Design and the Creation of Social Value

Just as the term design has been going through change, growth and expansion of meaning, and interpretation in practice and education – the same can be said for design research. The traditional boundaries of design are dissolving and connections are being established with other fields at an exponential rate. Based on the proceedings from the IASDR 2017 Conference, Re:Research is an edited collection that showcases a curated selection of 83 papers – just over half of the works presented at the conference. With topics ranging from the introduction of design in the primary education sector to designing information for Artificial Intelligence systems, this book collection demonstrates the diverse perspectives of design and design research. Divided into seven thematic volumes, this collection maps out where the field of design research is now.

Understanding Everyday Design

•       Soyoung Kim, Kwangmin Cho, Chajoong Kim

The more society gets complicated and developed, the more demand for various products. As a result, we are living in a flood of various products. However, considering how people consume and use products in their daily life, it is not difficult to find people transforming, changing the original purpose or adding value to existing products instead of buying new ones. This phenomenon has been defined as everyday design. In a sense that everyday design provides a better understanding of actual uses in real context, it deserves to be studied. Therefore, this paper attempts to figure out an underlying mechanism of everyday design. For this, a conceptual framework was developed, whose focus was on what triggers everyday design, what goals are set and how a product is transformed. The conceptual framework was validated with a photographic inventory of users’ everyday design in our daily life. The conceptual framework could provide a better understanding of everyday design in a systematic way. If it is considered in the product development process, it could contribute to an increase of use satisfaction as well as sustainable design. The limitations and a further study are discussed at the end of the paper.

Social Value Creation through Multidisciplinary Design Education

•       Steven Kyffin, Mersha Aftab, Nicholas Spencer

The paper proposes that design with a multidisciplinary student cohort as active partners can play the...read more...