How design professionals learn within collaborative research projects

Collaborative research projects are great opportunities for the involved design professionals to learn. Many design professionals join in such collaborations to contribute with their existing professional expertise, but also to further develop and extend that expertise. However, learning by individuals is usually not the main aim, and we lack...

Design capability when visioning for transitions: A case study of a new food system

In recent years, more designers have been engaging in transitions, for which design expertise is used to develop visions of long-term desirable futures. However, little is known about how design expertise is positioned in transition visioning processes. In this case study, we follow a design agency in envisioning a future food system for a...

Visualising and reverging: Understanding the intersection between creativity and visual thinking

We investigate reverging - the phase between the diverging and converging steps in a creative process - in the context of a visual thinking agency. Creative facilitation literature advocates for such a phase, aimed at revisiting and rearranging ideas generated during diverging, to prepare for converging. However, in practice this step is...

Exploring health and design evidence practices in eHealth systems’ development

Evidence-based practices play an essential role in the development of eHealth systems. Prior research has investigated the challenge of shared understanding between professionals from the fields of health sciences and design and has highlighted the need for effective alignment of development and research practices in eHealth. However, there is a...

What makes design research more useful for design professionals?: An exploration of the research-practice gap

Academic design research has developed a rich collection of knowledge and tools, but often the results fail to land in design practice. We conducted an interview series with experienced design professionals to study how the knowledge that they derived from research projects was of use to them. They used tools, papers, books, and their own...

Making design research relevant for design practice: What is in the way?

Knowledge from academic design research projects does not always help design professionals to actually strengthen their work. Based on a multi-case study, this paper describes how researchers view the impact of their design research projects on design practice and what they do to achieve this. Even in projects where impact on design practice...

Between attraction and aversion: How designers can use the concept of disgust to influence food consumption

Disgust is a strong emotion of aversion. In the context of food, it is often referred to as a guardian of the mouth, preventing close contact with pathogens and the accidental consumption of poisons. However, disgust can also create a certain level of attraction and be part of positive experiences, even in the context of food. In this article,...

Concept for a persona driven recommendation tool for process modelling approaches

In order to ensure successful product development processes, manifold modelling approaches have been developed, which cover a wide range of aspects such as responsibilities, duration of activities and dependencies. Still, an industry standard does not exist. Users of process modelling approaches are driven by different targets depending on the...

Drivers of usability in product design practice: Induction of a framework through a case study of three product development projects

In a case study of the development of three electronic consumer products, we traced the origins of usability issues. Based on the data collected, an initial, explanatory framework was induced of important drivers of usability in product design. We conclude that – while usability methods mostly focus on gaining knowledge about users and...

An inventory of creative spaces: Innovative organizations and their workspace

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and...

Design requirements to educate and facilitate junior design professionals to reflect more effectively on critical situations and conflicts at work

Junior designers are not trained to cope with critical situations and conflict at work. Most design schools do not educate their design students to prepare them for (potential) conflict. As a result, junior designers often do not have conflict-handling skills to handle critical situations and conflicts. While some tools and methods exist to...

Generating value across academic and professional design practice in the Internet of Things

This article accounts for how value in design research can be derived from knowledge exchange that occurs through the collaborative discourse of doing design. To demonstrate this point, the article details the arc and impact of a design research collaboration that extended over several years with design practitioners in the field of internet...

Taking a look at the utilisation of function models in interdisciplinary design: Insights from ten engineering companies

Interdisciplinary system development requires the integration of diverse expertise to combine different engineering technologies and—increasingly often—services, in order to provide users with expected value and desired functionality in newly developed products. Failure to achieve integration of disciplines can result in design errors posing a...