Design students, professionals, and academics often use design labels, such as social design, co-design, and sustainable design, to position or explain their work. We argue that the labels are insufficient for a clear and nuanced approach to describing design practices, and suggest a way to say a bit more. Seventy design labels were collected and categorized, yielding five clusters. Four clusters derive their name from a necessary element of a design project, namely resources, outcomes, criteria, and methods. The fifth cluster indicates application domains. The discussion explores the clusters and the related elements. We conclude that the labels are often insufficient to clarify a position, that the elements can assist in describing and planning a design practice. But that the labels remain valuable: although these do not describe or explain how these practices are conducted, they do serve to identify specialist communities, and highlight new directions in the field.

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Designers are increasingly collaborating with various stakeholders to address complex societal challenges. These challenges often require a codesign approach, where different actors with diverse perspectives and experiences unite to explore innovative avenues for change. Such collaboration requires empathy between the actors to understand each other’s perspective better in their interactions. This paper aims to assist social designers in orchestrating such empathic codesign processes by introducing an Empathic Journey framework. This conceptual and practical framework is based on empathic design theory and three design cases which used Virtual Reality for perspective exchange between actors. The framework addresses the importance of integrating an emotional spark through immersion and the necessity of embedding immersive experiences in a larger journey.@en

Collaborative research projects are great opportunities for the involved design professionals to learn. Many design professionals join in such collaborations to contribute with their existing professional expertise, but also to further develop and extend that expertise. However, learning by individuals is usually not the main aim, and we lack insight in the learning opportunities through collaboration in such projects. We propose that we need to understand this learning process better in order to make this happen more often and more effectively. This paper presents how four design professionals who each participated in different collaborative research projects look back on their learning processes. We interviewed each participant and drew a process map with them. The results show that these projects offer multifaceted learning opportunities and outcomes of important value for the professionals.The paper shows that their learning a) is not always easily recognised by the professionals themselves, b) benefits from their active engagement as learners, and c) requires supportive conditions in project arrangements. The paper provides guidelines for lead researchers, design professionals, as well as funding agencies to recognise and value this learning, to support explicit reflection and articulation, and to facilitate supportive learning conditions.

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Empathic design methods support designers in developing an empathic understanding of the people they design for. While researchers and designers use many of these methods, the literature falls short in providing an overview of these methods and what they contribute to the innovation process. We conducted two iterative workshops with 5 researchers in empathic design to define and map the properties of 10 selected empathic methods. By providing an overview, a mapping of empathic methods can support the deployment of empathic interventions. This mapping acts as a guiding tool to support designers in choosing the empathic methods that are the most relevant to their industrial context and audience needs. This work paves the way for further empirical research, inviting the design community to challenge these empathic properties and document how empathic design methods work in a variety of contexts for different audiences.@en

In Research through Design, design actions contribute to the method of research, to the way knowledge is developed. This brings out several tensions and confusions between what research and design are, what they produce, how the two are done together, and how the results can be shared with other researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders. This chapter draws lessons from two seminal PhD on how developing prototypes, and having a conceptual framework helps coherence in broad, phenomenon-led explorations.

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In our densely-populated cities, fostering harmony between differing communities is an increasingly difficult art, and one in which design can provide positive contributions. This paper describes a design project which aimed to decrease tensions between youth and residents in a city neighbourhood through an empathy- building process. Individuals from both groups were guided through the process of stepping into each others’ worlds (through Virtual Reality) and developing solutions together to address points of tension. Their individual transformative processes were tracked in order to make the implicit outcomes of such design processes explicit. Throughout this process new dynamics and connections emerged, revealing grounds for structurally decreasing tensions and promoting participatory approaches for local transformation processes. This paper describes the project and presents our learnings regarding (1) the transformative impact on the involved individuals from the neighbourhood and (2) reflections on the contributing roles of the designers in social innovation projects. @en

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other internal stakeholders shaping the service experience? In this contribution, we reflect on a three-year implementation of an empathy-centric design approach in an industrial context with a low user experience maturity from three different professional viewpoints: ours as UX researchers, the one of a company manager, and an expert researcher on empathy in design. These narrative introspective accounts unveil some of the main benefits, opportunities, and challenges of implementing an empathy-centric design approach in the industry. We discuss and confront them to prior work.We contribute to the field of empathic design with rich in-situ research insights and principles for a successful empathic approach.@en

In our densely-populated cities, living together in harmony between different groups of people becomes an increasingly difficult art, and one in which design can provide positive contributions. This paper describes a design project which aimed to decrease tensions between youth and residents in a city neighbourhood through an empathy-building process. Individuals from both groups were guided through the process of stepping into each others’ worlds through Virtual Reality and developing solutions together to address points of tension. Their individual transformative processes were researched through a content analysis procedure in order to make the implicit outcomes of such design processes explicit. Throughout this process new dynamics and connections emerged, revealing grounds for structurally decreasing tensions and promoting participatory approaches for social innovation. This paper describes the project and presents our learnings regarding (1) the transformative impact on the involved individuals from the neighbourhood and (2) reflections on the contributing roles of the designers in social innovation projects.

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"This paper explores the limitations and functions of design labels, such as social design, codesign, and sustainable design. It argues for a clearer and more nuanced approach to describing design practices. The authors collected over seventy of such labels and categorized them into five clusters. Four of these clusters derive their name from a necessary element of a design project, namely resources, outcomes, criteria, and methods. The labels in the fifth cluster pertain to specific application domains. The discussion explores the relations between these labels and the elements they represent, highlighting that each element can evolve during a design project. The authors conclude that the elements can assist students, professionals, and academics to planning and describing the execution of a design practice. It’s important to notice that although design labels do not define the practices, they do serve to identify specialist communities, and indicate new directions in the field. "@en

Purpose:
The increasing complexity of civil engineering projects necessitates focusing on new competencies of project participants. Based on the research on team performance and design processes that are more closely linked to the relevance of the project context, it is hypothesised that empathic abilities could play an important role in the performance of civil engineering projects. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether performance can be improved by focusing on empathic abilities during the integrated design phase.

Design/methodology/approach:
Semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts were conducted to explore the relevance of empathic abilities and their interaction with performance in a real-life infrastructure project. The project team’s empathy level was measured by means of a survey using Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index method. Finally, differences between expected and measured levels of empathy were analysed.

Findings:
The results provide insights into how empathic abilities interact with performance. The measurement indicates that, on average, professionals in the civil engineering industry score relatively low on empathy. In addition, differences were identified between the expected distribution and the measured empathy levels of the team, implying a potential for improvement, in particular by increasing the empathic abilities of the project management and increasing gender diversity.

Originality/value:
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate a relationship between empathy and the performance of civil engineering projects. The results provide initial insights into the empathic ability of civil engineering project teams and the potential of empathy to improve performance. Furthermore, from an empathy perspective, this study advocates increasing the gender diversity of project teams to improve performance.

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This chapter focuses on explorative research using research through design, because in these we have seen the strength of doing design as a part of doing research. It looks at one guided by a research prototype. The chapter outlines how both prototypes and frameworks can help guide explorative research: prototypes through giving a physical instantiation of a phenomenon, frameworks by placing a phenomenon in a conceptual perspective. The series of prototypes anchored the focus of the research, and determined the scope. The research progressed through a number of stages: after exploration, the prototype was developed and during its development it was continuously tested with members of the ID-StudioLab research community as test subjects and critical participants. The role that design skills, and design actions, can have in research has received growing attention. Prototypes force the researcher to confront theory, confront the world, they evoke discussion and reflection, change the world, and can be used to test a theory@en

Knowledge from academic design research projects does not always help design professionals to actually strengthen their work. Based on a multi-case study, this paper describes how researchers view the impact of their design research projects on design practice and what they do to achieve this. Even in projects where impact on design practice is a stated ambition, several challenges can stand in the way, such as a lack of funding opportunities and unclarity on the needs of design practice. The paper provides tips for researchers and funding parties who want to inform design practice by research, including tips to operationalize design practice roles.

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Academic design research has developed a rich collection of knowledge and tools, but often the results fail to land in design practice. We conducted an interview series with experienced design professionals to study how the knowledge that they derived from research projects was of use to them. They used tools, papers, books, and their own experience in research projects to learn about designing, about the application domain and about project organisation. We found that useful knowledge for design practice can take various formats, including prescribing tools which serve as demonstrator and a reference frame. We discuss how academic researchers can use these insight to make their research more applicable in a way that meets design practice needs.

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Academic design research has developed a rich collection of knowledge and tools, but often the results fail to land in design practice. We conducted an interview series with experienced design professionals to study how the knowledge that they derived from research projects was of use to them. They used tools, papers, books, and their own experience in research projects to learn about designing, about the application domain and about project organisation. We found that useful knowledge for design practice can take various formats, including prescribing tools which serve as demonstrator and a reference frame. We discuss how academic researchers can use these insight to make their research more applicable in a way that meets design practice needs.@en

In co-design, solutions are generated to serve people’s needs, short term and/or long term, through their involvement in parts of the design process. Methods like contextmapping and explorative prototyping serve these participatory processes. They help designers to step into the users’ shoes, to explore design solutions from and with their perspectives. In circumstances where contact with users is restricted, such as the recent lockdowns, user involvement is hindered and we need to find alternative ways to proceed with involving users in design processes. Instead of focussing on what is impossible because of the restrictions, we focussed on the opportunities it can bring. This paper shows that co-design is possible in times of a lockdown by deploying users in the role of co-explorer, creating ownership among users, using digital means, and obtaining an opportunity-oriented mindset.

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Designers play an important role in service transformation and the development of product-service systems by applying co-creation methods. This paper presents a case of how we applied co-creation in practice and the impact this has had on developing a circular product-service system. It details the method used in the co-creation process and highlights five benefits, such as the ability to develop value-adding services for repairs and supporting each of them with user citations. Furthermore, we interviewed the project team a year into product development to assess the uptake by the company and the impact co-creation had on their design process. Based on these findings, we present a conceptual model that identifies the tangible impacts of co-creation and visualizes at what stages and levels co-creation can impact both the development of product-service systems and a company’s shift along the servitization continuum.

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The role of service deliverables in the early phases of service development has been studied both in academia and practice. We lack knowledge on the impact of service deliverables for the later phases of the service development process in which service designers are usually not engaged. In this paper, we aim to understand what attributes of service deliverables help business clients to act upon the deliverables on their own after service designers are gone. To elicit actionable attributes of service deliverables, e.g., reports, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five leading and recognizable service design consultants from Poland who lead service design consultancies. We identified three categories of actionable attributes of service deliverables: communication, contextual, and transformative attributes. The attributes might support service designers in empowering their clients to make use of the service deliverables in later phases of service development.@en

Existing residential housing has to become more sustainable to meet global CO2 reduction goals. Zero energy home refurbishment is one approach to achieve this. Rather than the currently common behaviour change approach, this study investigates residents’ experiences and practices with regard to their home environment. The study consists of interviews in 11 residents’ own homes. The residents live in homes in various levels of refurbishment, including zero energy. The study focuses particularly on ventilation. Ventilation is an issue that is understudied yet known to affect homes’ energy performance as well as residents’ comfort experience. The study reveals many issues with trust, understanding and unfavourable associations of ventilation systems. The study then presents a number of exemplary design directions that could address these issues. The implications are that practices should be studied more to reveal such issues, and that there is a need for better home systems design approaches.@en

This study aimed to enhance the patient handovers within the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) by design, based on experienced qualities and pain points by the ICU team, existing of doctors and nurses. At the ICU, care is delivered by multidisciplinary healthcare teams who strongly rely on teamwork and communication. Patient handovers are scheduled moments of communication where information between different healthcare professionals is exchanged. However, patient handovers involve failures as well, which can be the result of educational, psychological, and organizational factors. To discover how design can overcome these failures in information sharing, first observations and interviews within the ICU were done. The aim of the observations was to reveal everyday practices of the ICU team. The purpose of the interviews was to get a deeper understanding of their personal experience with the different patient handover moments. The observations provided insights in the interactions between doctors, nurses, and both groups. The interviews revealed the experiences ICU doctors and nurses have with patient handovers. The obtained insights were captured in two work models showing the handover activities, touchpoints, and experienced qualities and pain points over time. Based on that, a design was iteratively created in co-creation with the ICU team and evaluated within an ICU. All in all, it was discovered that a design should facilitate more structure, overview, and reflection. The human-centred design approach in combination with Research through Design (RtD) turned out to be key during the study.@en

Design research aims to construct knowledge that is useful for designers and non-designers in the processes of designing for various types of challenges: from making products to solving complex social problems. Designers and non-designers seek information and inspiration for their work both in a non-design world, e.g., in films, illustrated magazines, and in various sources and forms of design research. Conference papers are one of many sources of design research insights. Unfortunately, the textual format of conference papers does not allow to convey the richness of design research insights and express them in forms that are actionable and available to others, e.g., non-designers. As a result, members of design teams might feel disempowered or do not trust and accept provided design research outputs. Therefore, they do not act upon the provided design research insights and find it challenging to apply them in collaboration. In this paper, we present the actionable palette that consists of nine qualities that act as building blocks of actionable forms of sharing and communicating design knowledge. Using the actionable palette to review design research outputs from 51 pictorials, we identified six forms of capturing design research insights. We characterize these six forms and analyze them in terms of actionability to inspire designers and non-designers to experiment with forms of sharing design research insights and first design ideas based on design research insights. Finally, we provide a set of guidelines to inspire and inform the process of reaching the particular qualities of actionability for design research outputs@en