The aim of this research is to examine the role of practice in collaboration between designers and African craft producers in order to develop a different methodology for future exchanges that can be more sustainable and equitable. It looks to determine how craft and design practices can act as tools for communication and exchange, to examine how to foster meaningful collaboration when the relationship of those involved is inequitable and to develop a co-creation methodology for practice, capitalising on the differing skills, experiences and cultures of those involved. The research explores collaboration through making with two Cape Town based, craft businesses - Imiso Ceramics and Kunye - investigating the interactions that occur between the collaborators. A critical contextual review reveals the majority of such partnerships are instigated from the top down with an emphasis on product development. This study proposes that the focus is shifted to one that is human-centred, where the process of collaboration between the people involved is foregrounded. By strengthening the collaborative relationships and giving all participants an equal voice, the process becomes more productive, with product development an inherent result. Using a practice based, participatory design methodology, the work draws on the African notion of ubuntu, which speaks of people's interconnectedness. Applying the cross-disciplinary practices of all three collaborators, products are developed, provoking a dialogue that challenges the designer's role in the developing world. The research culminates in an exhibition of the journey, conversations, issues and outcomes that occurred throughout. The exhibition provides an opportunity to provoke a conversation with the stakeholders, listening to their experiences and gaining their feedback on the work presented. Practical exercises for participatory design in future cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary contexts are presented.

Curiosity, as a strong motivator for exploration and discovery, has long been an underexplored but important emotional response in relation to technology. This research considers that it has great potential to improve many aspects of the user experience, especially in today’s screen-saturated context. However, engaging curiosity by novelty and uncertainty may exhaust attentional strength and challenge usability. Thus, the purpose of this research is to find ways to foster the human trait of curiosity and avoid its negative effects. To gain an in-depth understanding of curiosity, the first chapter reviews cross-disciplinary literature to expand its role in improving user experience. This ranges from serving as an attention grabber to including the values that contribute to human survival, thriving, emotional resilience, and personal development. The second chapter identifies problems in the current curiosity-provoking design methods. The chapter also emphasises design for supporting active curiosity and avoiding the creation of purely novel stimuli. This approach is to encourage active curiosity to develop. To this end, the research proceeds to conduct observational studies at a museum to broaden our understanding of factors that influence people’s curiosity and exploration within a screen-mediated context. Based on these observations, I identified that there are three conceptual elements: sociability, embodiment, and playfulness. Through theoretical discussion and reflection upon the design examples, subsequent three chapters explore the relationship between curiosity and each conceptual element. The chapters also suggest several design approaches that embrace curiosity in relation to its social, embodied, and playful nature. These include creating a sense of co-curiosity, allowing the use of covert and overt curiosity-satisfying strategies, increasing bodily exploration affordances of the screen for linking curiosity with embodiment, using metaphors of the body-screen relationship, and developing possibilities and adding enchanting effects for eliciting playfulness to enrich curiosity. In essence, this research enhances our understanding of the user experience from the perspective of curiosity, and these design suggestions also help to embrace users’ active curiosity in developing sociable, embodied, and playful well-being in the age of ubiquitous screens.

This document is the doctoral thesis of L Bruce Archer. It is a part of his pioneering attempts in the 1960s to create a science of design - a project he later looked back on with some regret. For a discussion, see "The Structure of Design Processes: ideal and reality in Bruce Archer’s 1968 doctoral thesis" http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1721/ This version of the thesis document is a photocopy that includes hand-corrections and amendments made onto the typescript. It seems to have been prepared as copy for a book: the closing remarks in the document thank "the designer of this book, Brian Grimbly" (one-time art editor of Design magazine). No such book was ever published. Archer's introduction states: "This thesis attempts to set up a framework within which the set of skills, sensibilities and intellectual disciplines that, taken together, constitute the art of designing might be logically related so as to form the basis of a science of design. No attempt is made here to distinguish between architectural, engineering and industrial design. Indeed, it is an essential element in the philosophy underlying this thesis that the logical nature of the act of designing is largely independent of the character of the thing designed. By the same token, no attempt is made here to define 'good design'. The argument presented is concerned with the theory of navigating towards a chosen destination rather than with the identity or merit of the destination itself. "A logical model of the design process is developed, and a terminology and notation is adopted, which is intended to be compatible with the neighbouring disciplines of management science and operational research. Many of the concepts and techniques presented are, indeed, derived from those disciplines. A primary purpose of this work is to provide a conceptual framework and an operational notation within which designers might work and upon which case study analyses might be based. "The range of techniques and disciplines which might be employed at various stages in the conduct of a design project are referred to only in general terms. Different design problems, and different classes of design activity, call for different techniques and different emphases at various stages. There is no suggestion here that all design should be conducted according to a given formula - only that the logic of any design problem may be better perceived against the background of a common framework. "In certain instances, the general form of the laws which are thought to connect certain phenomena common to most design problems is indicated. It is hoped that the logical model, terminology and notation presented will facilitate the accumulation of the case study data, and the derivation of the more precise general laws, upon which an emergent science of design must be based." A note on accuracy This PDF of the Archer doctoral thesis has been processed for Optical Character Recognition with a reasonable degree of accuracy for the typescript parts. It has not been hand-corrected. The captions and other textual parts of the figures, being in handwriting, have not been processed.

Cette thèse met en avant une lecture ethno-anthropologique et ontologique de l’œuvre du designer anglais Jasper Morrison.Le parti pris de lier l’ethno-anthropologie (André Leroi-Gourhan) et l’ontologie (Martin Heidegger) à la production morrisonienne, en l’occurrence de meubles, d’objets, d’images et de textes, nous permet de faire émerger quelque chose d’inédit quant à cette figure majeure du design contemporain. En effet, outre le fait que cette thèse examine la tangibilité des liens entre l’esprit et la matière, entre l’homme, l’objet et la civilisation, elle montre aussi à quel point le designer est relié à son contexte d’existence, qu’il crée ou recrée ad infinitum à la façon du design. Ainsi, cette thèse de structure interprétative, met-elle au jour de manière démonstrative la mécanique morrisonienne, qui commence par un travail poético-expérimental conditionné par le désir d’un affranchissement du cadre typologique pour évoluer rapidement vers un respect manifeste de celui-ci. Habité par la question du home, ce « constructeur du nouveau monde » qu’est Morrison, c’est ce que cette thèse démontre, œuvre à travers un design que l’on pourrait qualifier “au-delà du visible” ou dont on pourrait dire qu’il a tendance à se fondre dans la panoplie des formes plutôt qu’à s’en détacher. En effet, le designer, charmé par les « artefacts sans artistes » tente de se rapprocher de ces productions anonymes cherchant à retraiter leur substance, rejouant par le design les ressentis thoreauviens à Walden. Enfin, ce que cette thèse aborde et c’est là encore un nouvel horizon qu’elle ouvre sur la lecture de l’œuvre de Jasper Morrison, c’est la question de l’atmosphère comme démarche et/ou étude prospective du designer dont la production renvoie à une forme de vigilance existentielle de l’homme et par voie de conséquence de l’objet dans le monde contemporain. / This research aims towards an ethno-anthropological and ontological reading of the work by the British designer Jasper Morrison.Linking an ethno-anthropological (André Leroi-Gourhan) and ontological perspective (Martin Heidegger) to Jasper Morrison’s production, that is furniture, objects, images and texts enables us to bring out something entirely new contributing in a significant way to our comprehension of this major figure of contemporary design. Not only does this thesis examine the tangibility of the ties between mind and material, between man, object and civilisation, but it also shows the extent to which the designer is connected to his context of existence, which he creates or recreates infinitely through design. In other words, this thesis, of interpretative structure, reveals the mechanics of Morrison’s practice, a practice which starts with a poetic-experimental approach, conditioned by the desire to liberate itself from the typological constraints, and evolves quickly towards an obvious respect of those very constraints. Morrison, this « new world constructor » who is obsessed by the concept of home, works towards a design which could be called “beyond visible” or, one which shows a tendency to blend into the panoply of shapes rather than detach itself from it. Indeed the designer, who is charmed by « artefacts without artists », attempts to get closer to these anonymous productions, trying to re-treat their substance and thus replaying Thoreauvian feelings in Walden. Finally, this thesis offers another new horizon towards the reading of Jasper Morrison’s production. It deals with the question of atmosphere as a line of approach and/or a prospective study by the designer whose production refers to a form of existential vigilance of man and consequently of the objet in our contemporary world.

Understanding Design Impact: A new framework for understanding the potential of design and enhancing future professional practice. Design is widely recognised as an important driver for economic performance. However, the value of design has proved resistant to quantification despite research attention since the early 1980s. Correlation between design investment and impact has been demonstrated, but not causation. There is considerable interest from policy and professional bodies in what is described here as ‘Design Impact’. Impact can be measured, for example, by return on investment, increases in profitability or cost reductions. However this only crudely captures the economic impact of a design ingredient. Increasingly, social and environmental impacts are also of interest. The design profession sees the potential for better articulation of design impact as a means to increase their influence. The context has been explored through a series of descriptive and prescriptive studies including analysis of 45 DBA Design Effectiveness Award case studies, 304 undergraduate design projects from two institutions over a three year period together with interviews and workshops with senior design professionals and design academics. A new Understanding Design Impact framework is the overall outcome and contribution to knowledge from the work. This bridges between theory and practice and is a powerful basis for placing consideration of design impact at the heart of design activity. A design impact ontology has been developed as a robust foundation to the framework which resolves issues with underlying concepts. An initial version of this ontology is published in The Design Journal and is claimed as a supporting contribution to new knowledge. So too are new ontological classifications of factors which have considerable influence on design impact: Design Influences and Authority and Motivation and Path. These provide fresh perspectives and are worthy of further research consideration. A number of routes are identified for the further development and dissemination of the framework.

L'objectif de cet écrit est d'explorer la singularité d'un métier, celui de coloriste designer, qui prend sa source dans la couleur et qui se nourrit de l'espace urbain et de son histoire. Au cœur de l'art qui se fait, l'art appliqué à la ville, la couleur est à la fois la source, l'outil, et le projet. Cette polychromie urbaine d'hier, d'aujourd'hui et de demain constitue l'avènement d'une pensée voulue nouvelle de la couleur dans la ville. Envisageant la pratique du métier de coloriste comme relevant d'une archéologie qui ouvre à une pensée par strate, allusion au terrain et aux couches sédimentaires qui la composent, allusion à l'architecture et aux successions de couches de peinture et d'enduits qui la construisent au fil du temps, allusion à la ville et à son évolution, je fais aussi et surtout, allusion à une pensée qui se construit par niveaux successifs qui se rendent indispensables les uns aux autres. Au cœur de cette pensée chromatique stratifiée, c'est bien le métier de coloriste qui est interrogé, et les connexions qui s'établissent entre les strates au sein desquelles il s'inscrit. La première strate, qui établit les connexions entre couleur, coloration et coloris du point de vue la couleur, pose la place du coloriste dans l'ère industrielle. La seconde, celle de la coloration, empruntera au terrain du design et du projet. La dernière, celle qui pour moi est singulière, ouvrira à un imaginaire chromatique interstitiel, tel un éloge du projet en action et de ses outils et sera celle du coloris. / The purpose of this writing is to explore the singularity of a profession as a colorist designer, which originates in color and that feeds the urban space and its history. At the heart of the art that is, applied art to the city, the color is both the source and the tool and the project. This urban polychromy of yesterday, today and tomorrow is the advent of a new thought desired of color in the city. Considering the practice of the profession colorist as belonging to an archeology that opens to a thought by layer, referring to the land and sedimentary layers that compose it, referring to the architecture and layers of paint and coatings estates which build over time, referring to the city and its evolution, I also and especially refers to a thought that is built through successive levels that make themselves indispensable to each other. At the heart of this layered chromatic thought, it is the job of colorist that is queried, and connections that are established between the strata in which it operates. The first stratum, which establishes connections between color, coloration and shade in point of view of the color, instead of laying colorist in the industrial era. The second, the one of coloring, borrow the land of design and project. The last one that for me is singular, open in an interstitial chromatic fantasy as a eulogy of the project in action and its tools will be the shade.

Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le contexte particulier d’une étude en design portant sur la multiplicité des conduites de projet. Des origines gréco-latines, de « mania » à « manuarius », le terme « manière » nous prédispose ici au sens d’une « habile folie ». Une acception qui permet alors d’interroger les « manières de faire le projet » de design comme des pratiques de l’écart. Invités ainsi à cheminer sur le terrain de polarités divergentes, dans une discipline faite à la fois de ruptures et d’accompagnements, nous sommes conviés par cette aporie à un nécessaire dépassement dogmatique. Des singularités à l’unicité plutôt que de l’universalité à l’unité, cette recherche construit l’hypothèse d’un dessein commun : faire-monde par des manières de faire des mondes. L’analyse de quelques projets qui intéressent la multiplicité nous conduit aussi à dégager la tension que peut entretenir le design à l’égard de l’environnement. À partir d’un intérêt critique envers des projections qui évoquent l’idée d’un paradigme de « centrement et de séparation » de l’homme dans le monde, la thèse interroge ensuite son renversement par des valeurs de « décentrement et d’inséparation ». / This research is part of a study in design on the multiplicity of ways in project management. The word « manner », with its Greco-Latin origins from « mania » to « manuarius » inclines us to take it as « skilful folly ». This meaning allows us to question the various « manners to conduct the design project » as gap practices. Thus, we are invited to explore the field of divergent polarities in a discipline made of breaches and guidance. This aporia leads us to consider a necessary dogmatic passage. From singularities to unicity rather than from universality to unity, this research is constructed on the assumption of a common purpose: make the world through manners of making worlds.The analysis of a few projects related to multiplicity leads us to bring out the tension between design and the environment. Taking a critical stance toward projections evoking the idea of a « centering and separating » paradigm, this research questions afterwards its inversion through « de-centering and de-separating » values.

Ce travail de recherche contribue au questionnement sur les nouveaux enjeux de conception soulevés par le design critique. À plusieurs égards, le corpus de cette thèse repose sur une histoire de la contre-histoire. Une manière de faire et de penser dont l’historicité la plus évidente se situe à la fin des années 1960, lorsque certains designers ont souhaité porter le projet vers la mise en œuvre d’un écart afin d’interroger la société par les moyens du design. Une attitude qui instaure la conception à l’instar d’une logique de la désadaptation des habitudes et des manières conventionnelles de penser. La notion de critique, du grec krinein, qui signifie «séparer», «distinguer», prend ici tout son sens en instaurant, non pas une rupture, mais un déplacement, qui aménage des entre-deux et ménage des porosités de la pensée et de la conception. De l’individu augmenté à l’individu modifié, cette thèse révèle de surcroît, l’inquiétude d’une mainmise au delà de l’invention de l’artificiel et aux abords du biologique. Au gré d’un épuisement de la question du critique en design, nous décelons des moyens de déconstruire les systèmes de la discipline et ses réinventions. / This research work aims to contribute to the study of the new challenges of conception raised by critical design. In several respects the corpus of this thesis is based on a history of coun¬ter history, a way of doing and thinking whose conspicuous historicity takes place in the late sixties when a few designers decided to reconsider the notion of project and stray from the straight and narrow in order to question society through the means of design. The notion of criticism - from the Greek krinein meaning «separate», «discriminate» - takes on its full meaning by introducing a shift (not a break) which makes room for inter¬vals and allows sensitive thinking and conception. From human enhancement to human modification, this thesis also reveals a number of concerns which go beyond the invention of artificial means and touch upon biological aspects. Considering that the critical dimen¬sion in the field of design has been exhausted, this research highlights a few ways to deconstruct the operating principles of this discipline as well as its reinventions.

The core concern of my thesis is with shifting the focus from the description on how innovation is done (predominantly STS accounts of innovation in-the-making) to what designers do with conceptions of innovation. The thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork within a group of interaction designers of Milan. Despite the different conceptions and traditions of innovation that these designers bring in – the artistic and technological ones – I observed that a design-centered conception of innovation is reproduced, as well as the idea that plans and intentions precede things. However, another key idea of my fieldwork is the importance designers give to imagining things as they might be, rather than focusing on how things are. This is where different models of action, planned and open ones coexist in creative ways: it is these processes that the ethnography details.

Cette thèse interroge, par la méthode et la conception design, les modalités permettant de construire des récits liés à l'imaginaire urbain. Ces derniers constituent des potentialités qui racontent au travers de la dimension sonore des faits mémoriels, histoires et vécus de groupes. Le « designer des sons de l'urbain » construit alors sa propre scénophonie urbaine, procédé permettant de raconter l'espace sonore, entre espaces du temps et temps de l'espace. Cette posture permet de rendre compte de la prégnance socio-culturelle du fait sonore dans la manière de raconter le monde. Il s'agit de déceler puis d'interroger les enjeux d'une société en pleine mutation à partir de l'utilisation d'enregistrements de terrain et de créations sonores de territoire, c'est-à-dire des narrations composées à partir de ces premières captures. Ce travail s'articule autour d'une étude théorique d'un corpus artistique (Tome 1) et d'une recherche-action menée dans le cadre d'un contrat Cifre au sein de la Direction de la Culture de la Ville de Strasbourg, pour le Shadok, fabrique du numérique, régie directe de l'Eurométropole en collaboration avec une association trandisciplinaire, Horizome et l'équipe d'accueil ACCRA de l'Université de Strasbourg (Tome 2). / This dissertation questions through a design approach the ways and means allowing the construction of stories related to the urban imaginary. The latter constitute possibilities of telling something through the sound dimensions of historical events, and both individual and collective experiences. The “designer of urban sounds” then builds their own urban scenophony, a method allowing the telling of the sound space — between the spaces of time and the times of space. Such a position allows to account for the socio-cultural weight of sound in the waythe world is told. This research is about detecting and then questioning what is at stakes in a changing society, using field recordings and “territory sound creations,” i.e. narratives built from the raw material of those field recordings. Two dimensions are involved in this work: a theoretical study of an artistic corpus (Tome I) and an action research born outof a city of Strasburg Cifre contract for the state-sponsored and controled Shadok,fabrique du numérique, in collaboration with a transdisciplinary association, Horizome,and the ACCRA team of the University of Strasburg (Tome II).