Skip to Main Content

Collaboration

  • Isabel Prochner posted an article
    The DRS recently joined the College Art Association (CAA) as an affiliated society see more

    DRS Affiliation with the College Art Association

    The DRS recently joined the College Art Association (CAA) as an affiliated society. The CAA is an international art and design association based in the USA. They hold an annual conference in addition to other work including professional development support and advocacy.

    The CAA has opportunities to get involved in their association. They’re inviting nominations and self-nominations to serve on award juries. There are multiple positions for jury members for awards of distinction, publication grants, fellowships and travel grants. Nominations close at the end of the month on 31 July.

    The CAA also has open seats for committee members on topics including design, women in the arts and education. The CAA Professional Committees work on topics of special concern for the association and serve 3-year terms. Self-nominations are due 31 August.

    Contact DRS Administrator Linda Anderson (admin@designresearchsociety.org) for more information about DRS affiliations.

  • Isabel Prochner posted an article
    Conference theme: ‘knowing together – experiential knowledge and collaboration’ see more

    Conference Report: EKSIG 2019

    EKSIG 2019 was the international conference of the DRS Special Interest Group on Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG). The event took place 23–24 September 2019 at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia. With the theme ‘knowing together – experiential knowledge and collaboration,’ the conference explored collaborative knowledge generation by professionals and academic researchers in the creative disciplines and beyond.

    The aim of the conference was to understand how individual experiential knowledge/knowledge gained by practice is shared; how collective experiential knowledge is accumulated/communicated in/through collaboration; and how experiential knowledge is embodied in outputs and can be traced back to practice. The conference also highlighted making as 'action of change': matter is transformed by a collaborative team and their material/non-material environments.

    Top left: Keynote presenter Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa delivering his talk ‘Embodied and Empathic Knowledge – intuiting experience and life in architecture’ | Above centre: Participants interacting with an interactive play mat at a conference exhibition. Photos: Kristiine Špongolts.

    The conference received great international response with submissions from researchers across four continents. Papers were interdisciplinary and came from fields including architecture, behavioural science, ceramics, culinary art, design engineering, digital craft, education, fashion and HCI.

    Accepted submissions were organised around five strands: 

    • Handmade and digital crafts in collaboration
    • Making as action of change
    • Collaboration toward sustainability
    • Multi-stakeholder collaboration
    • Collaboration and knowledge transfer

    Above centre: Audience at presentations on handmade and digital crafts in collaboration. Photo: Kristiine Špongolts.

    In addition to paper presentations, the conference had keynotes by Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa and Prof. Ron Wakkary, a workshop, and an exhibition featuring artefacts created in dialogue with papers presented at the conference.

    Discussions among the conference delegates were very stimulating. The small scale of the conference (40 participants) created an informal and friendly environment that invited delegates to fully engage themselves in discussions. One of the most interesting conversations was about the generation/transfer of experiential knowledge in collaborative practices that extend collaboration to non-humans (i.e. materials, machines, matter and environment).

    The post-conference publication will be a special issue of CoDesign to be published in 2020.

     

    Author

    Nithikul Nimkulrat, Conference Chair and EKSIG Convenor; Associate Professor, OCAD University, Canada

     December 03, 2019
  • Isabel Prochner posted an article
    The SID is an annual event led by leading design research universities in Chile see more

    Review of the Seminario de Investigación en Diseño in Chile

    The SID - Seminario de Investigación en Diseño (trans. Design Research Seminar) - is an annual event led by leading design research universities in Chile. The 2018 event took place November 20th and 21st at the newly inaugurated theatre of Biobío in the city of Concepción. The seminar explored topics including healthcare, sustainability, design education, design for public services and design heritage. These diverse topics offered a rich opportunity to discuss the state of design at national and international levels. The seminar also demonstrated growing academic interest in design research and the diverse needs of the Chilean society, which can be addressed by interdisciplinary research projects.

    My research team at  Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) presented the project: "Designing an intuitive interface to enhance trigonometry learning.” We worked with the School of Engineering to develop an intuitive and non-traditional pedagogical approach.

    We greatly enjoyed the keynote by Dr. Helena Aguilar from the Centre of Nanotechnology and Smart Materials (CeNTI) in Portugal. She spoke about an inspiring project on smart windows, which showed how design, technology and sustainability can produce beautiful, efficient and innovative solutions to improve human lives. The seminar also provided the opportunity to learn about top design publications in Chile like DISEÑA, REVISTA CHILENA DE DISEÑO and BASE DISEÑO E INNOVACIÓN.

    Design research in Chile is developing fast and moving beyond our borders. Although Chile is geographically isolated, Chilean designers and design researchers work in constant collaboration with international partners. We reach global audiences and communicate Chilean design values to the rest of the world. Our next step is to invite the international design research community to Chile and Latin America. We are quickly working toward that dream!

     

    Author

    Catalina Cortés, Instructor and Researcher, Design School, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile

     April 01, 2019
  • Derek Jones posted an article
    Future DRS see more

    Future DRS

    As announced in the May DRS Member's Newsletter, a DRS Special Session will be held at the 2018 DRS Conference in Limerick. This will take place on the last day of conference - Thursday 28 June, 12:45 - 14:00 in room KBG12. All DRS Members are invited to attend this session, where Council will report to members and begin discussion on the future of the DRS.

    To be an international and representative community committed to promoting and developing design research, DRS Council believes the Society needs to engage in a more interactive and participatory way in setting future directions. However, the challenges in achieving this in contemporary contexts need to be recognised. As a starting point we propose to focus on four themes and conversations that will begin at the Special General Meeting.

    So please come to this Special Meeting and help influence the future direction of the Society! If you're not coming to Conference (and even if you are), we encourage you to give us feedback directly using the online form.

    Future DRS Feedback Form

    You can also comment on the Future of DRS discussion Forum or email us directly: admin@designresearchsociety.org

    Look out for further opportunities to engage during conference by following us on Twitter.

  • Derek Jones posted an article
    DRS Attends Design Declaration Summit meeting see more

    DRS Attends Design Declaration Summit, April 2019

    The DRS attended the second Design Declaration Summit in St. Étienne, 2-5 April 2019. International delegates from a diverse range of design related organisations were represented, including the UK Design Council, the national Danish Design Centre, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, Architecture Sans Frontières, as well as a number of Universities and design schools.

    This was technically the pre-summit which arranged a series of activities in preparation for the full summit, planned for 2021. These activities centred around three workstreams:

    • Establishing metrics and collecting data and case studies to more effectively communicate the value of design
    • Supporting development of National and Regional Design Policies
    • Fostering development, recognition, support and funding for design education and research, including development of new formats for design education curricula.

    It was felt by the DRS Council that the Summit was an important event to attend - not simply because the Society was one of 18 original signatories to the original Declaration, but also to ensure that design research and design researchers in particular were represented. It turned out that this was an important opportunity to do so.

    Presentations in each workstream demonstrated the breadth of global activity that relies on, or is affected by, design. At this scale, the synergies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals were noted by a number of presenters. The values in the original Declaration were referred to regularly, albeit with only a few delegates noting just how difficult it is to confront the practical reality of ethics in design.

     

     

    The range of discussion within each workstream attempted to identify practical progress that could be made prior to the main summit in 2021. This is, as anyone who has hosted such an event will know, the hard part - talking and  agreeing on matters is one thing but translating this to tangible action is quite another. The DRS, with a few other organisations, called for a design prototyping approach to elicit outputs and act as a catalyst to make progress. We await the outputs from the Pre-Summit and will share these with members as soon as they are available. 

    The DRS was represented at the second Design Declaration Summit by Peter Lloyd, Acting Chair, and Derek Jones, Communications Officer and acting PedSIG representative.

    The Design Declaration Summit website can be found here: http://www.designdeclaration.org/

     April 18, 2019
  • Isabel Prochner posted an article
    The DRS website will feature articles, event notices and job postings in their original language see more

    Moving Toward a Multilingual DRS Website

    Starting from now, the DRS website will feature articles, event notices and job postings in their original language. We’ll also include an automatically generated English translation at the end of each post. This change is part of the process of developing our international presence and our commitment to supporting the global design research community.

    Contact Isabel (editor@designresearchsociety.org) if you have news to share through the DRS online or have suggestions for the new DRS! 

     

     October 30, 2018
  • Isabel Prochner posted an article
    Invitation to the 2018 Latin American Design Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina see more

    The Latin American Design Meeting: A Space for Regional Conversations and Networking in Design

    The Latin American Design Meeting is a popular and important event for Latin American design and design research communities. It’s a free annual event hosted by the Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina that attracts approximately 400 presenters and 5000 visitors each year.

    Violeta Szeps, general coordinator of the meetings, explained that the event focuses on “everything that matters to designers.” This includes design thinking and new digital technologies, as well as regionally specific topics like Latin American craft traditions and business and economics for local designers. It also takes place in parallel to other events including a design education conference that attracts design educators and researchers from across the region.

    These annual meetings play an important role by creating new networks and fostering local design collaborations. They also support Latin American design communities by encouraging entrepreneurship and providing a space for local conversations, taking place in Spanish and Portuguese.

    Although a regional design meeting, designers and design researchers from around the world are encouraged to attend. This year’s event takes place from July 30-August 3, 2018. You can see publications from past meetings online at http://fido.palermo.edu/servicios_dyc/encuentro2008/05_publicaciones/publicaciones_encuentro.html

      

     March 16, 2018
  • Derek Jones posted an article
    Date announced for AHRC Global Engagement Meetings see more

    The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK has announced dates for their International Global Engagement Meetings.

    The aim of these large scale events is to showcase the opportunities available through the [Global Challenges Research Fund] GCRF; to bring together developing country and UK researchers and representatives from other organisations to forge networks; and to discuss opportunities for maximising the contribution of GCRF research into policy and practice.

    The Meetings will be held on the following dates and locations:

        Colombia (Bogota) Wednesday 4th-Friday 6th October 2017
        India (Delhi) Tuesday 7th-Thursday 9th November 2017
        South Africa (Pretoria) Tuesday 5th-Wednesday 6th December 2017

    The AHRC, UK remains focused on supporting greater design research community involvement and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) may be relevant to members of the DRS interested in international collaboration.

    Full details are available on the AHRC website: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/newsevents/news/international-global-engagement-meetings-colombia-india-and-south-africa/