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The 8th International Conference on Design and Emotion, with the theme ‘Out Of Control‘, will be organised in Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, London (UK) on the 11th-14th September 2012. The conference is a forum held where practitioners, academics and industry meet and exchange knowledge and insights concerning the cross-disciplinary field of design and emotion.

Currently, the organising committee is looking for researchers, academics and practitioners to submit proposals for the papers, case studies, workshops & masterclasses on various themes.

For more information and deadlines, consult the conference website.

Last week I (Ben Hagenaars) followed a thought provoking lecture by Bas Raijmakers at the FAK in Brussels. He is the co-founder of design research agency STBY in Amsterdam & London. He explained his view on what it means to be doing design research. A very interesting topic considering I started my own PhD in design research this year. I have tried to capture his presentation in some sketch-notes.

Bas started by explaining his background. He did a master in Communication Sciences at the University of Amsterdam where he developed his fascination for how people use media & technology. During his Masters he learned about usability research but wanted to go step further. He wanted to experiment with involving the user in the design and research process. This was the starting point for his PhD at the Royal College of Art in London, where he developed his ‘Design Documentaries’ method. This method took the form of a visual storytelling format that brings the everyday life of people into the design process, allowing it to act as a source of inspiration for designers. This method is often used by his design research firm STBY. For example, in a project commissioned by Panasonic called Living Sustainably, STBY researched how people in the US can live a sustainable lifestyle. This isn’t a question they could answer right away. They first had to understand peoples lifestyles and needs. By creating a series of design documentaries, they were able to create videos that communicated a range of intimate insights into their lives and opinions, telling their stories in a way that could both inform and inspire. STBY helped Panasonic to incorporate these insights into their future concept developments and business model development.

Design documentaries start from the idea that understanding is the first step in creating meaningful solutions that could enrich peoples lifestyles. Also, they make things visual, which helps people to understand. Empathy is an important skill in this context, the ability to put yourself in someone else his or her shoes, which really helps to open up to personal experiences that help you understand that persons needs.

Bas focused on the importance of making things visual for designers and artists in a research context. It is a way to express and share their knowledge. It allows not only peers but also people in other disciplines to interpret this knowledge and create new insights. Making an original contribution to knowledge then creates an ongoing debate that pushes interdisciplinary development forward.  Bas pointed out that working in between fields will become increasingly important. Several problems that our society is faced with today, are too complex to be solved within one disciplinary field.

Research through design  is a way of creating new meaning by visual storytelling. This vision raises interesting questions about the role of the designer in society. Should designers limit themselves as the makers of objects, or can they also adopt a new role as the makers of meaning? I think, as Liesbeth Huybrechts pointed out in her Thesis, designers can become makers of hybrid things, creating both objects and meaning.

After a year of research and development, Usewell, the user-centred design roadmap, tool and website was launched with a workshop at the e-culturefair on the 17th of November. The workshop itself consisted of  an introduction into the research carried out during the develpment of the project, followed by two real world UCD method case-studies presented by Usewell partners, Bert Paepen from Pyxima and Mathy Vanbeul from ATiT.

In its online form, the Usewell tool offers visitors the chance to shuffle through cards, looking for challenges their organisation is currently facing, ranging from issues around innovation to problems with existing websites, in turn, these challenges are linked with user-centred design methods which, when carried out, can lead to insight/solutions to the challenge at hand. The 15 Usewell methods; Brainstorming, Card Sorting, Checklist Review, Context Mapping, Customer Journey Map, Diary, Focus Groups, Interviews, Mapping, Personas, Prototyping, Scenarios, Shadowing, Task Analysis and User Experience Test, were selected based on their accessibility, contribution and relevance to organisations and small businesses looking to learn more about their user-based, innovate on existing services or make changes to existing products or services.

As a project, Usewell offers an easy, quick and easy way to match method to challenge. There already exists many roadmaps, toolkits, books and websites which offer many takes on user-centred design methods, but few offer users a clear means on how to prepare, execute and analyse the results. Over the coming years, Usewell intends to add further methods, casestudies and tips/tricks from users,educators and those trying these methods out for the first time.

Following the presentation of the case-studies, the Usewell workshop worked with an off-line version of the Usewell cards. This offline, tangible card-set mirrors the content online but is a tool that mediates discussion in small groups. Each small group was moderated by a Usewell partner and the participants ranged from small-business owners, people from cultural institutions to teachers in higher education. The feedback from the session confirmed the intent of Usewell, to make a clear relationship between the real issues faced and suggestion of method and to make these methods accessible.

For more information, visit: http://www.usewell.be
Download the cards, guide and worksheets: http://www.usewell.be/#/methods/

Eutropolis – imagine a city is an initiative of the SocialBeta Foundation in co-creation with NEIMED, Maurer United Architects and several other partners.

We challenge designers, urbanists, photographers, researchers and other disciplines to imagine a city called Eutropolis. Share with us your idea or dream about Eutropolis and it’s future. Your contribution might be a graphic design, an essay, a poem, a photoshoot or an artwork.

Want to contribute?

Send your proposal no later than 15th of December to eutropolis@ibeta.eu.
The publication will be spread throughout Eutropolis with your work included. Also, you’ll be our guest at the TEDxEutropolis conference on the 4th of February 2012 in Hasselt (B).

The ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) welcomes submissions (papers, workshops, demonstrations, …)  from a broad range of researchers and practitioners within the field of interactive systems design research and practice.

DIS 2012 encourages submissions that consider the following:

- Contexts: Places, people, communities, events, and phenomena
- Values: Experience, aesthetics, engagement, empowerment, health, wellbeing,
designing things that matter, sustainability, and diversity
- Processes: Methods tools and techniques for engaging people, researching
and designing, and co-designing interactive systems.
-Technologies: Sensors and actuators, mobile devices, multi touch and
touchless interaction, social media, personal, community, and public displays

For more information and deadlines, consult the conference website.