Shaping physical, social and imaginary spaces in healthcare design labs

The use of service design to support healthcare innovation has increased over the past decade. Recently, a growing number of design labs have been established to facilitate service design processes inside healthcare organizations. There is a growing need to gain a deeper understanding of how to set up and work within these spaces so that they live up to their promise of healthcare innovation and do not become a hype that fades out over time. Despite a growing body of literature on design labs, little attention has been given to the role of the lab space and how space may be ‘made use of’ to support healthcare service design. To examine the practice of making use of space, action research was conducted by embedding a design lab inside a hospital. Through empirical observations, we unpack three spatial dimensions that are made use of inside healthcare service design labs: (1) physical spaces supporting sensemaking and promoting innovation as culture; (2) social spaces facilitating and encouraging interactions among stakeholders; and (3) imaginary spaces challenging mental models and shaping propositions collaboratively. This extended understanding of lab space challenges existing research priorities, suggesting practical implications for using space more purposefully within design labs.

Sustainable collection practices and life cycle strategies: A fashion design perspective

The fashion collection is a primary format in fashion design. Nevertheless, literature on the phenomenon is limited. In the transition towards new sustainable ways of designing and producing fashion garments, it is important to understand (1) how designers can promote change through their core collection design practice, and (2) how collection practices manifest within life cycle strategies for design. The study is constructed as a qualitative comparative analysis of interview data from three designers in a company context. The data is analysed in two modes: first through a framework for sustainable collection practices and second through a life cycle strategy framework. The study contributes with insights on how designers work with sustainability strategies in their collection building design practice and the key role that both material choices and design for garment longevity play in driving the strategies. Furthermore, it shows that the represented approaches to sustainability: circular system, slow fashion and fibre sourcing, reside within technical life cycle strategies with slowing and closing circular loops objectives, and that strategies solely in biological life cycles appear nonexistent. The study is small scale, and insights are therefore indicative.

Design Innovation for creative growth: Modelling relational exchange to support and evaluate creative enterprise in the Scottish Highlands and Islands

This article examines the development and delivery of a Creative Growth Model as part of a programme of Design Innovation activities with creative micro-enterprises and support organizations in the Highlands and Islands region of Scotland. There is a growing body of critique for how creative enterprise is framed, supported and evaluated in relation to economic notions of value and growth that struggle to incorporate the sociocultural interests and activities of sole traders and micro-enterprises. This article presents a Design Innovation approach for identifying situated conceptions of value, modelled as emergent value constellations, based on the diverse interactions and relational exchanges prevalent within the creative enterprise. This research draws predominantly on the work of Design Innovation for New Growth (DING), a two-year AHRC follow-on funded project between 2017 and 2019, which engaged with existing creative expertise in the Highlands and Northern Isles of Scotland to mobilize local practitioners as central drivers of innovation. The article aims to contribute to co-design literature seeking to develop ‘design practices that understand how value is co-produced, […] understood, generated, and employed’ (Whitham et al. 2019: 2) in conjunction with creative enterprises.

Experiments all the way in programmatic design research

Experiments take various forms, have various purposes, and generate various knowledge; depending on how, when and why they are integrated in a design research study with a programmatic approach. This is what we will argue for throughout this article using examples and experiences from our now finalized Ph.D. studies. Reviewing the prevailing literature on research through design the overall argument is that design experiments play a core role both in conducting the research, in theory construction and in knowledge generation across the different design domains and methodological directions. However, we did not identify sources that explicitly discuss and operationalize roles and characteristics of design experiments in different stages of programmatic design research. The aim of this article is therefore to outline a (tentative) systematic account of roles and characteristics of design experiments. Building upon Schön’s definition of experiments in practice we propose adding to the prevailing understanding of experiments in research through design understanding and operationalizing design experiments (1) as initiators or drivers framing a research programme, (2) as ways to reflect on and mature the research programme serving as vehicles for theory construction and knowledge generation and finally (3) as a ‘designerly’ approach to the written knowledge dissemination and clarification of research contributions.

Investigating design-based learning ecologies

In this article we argue that, for educators in design, urbanism and sustainability, the responsibility of connecting emergent design practice and changing societal needs into pedagogical activities demands that attention be given to ecologies of learning that explore the interplay between what is and what might be. As such, this futuring imperative brings into play a mix of modes of situated learning experience, communication and tools from design and learning to query the planned and built environment as a given, while offering alternate future visions and critiques. In this article, we argue for agile pedagogy that enables students to co-create as citizens in public spaces, through agentive multimodal construction of their identities and modes of transformative representation. Our core research problematic is how to develop, enact and critique design-based pedagogies that may allow designer-educator-researchers and students alike to co-create learning ecologies as dynamic engagement in re-making the city. This we take up within the wider context of climate change and pressing societal and environmental needs within which design and urbanism education increasingly needs to be oriented. Our inquiry is located within a shared practice of design pedagogy across two continents, and climatic and disciplinary domains between the western cape in South Africa and the far north of Norway. The main finding of this research is that pedagogies that are enabling of and attentive to the interplay of an assemblage of relational context-sensitive modalities can be conducive to sustainable and futuring design-based urban engagements.

Review

Bloomsbury Applied Visual ArtsOnline Library (2019), New York: Bloomsbury Publications, <uri href="https://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com/">https://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com/</uri>

Review

Bloomsbury Applied Visual ArtsOnline Library (2019), New York: Bloomsbury Publications, <uri href="https://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com/">https://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com/</uri>