This paper offers a perspective on how design can respond to AI by framing current challenges within the broader historical context of design responses to machines. Tracing recurring tensions between technological advances and human agency in early Swedish industrial design, it explores the central role of "useful" things and tools in how design has historically addressed machine autonomy. Arguing that this aesthetic and conceptual foundation has reached its limits, the paper identifies new directions for design in relation to generative technologies and distributed agencies.
In contrast to most plastics, ambiently biodegradable (AB) plastics fully break down under natural conditions, avoiding microplastic pollution. This study takes a research-through-design approach to explore how we might use AB plastics in durable products that wear down, and how this affects their design. Through speculative design explorations of diverse cases, we developed a preliminary design framework that introduces a novel approach to integrating AB plastics into sustainable product design. Our study addresses the tension between the durability of products and the temporality of biodegradable plastics, which must break down under ambient conditions to prevent microplastic pollution. We explored the current limitations ofAB plastics, including their mechanical properties and the challenges they pose when used in real-world conditions. While the analysis is explorative and not exhaustive, our findings indicate thatAB plastics have the potential to serve as a viable solution for reducing microplastic pollution in applications where microplastic release is unavoidable. We also stress the importance of designing with circular design principles to ensure high-value recovery pathways are prioritized over biodegradation whenever possible. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for continued collaboration among product designers, material scientists, and biodegradation experts to further optimize the properties and applications ofAB plastics, suggesting that practical testing and case studies will be key to advancing their use in sustainable product design.
This article offers a disabled perspective on the ways in which AI systems (and their failures) are experienced by offering an account of living with a "smart" medical device for over ten years. By bringing together autoethnographic vignettes with transcribed data from machines and examples from crip making practice, the article illustrates the ways in which the body is rendered into both a hopeful and harmful testbed. The article proposes that the field of design take a "critical data studies" perspective to better understand the social consequences of technology.
Design and aesthetics have always been in a relationship with emerging technology and materials, as each advancement in technology offered and required new opportunities for design and aesthetics. In this piece I want to offer my perspective on how Artificial Intelligence and its technologies can relate to design and aesthetics. Through design exemplars, I will trace my own journey and aesthetic values across three previous waves of design aesthetics: appearance, interaction, and transformation, to arrive at a fourth wave of 'aesthetics of intelligence'. I will propose five principles that might help to offer an aesthetic compass for navigating these challenging times.
Nature paintings can provoke dynamic emotional experiences. However, their therapeutic potential beyond merely inducing positive emotions remains underexplored. Informed by the externalization technique from post-trauma therapy, we stimulate both negative and positive emotional experiences through visual engagement with nature paintings. Further, we investigate their potential in supporting healing, along with the influence of personal traits (imagination and resilience) and the severity of illness. Using 16 expert-curated paintings depicting distinctive emotions, we take a guided art therapy approach. Participants reflected on past illnesses and imagined healing journeys using negative and positive paintings of their choice, respectively. The result of an online experiment (n = 186) yielded significant mood enhancement (p < .05) after the guided art therapy, with the effect being significantly stronger in the lower resilience group (p < .05). Qualitative analysis revealed six themes that conceptualize individuals' traumatic experiences (e.g., confinement, inner chaos, and desperation) and seven themes for healing experiences (e.g., liberation, inner peace, and inner strength). The severity of illness influenced which of these themes were dominant in art-induced healing experiences. Integrating diverse pathways to healing, we introduce a conceptual framework and discuss design implications for creating personalized healing experiences.
This article presents a study exploring how designers consider and approach user or customer mood in real-world projects. Because explicit mood-focused practice is difficult to identify and often masked by overlapping terminology, we conducted retrospective interviews with twenty experienced practitioners across the field of experience design. While participants tended to conflate mood with other affective constructs, many had nevertheless incorporated it-directly or indirectly-into their work. From their accounts, we identified five approaches to addressing mood in design: treating it as (1) an end in itself, (2) a means to enhance engagement, (3) a means to enrich experience, (4) a means to create differentiation or advantage, and (5) a means to facilitate user research. These findings advance understanding of mood-focused design by highlighting practitioners' implicit engagement with mood and their pragmatic considerations, which extend beyond intrinsic well-being goals to instrumental, outcome-oriented goals. At the same time, we identified four categories of challenges practitioners face, three types of knowledge they regard as essential, and four obstacles that discourage them from bringing mood into practice or organizational contexts. Building on these insights, we outline research and educational opportunities to better support future mood-focused design practice.
This paper presents a social design method for controversy mapping called the Shape-shifter. Our method combines design techniques of material engagement and data physicalization through open prototyping with controversy analysis as developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS). It was designed to support the collaborative evaluation of AI & Society controversies, guided by the central question: how do we transition from the AI controversies we currently have to the AI controversies we need? The study engaged an extended community of AI and society experts in the UK through online consultations, interviews, and a participatory workshop in London, which drew 35 participants from academia, government, industry, advocacy, and the arts. The Shape-shifter method integrates three components: inventive indicators (relevance, participation, situatedness, power, solvability), open prototyping with simple materials, and participatory design principles. These were operationalized in a workshop activity where groups shaped and reshaped selected AI controversies using cardboard strips, plasticine, annotations, and facilitated discussion. Our analysis of the resulting controversy shapes shows how the method enables participants to diagnose existing controversies while imagining alternatives that open up more inclusive, situated, and accountable forms of problem definition. We conclude by reflecting on the Shape-shifter's contribution to linking participatory design with public deliberation and its potential for informing design, policy, and civic engagement with AI.
Multimorphic Textile-forms (MMTF) proposes a novel approach for creating seamless and sustainable textiles by simultaneously understanding both textile and form, which change over time across material, social, and ecological scales. MMTF capitalizes on textiles' ability to be situated in multiple contexts, i.e., multi-situatedness, for enriched experiences and prolonged user-textile engagements. In this paper, we delve into this under-explored potential of textiles' multiplicity by investigating the materials experience, particularly the performativity of an everyday MMTF artifact, AnimaTo. We designed AnimaTo to display morphing behavior when exposed to water over two sequential stages: shrinking and unfolding. Then, we deployed AnimaTo in a two-week longitudinal study, presenting it as an ordinary tea towel and encouraging users to interact as they wished, guided by its evolving shape, size, and texture. We collected in-depth accounts of materials experiences combining qualitative and quantitative methods. AnimaTo's morphing behavior generated curiosity, suggesting creative uses beyond the kitchen context. However, deviations from AnimaTo's initial state also caused frustration and interrupted use. We discuss the design implications of MMTF artifacts, emphasizing a critical balance between function, temporality, and materiality. This work advocates for embracing multiplicity in designing textile artifacts, generating value at use time, fostering sustained user-textile relationships, and ultimately contributing towards regenerative futures.
A plurality of knowledge systems remains unseen and unrecognized as invisible social structures that underpin lifestyles, life chances, and livelihoods of peoples. The legacy of imperialism and colonialism has suppressed, erased, and marginalized indigenous knowledge traditions and non-Western knowledge systems. A cultural interface between Western and non-Western knowledge systems is yet to be recognized as being instantiated during co-creation. We test a prototype of a sequential multi-phase inquiry protocol for user research to explore indigenous knowledge traditions of community preparedness for volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and introduce knowledge mapping. Knowledge mapping at the front-end of co-creation helps prepare, plan, and design interfaces for collaborations in conditions of epistemological plurality. A knowledge products map illustrates epistemic complexity of an indigenous co-creation interface. Knowledge mapping complements and enhances other service design methods such as stakeholder mapping, customer journeys, systems maps, etc. The protocol is designed to incorporate principles of indigenous research paradigms and a just and plural lens for inquiry to guide implementation of Western-theorized methods and tools. This methodological development considers entire knowledge systems as service design materials, with the aim to facilitate conditions for plural, just, and equitable co-creation.
Public organizations around the world are increasingly investing in their creative-purposive design capabilities. However, they often face difficulties in doing so and come to realize that this implies a fundamental organizational transformation. To date, knowledge about how such a transformation is realized remains limited. In this study, we conducted four focus groups and an in-depth case study of a Dutch municipality to explore how such a transformation comes about and how it can be fostered. We adopted a complexity perspective on organizational transformation, which enabled us to (1) gain a better understanding of how transformation unfolds in the complex reality of a public organization, (2) reveal how transformative work is continuously refined, and (3) how the engagement of public organizations with creative-purposive design evolves. Accordingly, this study contributes to both theory and practice of design-enabling transformation of public organizations.
Artificial Placenta and Artificial Womb (APAW) technologies are being developed to improve outcomes for extremely premature infants. Before such technology can be advanced to human trials, disparate challenges need to be addressed, spanning from technological issues that are addressed through functional prototypes to implementation challenges that require the definition of suitable procedures, as well as ethical issues for which public awareness and engagement are necessary. To involve future users and other stakeholders in the design process, we use a value-sensitive design approach. We advocate for an integrated approach that combines insights from the medical and technical fields with those from medical ethics, parent advocacy groups, and public opinion. Using a tripartite methodology, combining non-functional design prototypes, surveys, and (focus group) interviews, we collect a list of concerns, values, preferences, and design prerequisites. Values discussed included those related to safety, a nurturing environment, monitoring and intervention, parent-infant bonding, family-integrated care, and visceral aspects. Our results highlight how stakeholder involvement can make values more explicit and help formulate design requirements, as well as steer design processes. Our study demonstrates how applying a value-sensitive design process throughout APAW technology development enables stakeholder involvement to address implicit user needs, such as affective needs, early in the technology development.
Local shops are private sector entities that also play a social role within the community. Despite their importance in providing the community with social values, there have been few attempts to understand their creativity and resourcefulness in creating communityanchored service experiences. In this context, we aim to discover the implicit strategies of local shop proprietors and convert them into actionable knowledge for creating social value through community-anchored service experiences. Empirical data were collected through interviews with 21 local shops, supplemented by on-site observations, and analyzed using both thematic analysis and cluster analysis. Consequently, a framework of service touchpoints categorized by Community Anchors and Customer Enticements was developed with six strategic positions for service touchpoint deployment, including: Local Treasure, Digging Ground, Influencer-in-the-Wild, Celebration of Imaginative Stories, Village Salon, and Pure Merchant. The article presents design implications for creating community-anchored service experiences in local shops by using key design materials: 1) resources, 2) place attachment, and 3) proprietor's individuality.
As design practices are increasingly positioned in interdisciplinary contexts, origami tessellations present a powerful analogy for navigating shared design processes. This paper explores "growing tessellations", an innovative approach that integrates craft, biofabrication, and digital fabrication to create dynamic tessellated structures. By examining the relations among diverse processes and making traditions involved in growing tessellations and drawing on Ingold's theory of entanglement, we illustrate the intricacies of a living design process based on practice-led research methodologies. Our analysis of design events reveals the negotiations and novel affordances of individual processes, and these entanglements are captured through intermediary and final artifacts that are crucial in materializing and nudging diverse becomings. This reconstruction of the design process is aided by the development of a reflective and generative visualization tool, through which we untangle the symbiosis between designing-with and practice-led research, with implications for biodesign, digital fabrication, and beyond.
The increasing digitalization of societies necessitates a wide range of digital skills from all citizens. Previous research indicates that certain demographic groups, such as older adults who do not participate in the active workforce or formal education, are vulnerable to falling behind in rapid development. We present a case study focusing on the experiences of older adults with digital technologies and the digitalization of public services in the capital region of Finland. The goal was to produce knowledge that would help cities design better digital support services for elderly residents. The study is based on qualitative data, including interviews and observation notes, analyzed through a theoretical framework informed by digital inequality studies and digital literacy research. Methodologically, our work highlights the importance of adopting a flexible and responsive approach when engaging in research activities with individuals who have experienced marginalization due to technological development. As a result, we challenge the existing service models of digital support. We ask whether designing a more comprehensive approach to improving digital literacy, which would provide possibilities for long-term learning processes, would be more useful than offering technical support for singular use cases through various channels. Finally, we present examples of practical design implications of our work.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) potentially change the journey experience, allowing occupants to partake in non-driving-related tasks (NDRTs) such as using electronic devices. To support human-centered design, it is important to understand the types of NDRTs and consider ergonomic interior vehicle layouts to optimize carrying out such activities. An exploratory study was conducted using a vehicle buck: data on seat position, discomfort, posture, and observations of both space use and NDRTs were collected. Participants (n = 16) took part in three simulated commutes with different car interior scenarios, allowing for various levels of space availability and design features (e.g., laptop table, armrest). Using laptops, phones, and tablets was the most frequent activity, followed by reading and sleeping. Overall discomfort levels were low for all scenarios. Still, head/neck, upper back, and lower back discomfort were lower in the co-designed scenario where participants had both flexibility of space usage and additional design features. A high frequency of neck flexion was observed but was lower in the co-designed scenario for postures held over ten minutes; this was partly mitigated by the design features. This research explores the in-vehicle space usage of occupants in AVs to guide and evidence future design decisions for supporting NDRTs.
Design researchers use theory in many ways in their design research practice. Bridging the gap between theory (as an abstract form of knowledge) and making design decisions can be challenging. Based on interviews with 10 design researchers, the paper examines the various ways they apply theory in designerly ways. The paper presents three interrelated findings that emerge from a thematic analysis. The first theme unpacks how theory use can be characterized by examining the malleability of theory. It describes how theory is explored and used as a design material, similar to other design materials like wood or textiles. The second theme explores how design skills are ways to activate the malleability of theory as design material. The third theme explores a variety of practices that the participants mention, as "ways of doing," in design research. The combination of these themes describes how designers use design skills to activate the malleability of theory as a design material, and they employ a variety of practices to achieve this. Finally, we reflect on what the findings mean for the future of design education.
There is renewed interest in leveraging design in the public sector to address complex societal challenges. While collaborations between designers and public sector organizations hold potential, they often face significant challenges, leading to minimal uptake and impact of project outcomes. Hence, in this article, we investigate implementation as a practice, namely the practice of turning ideas into action. The study retrospectively explores implementation challenges in collaborations between external designers and public sector organizations. Based on a multiple case study, we identified eight implementation challenges across initiative, organization, and system levels, along with 13 design practices that help address these challenges. Our findings highlight that effective implementation requires designers to navigate inherent tensions between temporary and enduring elements, situated and systemic approaches, and stabilising and transforming organizational practices. This research contributes to understanding design's impact in the public sector by proposing a tension-driven framework for implementation, emphasising the need to shift focus from generating meaningful ideas to strategically orchestrating their practical realisation and sustainable impact.
This study addresses the knowledge gap concerning whether and how digital support tools can amplify children's perspectives in care contexts while counteracting adult-centric and healthcare-grounded norms. Acknowledging the influential role and power position of care professionals, this paper explores 11 professionals' perceptions of how a digital communication tool affected child participation in pediatric and social care meetings. Professionals' narratives were analysed from a socio-technical perspective using Interpretive Description. We found that the tool's affordances and materiality were perceived to improve the participation conditions for some children, though not all. In cases where professionals felt the tool helped facilitate participation, they described how conversing through the tool influenced topics, meeting dynamics, and parental involvement. Based on these experiences, professionals identified shortcomings in current approaches and practices, expressed an increased openness toward new tools, and ideated alternative ways of working. We discuss how design, affordances, and materiality were perceived to facilitate immediate participation, and what implications these experiences may have for norm transformation in care contexts over time. The insights can inform designers and care professionals aiming to enhance child participation in care settings.
This research applied Transactional Analysis to investigate the attribution of personality to products. Grounded in the theory of Transactional Analysis, which posits that human personality comprises ego states, this paper examines how individuals attribute ego state-based personalities to products throughout product-person interactions. Through fifteen co-discovery sessions, pairs of participants attributed personality to everyday objects and shared their experiences of these objects while viewing the concept prompts. Findings indicate that individuals attribute diverse personalities to the same product based on their interactions and experiences. Unlike existing literature that predominantly focuses on aesthetics, this study, using the concept prompts with no picture, highlights attributions of ego state-based personalities to products' function. Products representing Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child personalities are associated with perceived satisfactory functional performance and elicit positive emotions. These insights offer actionable strategies to develop products with personality attributes that enhance emotional experiences throughout product-person interactions in individuals' daily lives.
The landscape of service design is expanding and includes multiple layers of complexity. These dynamics influence how we teach and practice service design, particularly when designing with the public sector. The topics under investigation increasingly address relationships and broader societal challenges, the interplay between intangible and tangible, and visible and invisible materials in the design process. This inherent complexity can introduce ambiguity, leading to confusion among both design students and public sector partners. This paper centers on service design education in projects carried out in collaboration with the public sector, analyzing the components forming the final outputs at the delivery phase-namely, the service design deliverables. This is done by reviewing 45 student reports from a practice-based service design course in collaboration with a local municipality. Our findings show that while the intangible outputs have a significant role in defining the design proposal, the tangible gives an actionable form to the intangible through design interventions. Our proposed framework presents how intangible and tangible outputs work together in cycles shaping the service design deliverables. Our study further highlights the significance of creativity, adaptability, and systems design as core competencies in service design education and public sector practice.
