This paper presents a particular concern about the idea of the Project, namely that its boundaries are fundamentally soft, in addition to being structured around nested processes. The word Project can be understood both in terms of its own definition and with respect to a variety of possible concepts associated with it. The development of a project is a process itself because it usually combines a set of different skills in order to get an appropriate solution for a given demand. Because of the human relevance to the management process, it is a research issue. According to this understanding, project management is presented as "the art of planning, controlling and executing a project in a way that ensures successful delivery of the desired outcome”. At this time another question emerges from the previous discussion: that is, how to do a project? We present the simple answer: Describing the steps on the path to transform an idea into a product is a project itself. It is absolutely expected that each one of the steps described are developed using an understanding of the whole cycle, reinforcing the design approach as non-linear and unpredictable even taken as formal procedures in a product development process.

This chapter details a research collaboration "Theatre for Relationality" (TfR), which used a design research methodology to design and evaluate the lobby space and post-show programming that one can call "audience engagement events" surrounding a 2019 production of Guarded Girls at Green Light Arts (GLA) in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. TfR was initiated in response to the desire of GLA, a not-for-profit theatre company, to enhance and assess the series of audience engagement events, "FUEL", that complements productions in its annual season. TfR began to consider what assessment paradigms might help readers understand what audiences were thinking, saying, and doing. TfR's initial research goal at this phase could be defined as developing a concept model for "community-oriented audience engagement". TfR's initial research goal at this phase could be defined as developing a concept model for "community-oriented audience engagement".

Designers and digital humanists have successfully worked together for over twenty years, but many people from both fields have yet to enjoy the many opportunities such collaborations represent. This guide prepares readers for working together, outlining disciplinary perspectives, lessons learned and practical exercises.

In some projects, professionals face problems in designing a product that force them to deal with uncertainties in a creative way; in others, they follow structured guidelines and rely on preexisting knowledge. In this paper, we map thinking styles (conditional, creative, exploring, independent, inquiring) used by professionals with different academic backgrounds (architects, engineers, and designers), and relate these styles to rationality, intuition, and thinking disposition. Understanding the strengths of each type of professional training is crucial to planning and managing teams that suit designs' needs. Several professionals (n = 141) participated in a survey comprised of the Concept Design - Thinking Style Inventory, the Rational Experiential Inventory, and the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Scale. Results showed that all professionals have had their highest strength of thoughts associated with exploring new or alternative options and displayed significantly higher scores toward rationally-oriented decisions and cognitive flexibility with regards to thinking disposition. The implications of the prevalence of the different modes of thoughts for the development of new products are discussed in light of assumptions about (ir)rational human behaviour and professional stereotypes.

This article presents an argument to extend possibilities and discussions about the role of design in democratic participation. We ground this argument in case studies and observations of several grassroots experimental participatory design workshops run with the intention of producing spaces for community deliberation and a tangible transformation of these communities. These cases show how systemic mapping and prototyping are used to increase community understanding of how potential futures represent values systems that should correspond to the values the community would like to see in place. The methodologies used on these workshops are presented it here as an opportunity to question the role of design in democratic deliberation and policy making.

Design’s arguments of innovative transformation and its constant search for a preferred future have become a contemporary principle of the discipline, and yet most design models limit their process to the production of the next stage of incremental innovation. This approach to the future carries significant systemic problems that can go from unexpected behavioral changes to unintended discrimination against certain groups, especially when addressing complex social problems and transformations. Avoiding these systemic problems might require the use of Design Research to study the conditions that produced them. However, design researchers seem to still disagree on the nature of Design Research, and the specific knowledge that can be produced through it. This paper seeks to introduce a possible model for design research that integrates various design theories to help obtain a more sophisticated view of the systemic situation of possible preferred futures. The goal of these process is to seek to produce a better understanding of how stakeholders envision their future, their intentions, values and needs as a systemic view within any given socio-technical system.