Teaching new product development to design led innovation

Recently many international tertiary educational programs have capitalised on the value design and business can have upon their interception (Martin, 2009; Brown, 2008; Bruce and Bessant, 2002; Manzini, 2009). This paper discusses the role that two teaching units – New Product Development and Design Led Innovation – play in forming an understanding of commercialisation needed in today’s Industrial Design education. These units are taught consecutively in the later years of the Bachelor of Industrial Design program at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. In this paper, each teaching unit is discussed in detail and then as a conglomerate, in order to form a basis of knowledge students need in order to fully capitalise on the value design has in business, and to produce a more capable Industrial Design graduate of the future.

Information practices of teen content creators : the intersection of action and experiences a grounded theory study

What are the information practices of teen content creators? In the United States over two thirds of teens have participated in creating and sharing content in online communities that are developed for the purpose of allowing users to be producers of content. This study investigates how teens participating in digital participatory communities find and use information as well as how they experience the information. From this investigation emerged a model of their information practices while creating and sharing content such as film-making, visual art work, story telling, music, programming, and web site design in digital participatory communities. The research uses grounded theory methodology in a social constructionist framework to investigate the research problem: what are the information practices of teen content creators? Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and observation of teen’s digital communities. Analysis occurred concurrently with data collection, and the principle of constant comparison was applied in analysis. As findings were constructed from the data, additional data was collected until a substantive theory was constructed and no new information emerged from data collection. The theory that was constructed from the data describes five information practices of teen content creators. The five information practices are learning community, negotiating aesthetic, negotiating control, negotiating capacity, and representing knowledge. In describing the five information practices there are three necessary descriptive components, the community of practice, the experiences of information and the information actions. The experiences of information include information as participation, inspiration, collaboration, process, and artifact. Information actions include activities that occur in the categories of gathering, thinking and creating. The experiences of information and information actions intersect in the information practices, which are situated within the specific community of practice, such as a digital participatory community. Finally, the information practices interact and build upon one another and this is represented in a graphic model and explanation.

Guerrilla research tactics: alternative research methods

This case-study explores alternative and experimental methods of research data acquisition, through an emerging research methodology, ‘Guerrilla Research Tactics’ [GRT]. The premise is that the researcher develops covert tactics for attracting and engaging with research participants. These methods range between simple analogue interventions to physical bespoke artefacts which contain an embedded digital link to a live, interactive data collecting resource, such as an online poll, survey or similar. These artefacts are purposefully placed in environments where the researcher anticipates an encounter and response from the potential research participant. The choice of design and placement of artefacts is specific and intentional. DESCRIPTION: Additional information may include: the outcomes; key factors or principles that contribute to its effectiveness; anticipated impact/evidence of impact. This case-study assesses the application of ‘Guerrilla Research Tactics’ [GRT] Methodology as an alternative, engaging and interactive method of data acquisition for higher degree research. Extending Gauntlett’s definition of ‘new creative methods… an alternative to language driven qualitative research methods' (2007), this case-study contributes to the existing body of literature addressing creative and interactive approaches to HDR data collection. The case-study was undertaken with Masters of Architecture and Urban Design research students at QUT, in 2012. Typically students within these creative disciplines view research as a taxing and boring process, distracting them from their studio design focus. An obstacle that many students face, is acquiring data from their intended participant groups. In response to these challenges the authors worked with students to develop creative, fun, and engaging research methods for both the students and their research participants. GRT are influenced by and developed from a combination of participatory action research (Kindon, 2008) and unobtrusive research methods (Kellehear, 1993), to enhance social research. GRT takes un-obtrusive research in a new direction, beyond the typical social research methods. The Masters research students developed alternative methods for acquiring data, which relied on a combination of analogue design interventions and online platforms commonly distributed through social networks. They identified critical issues that required action by the community, and the processes they developed focused on engaging with communities, to propose solutions. Key characteristics shared between both GRT and Guerrilla Activism, are notions of political issues, the unexpected, the unconventional, and being interactive, unique and thought provoking. The trend of Guerrilla Activism has been adapted to: marketing, communication, gardening, craftivism, theatre, poetry, and art. Focusing on the action element and examining elements of current trends within Guerrilla marketing, we believe that GRT can be applied to a range of research areas within various academic disciplines.

Bouncing back : the role of design and making in understanding and dealing with adversity

The Bouncing Back Project, which began after the Queensland flood event in January 2011, has organically grown through a number of reiterations as per the diagram above. In the August 2011 it resulted in the physical construction of an Emergency Shelter [designed by GreenLeaf Engineers] in Sydney at the Customs House in Circular Quay and a conference paper publication at the AASA conference. To date this research has progressed without any research grant funding and has resulted in significant media interest. During the construction of the Emergency Shelter we collected a wide range of multimedia data which is being compilled into a documentary focusing on the architecture students’ experience throughout the iterations of Bouncing Back.

Bilingual asynchronous online discussion groups : design and delivery of an e-Learning distance study module for nurse academics in a developing country

The advent of eLearning has seen online discussion forums widely used in both undergraduate and postgraduate nursing education. This paper reports an Australian university experience of design, delivery and redevelopment of a distance education module developed for Vietnamese nurse academics. The teaching experience of Vietnamese nurse academics is mixed and frequently limited. It was decided that the distance module should attempt to utilise the experience of senior Vietnamese nurse academics - asynchronous online discussion groups were used to facilitate this. Online discussion occurred in both Vietnamese and English and was moderated by an Australian academic working alongside a Vietnamese translator. This paper will discuss the design of an online learning environment for foreign correspondents, the resources and translation required to maximise the success of asynchronous online discussion groups, as well as the rationale of delivering complex content in a foreign language. While specifically addressing the first iteration of the first distance module designed, this paper will also address subsequent changes made for the second iteration of the module and comment on their success. While a translator is clearly a key component of success, the elements of simplicity and clarity combined with supportive online moderation must not be overlooked.

Design and delivery of a distance education programme : educating Vietnamese nurse academics from Australia

In 2008 a move away from medical staff providing nursing education in Vietnam saw the employment of many new nurse academics. To assist in the instruction of these novice academics and provide them with sound teaching and learning practice as well as curriculum design and implementation skills, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) successfully tendered an international grant. One of QUT’s initiatives in educating the Vietnamese academics was a distance learning programme. Developed specifically for Vietnamese nurse academics, the programme was designed for Australian based delivery to academics in Vietnam. This paper will present an overview of why four separate modules were utilised for the delivery of content (modules were delivered at a rate of one per semester). It will address bilingual online discussion boards which were used in each of the modules and the process of moderating these given comments were posted in both Vietnamese and English. It will describe how content was scaffolded across four modules and how the modules themselves modelled new teaching delivery strategies. Lastly, it will discuss the considerations of programme delivery given the logistics of an Australian based delivery. Feedback from the Vietnamese nurse academics across their involvement in the programme (and at the conclusion of their fourth and final module) has been overwhelmingly positive. Feedback suggests the programme has altered teaching and assessment approaches used by some Vietnamese nurse academics. Additionally, Vietnamese nurse academics are reporting that they are engaging more with the application of their content indicating a cultural shift in the approach taken in Vietnamese nurse education.

Come together : forging publics in Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art

The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, recently staged ‘21st Century: Art of the First Decade’. The gallery spaces were replete with a commissioned slide by Carsten Höller, an installation of Rivane Neuenschwande’s I Wish Your Wish (2003), a table of white Legos, a room of purple balloons and other participatory or interactive artworks designed to engage multiple publics and encourage audience participation in a variety of ways. Many of the featured projects used day-to-day experiences and offered new conceptions about art practice and what they can elicit in their public – raise awareness about local issues, help audiences imagine different ways of negotiating their environs or experi-ence a museum in a new way. At times, the bottom floor galleries resembled a theme park – adults and children playing with Legos and using Höller’s slide. This article examines the benefits and limitations of such artistic interventions by relating the GoMA exhibition to Brisbane City Council’s campaign of ‘Together Brisbane’ (featuring images of Neunenschwande’s ribbons); a response to the devastation brought to the city and its surrounds in January 2011. During the Brisbane floods, GoMA’s basement was damaged, the museum closed and upon reopening, visitor numbers soared. In this context, GoMA’s use of engaged art practice – always verging on the ephemeral and ‘fun’ – has been used to project a wider notion of a collective urban public. What questions does this raise, not only regarding the cultural politics around the social and participatory ‘turn’ in art practice, but its use to address a much wider urban public in a moment of crisis.

Bouncing Back : Recovery through Design + Making

Architectural education is beginning to recognise the potential of a more intensive relationship between the tasks of designing and building (Erdman et al., 2002) within a work integrated learning environment. The Bouncing Back Project, began after the Queensland, Australia floods in January 2011, and has organically grown through a number of architectural student exhibitions, initially displaying flood responsive designs. In September 2011, 10 Queensland University of Technology architecture students travelled to Sydney to work together in helping to construct a shelter in the Emergency Shelter Exhibition, at Customs House in Circular Quay. The construction and making of the shelter, was filmed. This film documents the student experience, of making, working with industry professionals, community engagement and it reveals how this activity promotes informal work integrated learning in a real world context.

Dichotomy in the design studio : adapting to new blended learning environments

Since the architectural design studio learning environment was first established in the early 19th century at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, there has been a complete transformation in how the discipline of architecture is practiced and how students of architecture acquire information. Digital technologies allow students to access information instantly and learning is no longer confined to the rigid boundaries of a physical campus environment. In many schools of architecture in Australia, the physical design studio learning environments however, remain largely unchanged. Many learning environments could be mistaken for those last refurbished 30 years ago, being devoid of any significant technological intervention. While some teaching staff are eagerly embracing new digital technologies and attempting to modify their pedagogical approaches, the physical design studio learning environment is resistant to such efforts. In a study aimed at better understanding how staff and students adapt to new blended learning environments, a group of 165 second year architecture students at a large school of architecture in Australia were separated into two different design studio learning environments. 70% of students were allocated to a traditional design studio setting and 30% to a new, high technology embedded, prototype digital learning laboratory. The digital learning laboratory was purpose designed for the case-study users, adapted Student-Centred Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs [SCALE-UP] principles, and built as part of a larger university research project. The architecture students attended the same lectures, followed the same studio curriculum and completed the same pieces of assessment; the only major differences were the teaching staff and physical environment within which the studios were conducted. At the end of the semester, all staff and students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their experiences and preferences within the two respective learning environments. The questionnaire response rate represented the opinions of 100% of the 10 teaching staff and over 70% of the students. Using a qualitative grounded theory approach, data were coded, extrapolated and compared, to reveal emerging key themes. The key themes formed the basis for in-depth interviews and focus groups of teaching staff and students, allowing the researchers to understand the data in more detail. The results of the data verified what had become increasingly evident during the course of the semester: an underlying negative resistance to the new digital studio learning environment, by both staff and students. Many participants openly exhibited a yearning for a return to the traditional design studio learning environments, particularly when the new technology caused frustration, by being unreliable or failing altogether. This paper reports on the study, discusses the negative resistance and explores the major contributors to resistance. The researchers are not aware of any similar previous studies across these particular settings and believe that it offers a necessary and important contribution to emergent research about adaptation to new digital learning environments.

Bushfire responsive design : real life responses to energy ratings, bushfire standards and biodiverse sites.

Many of the more extreme bushfire prone landscapes in Australia are located in colder climate regions. For such sites, the National Construction Code regulates that houses satisfy both the Australian Standard for Bushfire (AS 3959:2009) and achieve a 6 Star energy rating. When combined these requirements present a considerable challenge to the construction of affordable housing - a problem which is often exacerbated by the complex topography of bushifre prone landscapes. Dr Weir presents a series of case studies from his architetcural practice which highlight the need for further design-led research into affordable housing - a ground up holistic approach to design which recolciles energy performance, human behaviourm, bushland conservation and bushfire safety.

Bouncing back : homegrown. Curated exhibition of student work and design workshop

Bouncing Back Architecture Exhibition: This exhibition showcases interpretations of urban resiliency by 2nd and 4th Year undergraduate architecture students who explore the notion of Bouncing Back from the 2011 Queensland floods, in the context of contemporary Brisbane built environment. Design solutions have been expressed in a variety of forms including emergency shelters, flood-proof housing and a range of urban designs, some of which address extreme environmental conditions. Design Process Workshop | Architecture Workshop with Queensland Academy of Creative Industries Students: In collaboration with Homegrown Facilitator Natalie Wright, Lindy Osborne and Glenda Caldwell and some of their architecture students from the QUT School of Design, extended the university design studio experience to 18 Secondary School students, who brainstormed and designed emergency food distribution shelters for those affected by floods. Designs and models created in the workshop were subsequently included in the Bouncing Back Architecture Exhibition.

Combinatorial design of key distribution mechanisms for wireless sensor networks

Key distribution is one of the most challenging security issues in wireless sensor networks where sensor nodes are randomly scattered over a hostile territory. In such a sensor deployment scenario, there will be no prior knowledge of post deployment configuration. For security solutions requiring pairwise keys, it is impossible to decide how to distribute key pairs to sensor nodes before the deployment. Existing approaches to this problem are to assign more than one key, namely a key-chain, to each node. Key-chains are randomly drawn from a key-pool. Either two neighboring nodes have a key in common in their key-chains, or there is a path, called key-path, among these two nodes where each pair of neighboring nodes on this path has a key in common. Problem in such a solution is to decide on the key-chain size and key-pool size so that every pair of nodes can establish a session key directly or through a path with high probability. The size of the key-path is the key factor for the efficiency of the design. This paper presents novel, deterministic and hybrid approaches based on Combinatorial Design for key distribution. In particular, several block design techniques are considered for generating the key-chains and the key-pools.

Value management in infrastructure project design : unlocking the project team’s creativity

Value Management (VM) is a proven methodology that provides a structured framework using supporting tools and techniques that facilitate effective decision-making in many types of projects, thus achieving ‘best value’ for clients. It offers an exceptionally robust approach to exploring the need and function of projects to be aligned with client’s objectives. The functional analysis and creativity phases of VM are crucial as it focused on utilising innovative thinking to understand the objectives of clients’ projects and provide value-adding solutions at the early discovery stages of projects. There is however a perception of VM as just being another cost-cutting tool, which has overshadowed the fundamental benefits of the method, therefore negating both influence and wider use in the construction industry. This paper describes findings from a series of case studies conducted at project and corporate levels of a current public funded infrastructure projects in Malaysia. The study aims to investigate VM processes practised by the project client organisation and evaluate the effects of project team involvement in VM workshops during the design-stage of these projects. The focus of the study is on how issues related to ‘upstream’ infrastructure design aimed at improving ‘downstream’ construction process on-site, are being resolved through multi-disciplinary team consideration and decision-making. Findings from the case studies indicate that the mix of disciplines of project team members at a design-stage of a VM workshop has minimal influence on improving construction processes. However, the degree of interaction, institutionalized thinking, cultural dimensions and visualization aids adopted, have a significant impact in maximizing creativity amongst project team members during VM workshop. The case studies conducted for this research have focused on infrastructure projects that utilise traditional VM workshop as client’s chosen VM methodology to review and develop designs. Documents review and semi-structured interview with project teams are used as data collection techniques for the case study. The significant outcomes of this research are expected to offer alternative perspectives for construction professionals and clients to minimise the constraints and strengthen strategies for implementing VM on future projects.

Custom digital workflows : a new framework for design analysis integration

Flexible information exchange is critical to successful design-analysis integration, but current top-down, standards-based and model-oriented strategies impose restrictions that contradicts this flexibility. In this article we present a bottom-up, user-controlled and process-oriented approach to linking design and analysis applications that is more responsive to the varied needs of designers and design teams. Drawing on research into scientific workflows, we present a framework for integration that capitalises on advances in cloud computing to connect discrete tools via flexible and distributed process networks. We then discuss how a shared mapping process that is flexible and user friendly supports non-programmers in creating these custom connections. Adopting a services-oriented system architecture, we propose a web-based platform that enables data, semantics and models to be shared on the fly. We then discuss potential challenges and opportunities for its development as a flexible, visual, collaborative, scalable and open system.

Existential place-making : the dialogical realms of design for dwelling with disability

The world of disability is often neglected or taken for granted in able-bodied society. Apart from the challenge that disability is a social construct (Linton, 1998, 2006; Longmore, 2003; Thompson, 1997) there is an impact on the people with disability that they either feel left out or they don’t belong in the larger community. The able-bodied community is also left with very little knowledge or no sensitivity towards people with disability. These internal whirlpools do not contribute to any community only to create larger gaps and higher differences between the groups of people. Peace (2010) claims that disability is something imposed on to a person on top of a physical impairment. Nord (2008) advocates that while environmental barriers and social attitudes are crucial aspects of a person’s experience, they can indeed disable a person. The study reported high-lights what is home for people with disability and their family members. The way the person with disability and family members without disability share the same home and nurture personal relationships with each other demands greater attention. This research sheds light on the intricate relationships that exists between the family members including person with disability and their built environment. These existential connections provide a holistic viewpoint and the glimpse into the lived experiences of homes for people with disability and their care-givers. Concepts of universal design or barrier free design have not been successful (Connell and Sanford, 1999) in revealing in-depth the nature of place-making for people with disability and their care-givers. Such studies fail to incorporate the holistic needs of individuals with disability and their family members in terms of their bodily, visceral, emotional, social, psycho-social, intuitive, spiritual and temporal needs, to name a few (Franz, Bitner, 2010). This paper reports on some preliminary findings on phenomena of dwelling for people with different kinds of disability and their care-givers sharing the same home from an interior design perspective.