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On the 11th of February 2012  the 14th World Information Architecture Day will be organised. THe World IA Day wants to focus on the importance of information architecture and tries to bring together a community of interested at the same day throughout the world.  This years theme is on Designing Structures for Understanding and focusses on global conversations on this subject and provide a local venue to connect with leaders and peers. At 14 locations in the world people will come together discuss and exchange ideas on approaching complex information challenges.

Former C-md student Hannes d’Hulster, working for the Ghent based webcompany Netlash-B-seen, is co-organising a Belgian event. More info on this can be found at http://informatiearchitectuur.be/.

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.

In early ‘2011, the Media and Design faculty in Genk participated in the exhibition Alter Nature, where works from around twenty international artists explored how humankind manipulates nature. We got to know what synthetic biology is and how much more manipulative ‘design’ can be in this field. We also learned that as media designer or artist one can imagine and visualize a future with synthetic biology, which makes it interesting to collaborate with scientists. When me, (media) designer and a (graphic) designer where asked by our design school (MAD Faculty) to join the iGEM competition – a competition between universities on the topic of synthetic biology – we took advantage of this unique opportunity. Between June and November 2011 we collaborated with bioengineers and biomedical science students. In iGEM, teams make or use existing biological parts to build biological systems and operate them in living cells(1). For instance, a student team could be designing a microbe that detects toxic chemicals and outputs a corresponding color.

On the 9th of December 2011 a one day conference – hosted by V2 in Rotterdam – will aggregate developments and focus on the issue: “What are the consequences for our home-environment with regard to the Internet of Things?”

More information can be found here

Social Cities of Tomorrow, a conference and workshop on new media and urbanism is organised by The Mobile City, Virtueel Platform and ARCAM. The conference will take place on 17 February 2012 in the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. Several keynote speakers such as Usman Haque and Natalie Jeremijenko will speak about the promises and challenges in this newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of urban design. T

They are currently welcoming proposals in the fields of urban design interventions, projects by housing corporations, media artists, citizen initiatives, technology companies, or others.

Deadline for proposals: 15 December 2011

For more information, consult the conference website.