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Several studies have highlighted the expanding role of designers through interdisciplinary collaboration. However, the literature rarely covers the public perception regarding design, and it is unclear whether collaboration with designers in the early stages of development is generally acceptable in practice. Thus, this study aimed to examine the status of communication designers' role and collaboration in a multidisciplinary team to make suggestions and recommendations that can maximise organisations' potential competency in using designers. In-depth interviews were conducted to investigate the current roles of communication designers in organisations and clarify the determinants of the collaboration. Consequently, the propositions for maintaining a better collaboration with designers, together with the concluding remarks, were presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with research is regarded as an essential part of design practice today by many experts. However, few academic studies have investigated research activities and attitudes within design professions. We conducted an online survey with 212 Australian communication design practitioners to understand how design research is valued and conducted. We found 90% of the respondents regarded engaging with research as 'highly important' or 'extremely important' for practising professionally. However, 76% indicated that the research activities they engaged in were 'not at all' or only 'somewhat' systematic. This suggests a mismatch between their positive attitudes and limited activities. We conclude that designers' considerable appetite for research engagement and their frequent yet informal, unsystematic research activities present substantial opportunities for collaboration between design academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image establishes how an entity is perceived and affects how audiences interact with it. Communication design assumes a particular responsibility in building this image as it intervenes in setting the interface between people and things, thus determining the way their relationship is established. This relationship, which has progressively changed in light of technological developments, is now subject to new dynamics, mostly of an economic nature, whose evolution and effects are difficult to anticipate. The challenges for project practice stem from the need to integrate current concerns – creating value, promoting inclusiveness, ensuring sustainability – in a digital world, subordinate to the global network and the attributes it supports – permanent interaction, disintermediation, remediation. An effective strategy for image building implies understanding the ongoing process of dematerialization and the situations that change accordingly; it also entails adapting to the dynamics of virtual media, the exploitation of new media synergies and taking advantage of creative information and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a report on the structured discussion workshop at the EAD 2017 Design for Next (Society) conference in Rome, Italy. The workshop was hosted by Bianca Herlo and Andreas Unteidig from the Berlin University of the Arts and joined by İdil Gaziulusoy from Aalto University and Wolfgang Jonas from the University of Braunschweig. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand how co-design influences the design process, by presenting a case study where graphic designers and end-users co-designed asthma information. Three co-design activities are presented, as part of a larger project, revealing insights for the next generation of graphic designers. The co-design activities built a trusting, enjoyable environment, while posing the question are designers still in charge of the process? A visual verbal game dissolved participant status barriers, a persona scenario activity uncovered the real brief and a mix and match card game suspended participant politics. The findings suggest that co-designing with end-users, challenges graphic designers’ use of intuition, as new ways of categorizing asthma information material were revealed that previous design-led processes had overlooked. This study confirms the rich contribution of end-users’ creativity, when designers relinquish creative control, ultimately revealing co-design as a valuable approach for graphic designers engaging in bottom-up design processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, society recognizes the childhood as an important step able to generate a social value: children are the main actors of the future but it is necessary to consider the children as children and not as the next adult. Traditionally, the design for kids consider them little adults in a transition phase. The research intention is to spread a new design culture conceived expressly for children, which shall be able to communicate to them using their languages. The project is dedicated to the children - the next generation - from 3 to 11 years old. The aim of this research is to propose a methodological system to design public spaces in the cities able to orient, inform, communicate, entertain, interact, educate, and integrate all kind of children (and their parents) belonging to different cultures with one universal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project explores how a design-led approach can be used to improve health seekers’ wayfinding experiences within a public hospital. It questions how communication design might support and empower wayfinding health seekers. Whilst addressing physical wellness, hospitals often overlook the high levels of stress, anxiety and uncertainty that come with this particular environment. Currently within healthcare, there is an institutional shift toward providing patient-centred care, so that the patient’s voice can be heard in the process of designing services and solutions. The vulnerabilities of health seekers within healthcare contexts mean that there is a greater need for meaningful communication. A Children’s Outpatient Department was used as an environment to explore the challenges that people face when negotiating complex environments when the attention is focused on their own, or their family’s healthcare journeys. By constraining the research initially to a specific location, full-scale in-situ prototypes were able to be installed to enhance engagement with design research and help generate deeper insights around wayfinding contexts. Thus a holistic approach to outpatient wayfinding was able to be developed, that emphasised the broader healthcare experience of the individual, and demonstrated how a design solution may support and guide this journey. Rather than investigating the environment in isolation, there was a consideration of multiple channels of wayfinding communication. These channels are crucial to prepare and support wayfinding at different stages within a journey. Wayfinding solutions should aim to empower health seekers by communicating information in ways that enable confidence and informed decision-making. The designed wayfinding solutions demonstrate the importance of cohesive and staggered information that reflects the health-seeking journey. Throughout the development and testing of these solutions, there was an emergent need to emphasis the supporter role (parents and caregivers) when health seeking in a children’s outpatient environment due to the complexity of wayfinding tasks. Stakeholder relationships were critically important in undertaking this design-led research and testing the feasibility of designed solutions. Through probes, prototyping and project collaboration, the designs produced were able to respond to real problems, to test assumptions and validate the need for change in on-going wayfinding projects within hospital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge and skill required by graphic designers is expanding from traditional views that value craft and technical expertise to those reliant on reflective design thinking. This marks a re-definition of design as a social practice more concerned with the facilitation of interaction(s) and that draws on design criticism and principles of rhetoric. Consequently, design practitioners must apply skills that place more emphasis on the impact or outcome of design and where people, and how they respond as part of a communication system, are the priority. However, despite this indication that rhetoric is vital to shifting design thinking and practice, our understanding of the skills related to its application and how they are developed is relatively limited. In this exploratory study we gauge the current state of design education in an Australian university to determine whether and to what extent students reflect critically on the effectiveness of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In design teaching, “the client” is a very distant figure, that edits a briefing and stays waiting for the answer that should be delivered before the “deadline”. The problem is: this professional scenario does not exist. So, part of the education of a designer should be in awaken future practitioners to the need to identify possible opportunities matching their skills. The “brief” is not a “to do” job. Is a problem to be solved. According to our study, professional designers acknowledge clients to be a very significant part of the final work produced and see them as co-authors. Students should be enrolled in task with a high degree of complexity. Led to analyze data, understand the environment, discover problems and opportunities. There should be no briefing but an open call for action in a certain area or context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand how co-design influences the design process, by presenting a case study where graphic designers and end-users co-designed asthma information. Three co-design activities are presented, as part of a larger project, revealing insights for the next generation of graphic designers. The co-design activities built a trusting, enjoyable environment, while posing the question are designers still in charge of the process? A visual verbal game dissolved participant status barriers, a persona scenario activity uncovered the real brief and a mix and match card game suspended participant politics. The findings suggest that co-designing with end-users, challenges graphic designers’ use of intuition, as new ways of categorizing asthma information material were revealed that previous design-led processes had overlooked. This study confirms the rich contribution of end-users’ creativity, when designers relinquish creative control, ultimately revealing co-design as a valuable approach for graphic designers engaging in bottom-up design processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image establishes how an entity is perceived and affects how audiences interact with it. Communication design assumes a particular responsibility in building this image as it intervenes in setting the interface between people and things, thus determining the way their relationship is established. This relationship, which has progressively changed in light of technological developments, is now subject to new dynamics, mostly of an economic nature, whose evolution and effects are difficult to anticipate. The challenges for project practice stem from the need to integrate current concerns – creating value, promoting inclusiveness, ensuring sustainability – in a digital world, subordinate to the global network and the attributes it supports – permanent interaction, disintermediation, remediation. An effective strategy for image building implies understanding the ongoing process of dematerialization and the situations that change accordingly; it also entails adapting to the dynamics of virtual media, the exploitation of new media synergies and taking advantage of creative information and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a report on the structured discussion workshop at the EAD 2017 Design for Next (Society) conference in Rome, Italy. The workshop was hosted by Bianca Herlo and Andreas Unteidig from the Berlin University of the Arts and joined by İdil Gaziulusoy from Aalto University and Wolfgang Jonas from the University of Braunschweig. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, society recognizes the childhood as an important step able to generate a social value: children are the main actors of the future but it is necessary to consider the children as children and not as the next adult. Traditionally, the design for kids consider them little adults in a transition phase. The research intention is to spread a new design culture conceived expressly for children, which shall be able to communicate to them using their languages. The project is dedicated to the children - the next generation - from 3 to 11 years old. The aim of this research is to propose a methodological system to design public spaces in the cities able to orient, inform, communicate, entertain, interact, educate, and integrate all kind of children (and their parents) belonging to different cultures with one universal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project explores how a design-led approach can be used to improve health seekers’ wayfinding experiences within a public hospital. It questions how communication design might support and empower wayfinding health seekers. Whilst addressing physical wellness, hospitals often overlook the high levels of stress, anxiety and uncertainty that come with this particular environment. Currently within healthcare, there is an institutional shift toward providing patient-centred care, so that the patient’s voice can be heard in the process of designing services and solutions. The vulnerabilities of health seekers within healthcare contexts mean that there is a greater need for meaningful communication. A Children’s Outpatient Department was used as an environment to explore the challenges that people face when negotiating complex environments when the attention is focused on their own, or their family’s healthcare journeys. By constraining the research initially to a specific location, full-scale in-situ prototypes were able to be installed to enhance engagement with design research and help generate deeper insights around wayfinding contexts. Thus a holistic approach to outpatient wayfinding was able to be developed, that emphasised the broader healthcare experience of the individual, and demonstrated how a design solution may support and guide this journey. Rather than investigating the environment in isolation, there was a consideration of multiple channels of wayfinding communication. These channels are crucial to prepare and support wayfinding at different stages within a journey. Wayfinding solutions should aim to empower health seekers by communicating information in ways that enable confidence and informed decision-making. The designed wayfinding solutions demonstrate the importance of cohesive and staggered information that reflects the health-seeking journey. Throughout the development and testing of these solutions, there was an emergent need to emphasis the supporter role (parents and caregivers) when health seeking in a children’s outpatient environment due to the complexity of wayfinding tasks. Stakeholder relationships were critically important in undertaking this design-led research and testing the feasibility of designed solutions. Through probes, prototyping and project collaboration, the designs produced were able to respond to real problems, to test assumptions and validate the need for change in on-going wayfinding projects within hospital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge and skill required by graphic designers is expanding from traditional views that value craft and technical expertise to those reliant on reflective design thinking. This marks a re-definition of design as a social practice more concerned with the facilitation of interaction(s) and that draws on design criticism and principles of rhetoric. Consequently, design practitioners must apply skills that place more emphasis on the impact or outcome of design and where people, and how they respond as part of a communication system, are the priority. However, despite this indication that rhetoric is vital to shifting design thinking and practice, our understanding of the skills related to its application and how they are developed is relatively limited. In this exploratory study we gauge the current state of design education in an Australian university to determine whether and to what extent students reflect critically on the effectiveness of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In design teaching, “the client” is a very distant figure, that edits a briefing and stays waiting for the answer that should be delivered before the “deadline”. The problem is: this professional scenario does not exist. So, part of the education of a designer should be in awaken future practitioners to the need to identify possible opportunities matching their skills. The “brief” is not a “to do” job. Is a problem to be solved. According to our study, professional designers acknowledge clients to be a very significant part of the final work produced and see them as co-authors. Students should be enrolled in task with a high degree of complexity. Led to analyze data, understand the environment, discover problems and opportunities. There should be no briefing but an open call for action in a certain area or context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]