Design Labels: The Words that Divide & Unite Us

"This paper explores the limitations and functions of design labels, such as social design, codesign, and sustainable design. It argues for a clearer and more nuanced approach to describing design practices. The authors collected over seventy of such labels and categorized them into five clusters. Four of these clusters derive their name from a...

How to include the sociocultural context in food design: Insights, tools and strategies

Designers hope that their innovations will be adopted by the people they are designed for. How well their designs align with consumers’ cultural contexts is a key determinant of whether they are accepted or rejected. This is especially<br/>important for food solutions, as eating habits are deeply rooted in local cultures. However, academic...

Designing interactive storytelling to reduce obesity stigma

Unmasking biases in design education

This paper presents two master graduation design projects that address unconscious biases (UB) in the context of design education related to two topics: gender and skin colour. In addition to their sensitivity to exclusion and injustice, two design students brought in their analytical, design research and creativity skills to find solutions...

Remote co-development of a design education toolkit for children rural Kenya

Innovating a Large Design Education Program at a University of Technology

Over the last half century, design education has diversified and developed considerably, in part in the arts academies, and increasingly in universities and vocational technical education. The TU Delft design program was founded in 1969, and has since grown quickly into a large, university-based, technology-aligned set of programs presently...

Cultura: A communication toolkit for designers to gain empathic insights across cultural boundaries

Designing successful products and services that people like, requires an understanding of the context and the aspirations of those people. Over the past decade, a range of methods has been developed to help designers gain such empathy. These have worked well when designer and target user share a cultural context. However, designers often find it...

Generative Research Techniques Crossing Cultures: A Field Study in China

The value of understanding user needs has been recognized by industry, and user research methods have become an accepted part of industrial design practice. These techniques were originally developed and tested for Western markets, with participants from Western cultures. More recently, companies developing goods and services for the Chinese...

Crossing Cultural Chasms: Towards a culture-conscious approach to design

This thesis concerns specifically the discipline of product design, and the main question is how can designers be supported in understanding the culture of their intended users. The reason for this study is that designers are experiencing difficulties and uncertainties with regard to their intended users, as these users live in cultures with...

From BoP to ToP and vice versa daily practices in settings with limited resources to inspire designers

This paper reviews the methods and practices that reflect subconscious behaviours of people in daily lives. Cases, studied for this paper, show how practices of people living in poor settings, who are members of the base of the economic pyramid, contribute to designers, belonging to the top of the economic pyramid, in designing better products...

Cultural study in design: In search of a meaningful approach

Does the Circuit of Culture help design students to do a cultural study that is meaningful for their design project? Indeed, it provides a good view on the phenomenon culture, its complexity and how contemporary cultures can be studied, providing an overview and structure of the processes that influence cultural change. However, there are...

Motivation to self-report: Capturing user experiences in field studies

Socio-cultural dimensions to sharpen designer's cultural eyeglasses

This paper answers the question, how the dimensions that have been developed by anthropologists to typify cultures, can support designers in user-centred design processes. An analysis and evaluation of the use of cultural dimensions in design projects was performed. Although many of the dimensions found in the literature appear relevant for...

Designers coping with culture in an educational setting

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study about how design students cope with culture in the i-do (international design opportunity) series of international design workshops in Hong Kong. We wanted to learn three things. (1) To what extent do the design students from different nations share common cultural values? (2) what...

Persuasion for a Healthier Life: Persuasive Technology Design Guidelines from the Precious Project for Indian diabetics

Health behaviour change is a key issue in India and especially for reducing diabetes related risks. But the issue is confined neither to diabetes nor to India. After the proliferation of personal digital devices and widespread internet access, persuasion for behaviour change has taken new forms. In this paper we propose 8 design guidelines for...

Incubator

The invention relates to an incubator comprising a support and, mounted on the support, a patient-receiving unit provided with a cover, the cover being provided with means such as access openings for treating a patient, and wherein the patient-receiving unit is coupled with a heating element and/or a humidifying element via a conduit or conduits...