Sharing the vision: representing the matters of concern for design-led fledgling companies in Scotland

Design is being performed on an ever-increasing spectrum of complex practices arising in response to emerging markets and technologies, co-design, digital interaction, service design and cultures of innovation. This emerging notion of design has led to an expansive array of collaborative and facilitation skills to demonstrate and share how such methods can shape innovation. The meaning of these design things in practice can't be taken for granted as matters of fact, which raises a key challenge for design to represent its role through the contradictory nature of matters of concern. This paper explores an innovative, object-oriented approach within the field of design research, visually combining an actor-network theory framework with situational analysis, to report on the role of design for fledgling companies in Scotland, established and funded through the knowledge exchange hub Design in Action (DiA). Key findings and visual maps are presented from reflective discussions with actors from a selection of the businesses within DiA's portfolio. The suggestion is that any notions of strategic value, of engendering meaningful change, of sharing the vision of design, through design things, should be grounded in the reflexive interpretations of matters of concern that emerge.

Playing with sound and gesture in digital audio games

This article introduces the genre of a digital audio game and discusses selected play interaction solutions implemented in the Audio Game Hub, a prototype designed and evaluated in the years 2014 and 2015 at the Gamification Lab at Leuphana University Lüneburg.1 The Audio Game Hub constitutes a set of familiar playful activities (aiming at a target, reflex-based reacting to sound signals, labyrinth exploration) and casual games (e.g. Tetris, Memory) adapted to the digital medium and converted into the audio sphere, where the player is guided predominantly or solely by sound. The authors will discuss the design questions raised at early stages of the project, and confront them with the results of user experience testing performed on two groups of sighted and one group of visually impaired gamers.