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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.

Posteren blev præsenteret på Participatory Design Conference 2008, men er ikke i proceedings.

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.

It is not rare that textile designers experience a need to explain or discuss decisions made during the design process. This article draws on the Fabric as Upholstery Workshop, which explored the Repertory Grid, an interview technique, as a tool for structuring a dialog about emotional value of applied textiles. Originally developed as a one-to-one interview technique, the article additionally introduces the Repertory Grid as a tool for dialog between groups of people. The discussion is based on three examples from the workshop, demonstrating ways in which the Repertory Grid encourages the participants to articulate and have a dialog about emotional aspects of textiles. It is exemplified how the procedure of a Repertory Grid can serve as a tool for dialog in the sense that it enables a group of participants to establish a common platform for dialog, achieve an in-depth dialog, and refine the dialog to concentrate on emotional aspects of the experience. In order to argue for the assumed potential o...

In recent years the challenges for the textile industry have changed because of technological development and outsourcing. Present paper reports on a research project concerned with emotional values in textile design and how the designer can actively involve and empathise with end-users and other stakeholders in the design process. Exploratory approaches using the triadic difference are proposed as a means for dialogue about emotional values. The triadic difference and how it influences the dialogue are demonstrated through cases and research literature. Hence cases and research literature exemplify how working with the triadic difference enables various stakeholders to express personal experiences concerning emotional values.

Product design, and especially relevant for this study in textile design, is concerned with designing not only products but also the materials that form the products. Here, designers should relate their materials and products to an existing context and environment that correspond to future users’ created meanings and experiences. Therefore, for design education, it is essential to discuss the diversity of material attributes that have to be considered as well as the creative process of actually designing materials in order to obtain the desired properties, characteristics and meanings. As educators of future designers we are concerned with teaching students, how to develop and use materials for “future design” in a way that embraces multiple properties, including aesthetic, technical, functional and sustainable concerns. In this paper we are specifically concerned with associative meanings and how they affect the design of new materials and how links between associations and physical properties of...

The paper is a contribution to building a research discourse and methodology across disciplines. Taking design aesthetics as our theme, we present and discuss a research framework with roots in the interest in aesthetics within the humanities but aimed at producing research perspectives across design practice, the humanities and the social sciences. The initial research question is a meta-question contesting the relevance of the concept of design aesthetics in design research in terms of the interest in practice methodology within design practice, the interest in understanding the object within the humanities and the interest within the social sciences in investigating patterns and aspects of consumption. The research frame is guided by two aims: (i) to enable specific research interests by looking at possible combinations of empirical material and phenomena (processes, objects, contexts) and speculative settings of employed concepts, and (ii) to investigate the methodological setting of how the research frame may be engaged in an overall framework of aesthetics while the participants simultaneously operate with the particular interests of their disciplines. After a presentation of the concept of design aesthetics, we discuss the methodological and theoretical setting of the framework and its visualization in a model and present two projects which in different ways engage and explore design aesthetics: (i) the role of tactile sensing in textile design in relation to the articulation of aesthetic qualities for both designers and consumers and (ii) a critical-analytical project investigating different levels of aesthetics in design and the role of their specific cultural setting.

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.

Design and management are characterized by intangible processes. A common perspective dominates both fields, since it most often is implicitly assumed that they take place inside well defined organizational boundaries. In this paper, we assume that design as well as management takes place in open organizational systems with activities crossing organizational boundaries. Based on this assumption, it is proposed that designing includes stakeholders in a number of organizational units, cooperating in order to contribute to the process of creation and implementation of specific designs. It is thus proposed that design and management are intertwined in several ways.

It is, today, widely appreciated that Research-through-Design – or Constructive Design Research as we will call it in this paper – allows for designers to produce knowledge based on the skills and capacities of the design field itself.However, most of the research fails to bridge the gap between the general notions of constructive design research and the detailed research activities of the field. We therefore suggest bridging this methodological gap in the academic discussion with what we have ended up calling the “entrance level of constructive design research”. As a step towards to a more nuanced and solid perspective on how to keep constructive design research on track, this paper offers a model for understanding the role of hypothesis in constructive design research. The model allows for understanding the hypothesis’s relation to research motivation, questions, experiments, evaluation and knowledge production. The intention of the model is to have it serve as a tool in the research process aiding the researcher to understand at what “level” discussions and claims are brought forward, and what consequences these might have for the research work at hand. Thus, the paper claims the central position of the hypothesis as a key-governing element even in artistic led research processes.