The impact of data on the role of designers and their process

The impact of data on the role of designers and their process

Lu, Jiahao (Student TU Delft)
Gomez Ortega, A. (TU Delft Internet of Things)
Gonçalves, M. (TU Delft Methodologie en Organisatie van Design)
Bourgeois, J. (TU Delft Internet of Things)

2021

With the advance of the Internet and the Internet of Things, an abundance of 'big' data becomes available. Data science can be incorporated in design, which brings forward various opportunities for designers to benefit from this new material. However, the designer's perspective and their role remains unclear. How do they think about and approach data? What do they want to achieve with this data? What do they need to take ownership of designing with data? In this paper we take a design perspective to map the opportunities and challenges of leveraging large data-sets as part of the design process. We rely on a survey with 75 participants across a Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and in-depth reflective interviews with a subset of 9 participants. We discuss the impact of data on the roles designers can adopt as well as an approach to designing with data. This work aims to inform on educational support, data literacy and tools needed for designers to take advantage of this new era of design digitalisation.

Big data
Data literacy
Design education
Design process
Designers' roles

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e7ace41d-03d3-4d41-ae35-4e61f4598f89

https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.563

Proceedings of the Design Society, 1, 3021-3030

23rd International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2021, 2021-08-16 → 2021-08-20, Gothenburg, Sweden

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2021 Jiahao Lu, A. Gomez Ortega, M. Gonçalves, J. Bourgeois