Com a crescente oferta de cursos superiores de design no Brasil, considerou-se que parte dos egressos destes cursos não seguem atuando nesta área. Notou-se que, com o advento de publicações sobre o tema do design thinking e sobre o ensino de elementos do design na educação geral, há valorização dos atributos da formação do designer para resolver problemas em outras áreas. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi verificar a possibilidade de aspectos da formação em design permearem a atuação de ex-alunos deste curso no desempenho de outras atividades profissionais. Metodologia de projeto, antecipação construtiva, capacidade criativa, uso de linguagem visual, pensamento abstrato, análise crítica, noções de gestalt e de semiótica, entre outros elementos, fazem parte da formação do designer e interferem em sua forma de pensar e de resolver problemas. Esta pesquisa se baseou em métodos qualitativos de investigação, empregando, sobretudo, entrevistas semiestruturadas em profundidade com diversas categorias de respondentes afetas à temática. / With the growing offer of higher education courses in design in Brazil, some that graduate from these courses end up not working in this area. The advent of publications on the subject of design thinking and on the teaching of design elements in general education, the attributes of designer\'s academic background for solving problems in other areas are being valued. The object of this research was to check for the possibility that aspects of their background in design might permeate the actions of former students of this course when carrying out other professional activities. Project methodology, constructive anticipation, creative capacity, the use of visual language, abstract thinking, critical analysis, notions of Gestalt and semiotics and other elements form part of the designer\'s education and interfere in his/her way of thinking and solving problems. This research is based on qualitative methods of investigation and uses, in particular, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with many different categories of respondents who are devoted to this subject.

This thesis explored design’s role in transitioning the Swedish food system to one that is more resilient to the shocks caused by climate change and in the context of the project duration, COVID-19. The project’s central question was: What does food citizenship look like in a resilient food system, and what design process is necessary to facilitate such a solution? The project collaborated with a local food ecosystem startup, Harvest, which has the mission to improve the local food supply chain so everyone can eat deliciously and sustainability. Together with Harvest, the project developed a vision of what the local food ecosystem will look like in a viable world. It proposes that collective action around food is a possible vehicle for systems transition. The resulting design is the proposition of a network that connects urban communities to local food producers while facilitating the support required to expand the production capability and stability of the local food ecosystem. The network is grounded in the design principles synthesized from the research conducted with the creative communities in Sweden that are working towards a resilient food system. The ideas of mutual aid and the permaculture ethics of people care and fair share have been guiding forces as supporting those living in transition is an essential element of food systems transition. From this proposition the project sets to explore what disruptive innovations need to occur in order to reach this vision. By framing the project in this way I aim to not only illuminate what the preferable future looks like and how it will function, but also illustrate how it is possible to reach this future.

När man tänker på design och kanske framförallt grafisk design, samt med vilket av våra fem sinnen som vi människor främst upplever detta med, så är det förmodligen synen som man tänker på i första hand. De övriga fyra sinnena hamnar i skymundan och aktiveras inte i samma utsträckning som synen gör och de förblir passiva i vår interaktion med grafisk design. Men hur skulle upplevelsen av design förändras om man formger för fler sinnen än ett? Att inkludera och ta hänsyn till fler sinnen än synen när man designar öppnar även upp för ett mer inkluderande samhälle för dem människor som saknar full kapacitet av synen eller något av de övriga fyra sinnena oavsett om det är ett permanent eller temporärt tillstånd man befinner sig i. Med detta projekt ämnar jag att utforska vad sinnesdesign kan göra för vår upplevelse av design samt belysa de eventuella möjligheter som kan komma med den här typen av design där man designar med fler sinnen i åtanke. / When thinking about design, and perhaps graphic design in particular, and which of our five senses that we as human beings experience design with, most of us are likely to think about sight first hand. The other four senses tend to be forgotten or not taken into consideration and remain passive in our interaction with graphic design. How might the inclusion of more than one of these senses change, or perhaps even enhance the experience of design? To take more than one sense into consideration while designing could also create a more inclusive society for people that lack full capacity of their vision or any of the other four senses whether it be a permanent or temporary condition.  This project aims to explore what sensory design does to our experience of graphic design. It highlights the opportunities that could come with sensory design and designing with more senses in mind.

Since the early 2000s, within the fields of Design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) an emerging body of unconventional design work has exemplified and articulated alternative and oppositional functions of design. Examples of such functions include provocatively speculating about alternative futures (speculation), questioning the status quo (critique), and debating political issues (agonism). Prominent examples of alternative and oppositional design have originated within HCI. Others have been heavily discussed, adapted, and critiqued within HCI. Alternative and oppositional designs have been presented under various names: critical design, design fiction, adversarial design, reflective design, ludic design, speculative design… At this moment the list continues to grow while examples of such work proliferate. This work collectively demonstrates the potential for design to engage concerns and goals that pivot around themes of generating radical alternatives and creating productive political, cultural, and social opposition. This thesis argues that there is a body of unconventional design work that becomes cohesive and legible when held together by themes of oppositionality and alternatives, and operating throughout these designs is a technique which I term design resistance. This thesis presents two primary contributions. The first contribution is to isolate and elaborate resistance as a design technique at work across a range of alternative and oppositional designs. I articulate how design resistance works by analyzing a series of design exemplars drawn from HCI and adjacent areas of Design. The second contribution is to extend and refine the overarching technique of design resistance through two design case studies. These design case studies serve the dual function of offering additional insight into design resistance grounded in my own design practice while concretely demonstrating new knowledge relevant to specific domains and concerns within HCI, including sustainable energy consumption and critiques of digital consumer technologies. Together these contributions provide new knowledge for (1) understanding the rise of alternative and oppositional designs, the concerns they are working to engage, and the research gaps they are working to fill, and (2) how to practice alternative and oppositional forms of design using techniques of design resistance.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the engine of economic growth and job creation. Governments have devoted considerable resources to increase their competitiveness in the market. Several design support programmes (DSPs) have emerged from this investment to promote design as a strategic resource for innovation and business growth. Although existing research indicates that an effective use of design can enhance the business performance, a lack of interest amongst SMEs to work with designers is cited in several studies. Despite the great amount of money, energy and time that has been spent on design support for SMEs, there is still a lack of knowledge about effective delivery and evaluation. This thesis focuses on the problem of finding better ways to assist SMEs with design for economic growth by evaluating the effectiveness of design support for SMEs. This research, therefore, has examined the activities of UK-based DSPs, investigated the expertise of design consultancies and inquired about the self-image of designers in order to expand the knowledge of design support for SMEs. The research applied an interpretive paradigm, where multiple realities are recognised as socially constructed. Data was gathered through interviews with individuals representing DSPs, SMEs, design consultancies and government support agencies assisting SMEs. Observation of business support events and publicly available documents were used as additional sources. A thematic analysis and a systematic metaphor analysis were employed to examine the resulting data. The research has highlighted a number of key issues that are pivotal to the success of design support for SMEs. This PhD research also proposes two explanatory frameworks to contribute to design theory and practice: a seven-step evaluation framework for planning and evaluating the outcomes of DSPs and a re-framing of the generalist-specialist dilemma that can inform the activities of design consultancies and DSPs and can guide designers to improve their expertise.

This dissertation focuses on design sessions in which users and stakeholders participate. It demonstrates how material from field studies can be used in exploratory design sessions. The emphasis is on the staging and realization of experiments with ‘possible futures’. Using a design perspective I have worked with how field studies can contribute to design processes in which many parties collaborate. With a starting point in collaborative ‘sketching’ and creation of scenarios I have striven to create a meaningful way for design teams to adopt a practice perspective. The dissertation shows that there need not be any opposition between exploring ‘what is’ and envisioning ‘what can be’. The increase of computer technology in everyday life and the development making information technology become an integrated part of more and more everyday products has given rise to a need to find new ways of working in the process of designing. If it was ever possible to work in an isolated way on either digital or physical technology, this is no longer the case since development requires collaboration over these borders. In the same way, IT plays an increasing significant role in people’s everyday lives. User focus and user involvement have become commonplace. This calls for new ways of organizing the design process. The present dissertation meets this problem. I have participated in four projects in which exploring users everyday practices has become a meaningful design activity and a foundation for collaboration. The purpose of this dissertation is to shed light on the possibilities and the advantages offered by working design oriented with material from field studies. Furthermore, it strives to show how design sessions can be organized and carried out on a practical level and exemplifies with concrete projects. Special emphasis is given to the creation of and the inquiry into design material and the development and use of design games. / <p>In collaboration with School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden.</p>

Denna rapport redovisar arbetet med att uppdatera webbplatsen qnodd.se, en webbplats som är till för att presentera läromedlet Qnoddarnas värld, utgivet av Natur &amp; Kultur. I rapporten redovisas för tidigare studentuppsatser samt teorier rörande användarvänlighet och designprinciper som har används för att utföra användartester och utvärderingar. Webbplatsen har under tiden för projektet genomgått två uppdateringar och arbetet med webbplatsen kommer med hjälp av användartesterna fortsätta även efter projektavslutet. / This report describes the process of updating the website qnodd.se, a website that is designed to introduce the teaching material Qnoddarnas värld, published by Natur &amp; Kultur, Sweden. The report presents former student essays and theories of usafulness and design principles that have been applied when preforming user testing and evaluations. The site has during the project undergone two updates and further development of the site will through the user tests continue even after the project is finished.

What if a computer wasn’t necessarily the best place for kids to learn the fundamentals of coding? A new wave of digital coding teaching tools has been ushered into America, with the country progressively gaining more interest in having kids learn code.  The goal of this project has been to propose an alternative teaching method, one focused and tailored to students who learn best through kinesthetic and visual means.  The approach has been to combine tangible interaction principles to help make the introductory stages of learning code as approachable and intuitive as possible.  The final result of this thesis is a modular toy system which gradually introduces kids to the fundamentals of coding independent of a computer, prompting exploration and problem solving.

The role of visual communication design continues to increase in importance around the world. In Bahrain, organisations are increasingly considering visual communication design as a means of accomplishing organisational goals. The research aims to understand the process by which design managers in organisations in Bahrain manage and evaluate visual communication designs to gain strategic advantage. Even though the management of visual communication design has not yet been recognised as a separate category of design management in Bahrain, its processes and approaches may differ from other management applications. This research opens with a contextual overview of the visual communication design management field, before presenting an understanding of how visual communication design can be utilised as an innovative approach to the strategic structuring organisational thinking. Methods have been developed for investigating how Bahraini client design managers manage visual communication design projects. Observational studies and interviews with client design managers and creative directors have been conducted to obtain an understanding of the visual communication design process, together with evaluation procedures in the Bahraini context. These empirical investigations have led to the development of a conceptual framework that describes the visual communication design management process and the evaluation procedure that is carried out by client design managers in Bahrain. The remainder of this thesis explains the outcomes of each phase of the research. The unique contributions of this study are embodied in a discussion of the findings together with reflections and recommendations for those involved and interested in design management in Bahrain.

ARGENT SOUND RECORDINGS explores the integration of visual, written and sonic elements to tell a story. "The Silver Bell," a fairy tale, is delivered through the internet – providing users an opportunity to experience and interpret a constructed narrative under the guise of an independent record label website.