audience is decisive in designing digital health solutions. This study aimed to collect data on SUS patients' socioeconomic status and media preferences. The results of 52 participants show the …

Identifying Problem Frames In Design Conversation, Senthil Chandrasegaran, Peter Lloyd, Almila Akdag Salah

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design thinking concepts such as framing, storytelling, and co-evolution, have been widely identified as part of design activity though generally have been evidenced from manual coding of design conversations and close reading of transcripts. The increase in easy-to-use computational linguistic methodologies provides an opportunity not only to validate these concepts, but compare them to other kinds of activity in large datasets. However, the process of systematically identifying such concepts in design conversation is not straightforward. In this paper we explore methods of linguistic analysis for revealing problem frames within design process transcripts. We find that frames can be identified through …

Constructing A Critical Anthropology Of Contemporary Design Practices, Jocelyn Bailey

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper articulates a critical approach to researching design as a contemporary phenomenon that was developed through my doctoral research. The approach - critical anthropology of design - is a combination of anthropology of design, critical strategies borrowed from other fields, and a ‘Foucauldian’ theoretical toolkit, which together allow us to see design as a complex disciplinary apparatus. I advocate for such an approach – a switching of the disciplinary lens when studying design, and a more sceptical engagement between social disciplines and design – as essential for both robust critique and original insight. Such an approach is productive and …

Arabic Type In Urban Environments: A Graphic Heritage, Shaima Elbardawil

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Graphic design as a cultural object can contribute to the design of heritage in various ways. This study investigates the meaning of heritage and graphic design in relation to culture and communication. It discusses cultural heritage in Arab states with reference to Arabic type and introduces Naskh-style typefaces in wayfinding systems and signage as a graphic urban heritage. This is done using a framework for analyzing urban graphic heritage alongside empirical field study from the United Arab Emirates and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The study reveals that graphic design provides a unique framework toward understanding the role of typographic …

Fuzzy Logic Evaluation Of Customer Loyalty In Local, Community, And International Cafes In Hong Kong, Bharati Das, Sylvia Xihui Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

It is a company’s paramount goal to achieve customer loyalty and expand its business. The effectiveness of these business strategies is relative to customer loyalty which is often pursued through a binary approach. This paper primarily focuses on a non-binary approach using Mamdani Fuzzy logic to measure customer loyalty and compares the outcomes with a binary approach. Also, the customer loyalty factors, including repeat patronage and relative attitude, are explored. Further, a comparison of loyalty towards various cafe categories in Hong Kong is presented. Customer Loyalty Matrix has been used to classify the above cafes based on the loyalty factors. …

Musings On Vocabulary Choices When Proposing Design Towards Profound Systems Change, Gwendolyn Kulick

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The search for an imaginative vocabulary that encourages mind and behaviour shifts is not an easy task in processes of formulating design trajectories towards profound systems change. At the same time many design concerns are embedded in larger ecological, social, economical or political systemic crises and call for generating systems change across multiple dimensions. A prolonged terminology search when describing the theoretical and practical results of a PhD research into Pakistan’s craft sector through the systems lens triggered the interest in penning this paper about the entanglements of language and expanded design horizons and methods. While it can only offer …

Material Metaphors: An Approach To Collaborative Knowledge Production In Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research, Daniela Peukert

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The integration of different forms of knowing and bodies of knowledge, as well as collaborative forms of knowledge production, seems particularly significant for the core of scientific work and in inter- and transdisciplinary processes in sustainability research. Nevertheless, collaborative knowledge production in heterogeneous teams brings up specific challenges. This is where existing methods for group negotiation processes, strongly based on language and text, reach their limits. To fill this gap, design-based methods can be used. They expand the mode of language and text to include the visual-haptic dimension, which allows access to other levels of thinking as it appeals to …

Ultrametrics And Complete Multipartite Graphs, Viktoriia Viktorivna Bilet, Oleksiy Dovgoshey, Yuriy Nikitovich Kononov

Theory & Applications of Graphs

Let (X, d) be a semimetric space and let G be a graph. We say that G is the diametrical graph of (X, d) if X is the vertex set of G and the adjacency of vertices x and y is equivalent to the equality diam X = d(x, y). It is shown that a semimetric space (X, d) with diameter d* is ultrametric if the diametrical graph of (X, d _ε) with d _ε (x, y) = min{d(x, y), ε} is complete multipartite for every ε ∈ (0, d* …

Efficacy Of Early Childhood Education Social Emotional Curricula That Include Sensory Integration Strategies, Ana Schmid

Graduate Teacher Education

The primary concentration at any early learning center must be the promotion of healthy development and learning in a safe and nurturing environment. Research has shown that in order for educators to meet criterion standards for healthy and safe learning environments, ongoing evaluation and assessment of teaching strategies that target the child’s development are needed.

Further, if there is any one area to be emphasized over any other as holding paramount importance or influence in early learning, it must be identified and fully supported (Nix, et al., 2016). Research now points early childhood practitioners toward intensive focus on social/emotional development, …

How Can A Play-Based Curriculum Foster Social And Emotional Self-Regulation Skills In Early Childhood Classrooms?, Kalei Stephens

Graduate Teacher Education

Play is an essential aspect in the early childhood years, especially during the years of preschool and kindergarten when children’s social and emotional skills are developing rapidly (Denham et al., 2012; Kangas et al., 2015; Kroll, 2017). Even though play is an essential part, allowing children to partake in pretend play during school hours has decreased tremendously due to the push of academics within the school (Aras, 2015). With the rising importance of play as part of the curriculum, there have been previous studies and research explaining the why and the benefits of play and how play has allowed children …

The Impact Of A Pilot Virtual Synchronous Group-Based E3 Parent Education: A Qualitative Study, Yu Jiang

Graduate Teacher Education

This study evaluated the accessibility and effectiveness of a pilot virtual synchronous group-based E³ Parent Education (E³PE) program initiated in Whitefish, Montana, in January 2021. It is a qualitative study of a model designed initially for a virtual live group-learning setting to empower parents in building a nourishing family environment. Parent education has been proven as an effective intervention and prevention of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and K-12 student mental health problems and behavioral issues. However, a lack of universal access and the busyness of parents are significant barriers to participation. The Literature Review showed rapid …

Diversity And Multi-Cultural Education In The 21st Century: An Oer / Coil / Ztc Course Text, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

CLDV100 (Liberal Arts) Introduction to Multicultural Studies in the 21st Century: 3 hrs. 3 crs.

A study of what culture is; how it influences the choices we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working/living situations with people of diverse cultures. It is a course structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students' social skills in dealing with cultural differences. It includes an ethnographic study of cultural groups in the U.S.A. Through the study of cultural concepts, this course develops skills in critical thinking, writing, and scholarly documentation. Not open to students with credit in CLDV …

Secrets And Watchers: A Markan Demonology, Christopher W. Peters

Liberty Theological Review

Mark’s use of a secrecy motif is well known to commentators. This article explores the messianic secret by analyzing its most common violators, the demons of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s various exorcism accounts function to provide a working demonology of the Evangelist, and this biblical theology is correlated with other extant Second Temple Period Jewish literature, primarily 1 Enoch and its Watchers tradition. Mark relies upon both Leviticus and the Book of Watchers to describe the function and identity of demons, explaining their own supernatural knowledge of the identity of Christ, knowledge which necessitates his commands to keep silent. …