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The aim of this paper is to emphasise the relevance and importance of sensibility, contemplation and craftmanship as a foundation for sustainable development driven by fashion and textile design. The paper looks beyond the frameworks and tools that often guide lecturers in higher educational institutions. Within design, we have access to several newly launched and open source frameworks and method collections, but the question is how we prepare educators as well students to critically work with, contribute to and reflect upon sustainable development acting as change agents across disciplines? This position paper suggests and discusses the value of combining disciplinary expertise with cross-disciplinary teamwork. It also suggests that we fully acknowledge and implement this in our teaching and curriculums of fashion and textile designers. The yarn winding technique known from weaving serves as an example to discuss cross-disciplinary mutual understanding in combination with deep disciplinary articulation as a means for sustainable change of the fashion and textile industry.

Design disciplines in general are challenged to foster alternative solutions towards a green transition of the industry. This naturally effects the design educations where the majority of curriculums include various learning objectives regarding sustainability, circular economy, re-cycling, etc. However, in this paper, we argue that many of the traditional tools and skills already inherent in the curriculums have the potential to promote a green transition provided they are introduced differently. Using well-known tools and skills in alternative ways is however challenging as the way in which their use is articulated and presented by lecturers determine the way in which the student implements and makes use of the tools. This article explores whether and how an alternative use of well-known tools in a fashion design context can beneficially contribute to increased product awareness among students and thereby support a sustainable development of the fashion industry. We suggest using the professional tools ‘line-up’ and ‘collection plan’ as anti-poles for the creation of a space for critical reflection. The anti-poles respectively address fashion as dreams and fashion as products. Fashion is a very visible part of consumption. As a concept that involves planned obsolescence, it is a major sinner in polluting the environment. Consequently, fashion design provides a relevant case to explore whether well-known tools and skills submitted through an alternative didactic approach, predominantly through articulation, can contribute to foster design students’ ability to contribute to sustainable development in design and engineering education in general.

Smart textiles have established a foothold in different academic fields, such as in chemistry, engineering, and in human-computer interaction (HCI). Within HCI, smart textiles are present in research in many ways, for example, as context, as means, or as focus. However, interdisciplinary projects tend to leave the implications of and to textile design without notice. How can a project utilise a textile designer’s skills to feed back to textile design from an interdisciplinary project? In this paper, we present a case study, where a textile designer’s role extends beyond the prototype production, and we analyse the project in light of textile design. Our findings show that textile design can augment data collection and analysis. We conclude with a discussion towards inclusion of textile design in HCI.

The Tripod Approach is a tool originally developed for analysing and designing interior textiles. Since 2012, we have introduced it in a concept development course for second year BA-students in fashion and textile design at XX-School in XX-country. The c

The fashion industry is currently undergoing a radical change towards an overall sustainable paradigm shift. This paper investigates how the fashion collection, as a particular design framework, mi...

Purpose Suppliers stand in the wake of a new diversified strategic momentum in the global production network, where innovation is growing in importance. The term “supplier-driven innovation” is coined in contrast to the current hype on user-driven innovation; this paper aims to discuss the wicked problems for suppliers to actively engage in customers’ innovations. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study of eight Danish suppliers. Findings The wicked problem of supplier-driven innovation is generated by two intertwined constraints: the ability to engage customers in the co-creation of attractive offers and the ability to include technological knowledge and capabilities residing in the upstream network of suppliers. Research limitations/implications This research combines an industrial network approach with perspectives generated through design management literature aiming to develop an innovative space for co-creation across diverse organizational, technological and managerial domains in the global production system. Practical implications To participate in supplier-driven innovation, partners need to co-create an innovative space for joint development. Originality/value Co-creation enriches the understanding of the diversity of forms of interaction, ranging from information and knowledge exchange and mutual adaptation processes to experimentation with processes of co-creation. Through a complementary view on how suppliers co-create innovative spaces of action in the upstream spaces of technical knowledge as well as the downstream spaces of preferential needs, the research contributes insights about the characteristics of the wicked problems that suppliers need to handle in bridging and expanding these spaces for innovative actions.

Design experiments are claimed to be a core means of inquiry in the research tradition of research-through-design. However, it is rarely articulated how the experiments were carried out in order to test a hypothesis, to begin a fruitful journey into unexplored design terrain or just gradually build knowledge. On the basis of the analysis of ten PhD theses we provide a typology comprised of five forms of design experiments in research-through-design. This provides a general outline of the characteristics which point to the methodological roles that design experiments and design work may acquire in research-through-design. Our typology of design experiments in research-through-design accounts both for relations between major cases and iterations embodied in detailed sketches and prototypes. The purpose of the typology is to provide an overview that respects and account for the less-than-ideal way design research actually happens: process-loops where hypothesis, experiments, and insights concurrently affect one another and result in a drift of research focus and continued adjustment of experiments to stabilize the research endeavour.

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 PhD 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 char- acteristics 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. Build- ing upon Schon’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.