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This research investigates the role of design as a ‘functional leader’1 in multinational organisations, to drive innovation successfully at a strategic level. It involved a detailed case study of the innovation process, and practices within Philips Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where design is a key function within the company but not yet recognised as a leading strategic discipline. Philips Design wanted design research to build an integrated map of its actual practices and correlate these with other corporate innovation practices, to help establish strategic recognition for their value. The doctoral challenge was to explicate the process and determine whether the findings have generic capacity to support the role of design as a leading functional discipline. The investigation integrates an iterative loop of; abductive reasoning of design thinking and inductive reasoning of management thinking in an action research cycle. The case study was an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a ‘participatory observer’ at Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews for data collection and refining their analysis using a Delphi Technique. The contribution to knowledge has been generated by combining these research methods to represent data in a logical manner using visual mapping techniques to produce an explicitly defined ‘design innovation process map’ for Philips Design. Comparison with three other multinational organisations explored how each perceives the contribution of design and the different roles it plays in their organisation. Triangulation with a third party expert was also used to validate the findings. The correlation of the research with literature in the field explored the relationship between human behaviour, organisational culture and business innovation cycles and took this an incremental step forward by visually illustrating the conceptual relationship between different theories. The focus became understanding the reasons for the differences between the thinkers and the practitioners in a design team. Significantly, this led to it validating the theory of ‘Design Driven Innovation’ by Roberto Verganti (2009). The study contributes value to his theory of innovation by highlighting four gaps in its application in multinational organisations and demonstrates that design can share the role of innovation leadership with other important functions only if it has an explicit process that aligns with organisational brand values and communicates the value generated by design effectively to the wider team. Therefore, whilst the research has not been able to confirm whether design can lead an effective innovation process at a strategic level, rather it needs to share this role in multinational organisations, it has identified the major reason for this as the differences between design team thinkers trying to find viable options for the future and practitioners trying to defend the core business in their organisation, resulting in a gap between strategy and operation. The research has confirmed the conditions for design to act as a leading functional discipline and provided design practitioners with tools that can help in strategic decision-making. It is hoped this research will inspire design researchers to carry out further study on the topic to improve and develop knowledge and competency to support the strategic role of design as a leading functional discipline in organisations. Also, that business, strategy and marketing researchers will be inspired to generate theories that could link the strategic role of the design innovation process to strategies in their own fields. Finally, the research identifies the need for quantitative research to explain the qualitative conceptual relationships it has depicted between designer behaviour and organisational culture in the different innovation cycles that exist in multinational organisations.

The phenomenon of timelessness has important connotations beyond its popular meaning. Although philosophical, timelessness is frequently applied to objects: there are various suggestions concerning the properties of a timeless object in literature and popular publications, but there is no apparent unanimity on how to realise these characteristics. The approach to sustainable development has broadened, but the impact of immaterial properties of objects needs to be further explored. This thesis addresses these issues through cross-disciplinary research, which is located in industrial and product design and embraces the subject areas of history of design and art, philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science and sustainable development. The research question is: what makes some objects retain their significance over time and in a changing human context? Although the analyses of literature presented in this thesis have made it evident that the discourse on sustainability, including system thinking, has an apparent focus on material characteristics, there is nothing implicating opposition to an expanded view comprising immateriality. On the other hand, there are indications that the ambiguity of timelessness and related notions, including how the judgment is formed causes confusion for designers pursuing longevity in objects. The aim for this thesis is hence to address this ambiguity and introduce directions, which would allow designers to consider the immaterial qualities of objects when designing and thereby promote a more profound holistic approach to sustainability and sustainable design. The thesis embarks on a deconstruction of timelessness, resulting in the phenomenon being conceptualised: affective sustainability, and subsequently explored through three applications. These initiate new lines of inquiry and allow for the thesis to conclude the key findings of the research. The study concludes that affective sustainability is considered to be a lived experience. Re-considering sustainability and rethinking time, tradition, aesthetics and perception facilitate comprehension of affectively sustainable objects: a designer has to use intuitive judgements and to reach beyond the personal these have to be balanced by the verbal visualisation of thoughts and the study of un-reflected human behaviour outside laboratory settings.

This thesis explores the process of ethical fashion purchasing through a qualitative research approach, to find insights to improve the provision and purchasing of socially responsible fashion on the UK high street. This was achieved through the investigation of both the consumers that purchase womens wear at a mid market level, but also the retailers who provide the merchandise. The relationship between these two parties was explored, with the communication methods also being investigated. Furthermore, the influence the communication of retailer Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) messages had on the final purchasing behaviour was also a key research area. This distinctive two-sided perspective was utilised to contribute to the creation of new knowledge in the area of ethical fashion purchasing behaviour, and consequently provide new perceptions of how positive, social changes can occur in the fashion industry. Much of the previous ethical fashion purchasing research has been criticized for several reasons including methodological weaknesses, survey instruments potentially overstating the importance of ethical issues, as well as participants having little to no incentive to answer truthfully (Auger and Devinney, 2007). As a result, researchers in this field have suggested that broader, more rigorous data collection tools need to be developed in order to advance this area of research (Dickson, 2011). With this in mind, a mixed method or bricolage approach (Kincheloe and Berry, 2004) was used to not only overcome the methodological issues identified, but to also address the knowledge gaps in a creative and innovative way (Bremner and Yee, 2011). As a consequence of using this approach, the interplay of data collection and analysis has resulted in an iterative process throughout the research undertaken. This iterative nature facilitated a five-stage data collection process, which included an ethnographic style case study with a major high street retailer, a consumer focus group and additional retailer, semistructured interviews. Between each of the five research stages, analysis and reflection took place, facilitating the development of the next data collection method. When addressing the study’s over-arching question: what influences ethical fashion purchasing, several factors were identified from both a consumer and a retailer perspective. It was found that whilst consumers do have a certain level of knowledge regarding social issues in the garment supply chain, they rarely implement this knowledge during their purchasing behaviour. The retailers surveyed, being evidenced in several of the additional interviews with CSR representatives, also identified this. However this lack of cohesion between consumer intentions and actual behaviour was found to be heavily influenced by the communication of CSR information from retailers to their customers. As a result, consumers were found to have a lack of understanding of social issues within the garment supply chain. Thus, it was concluded that the contribution to knowledge that this work makes is that an increase of retailer CSR communication, will aid in the development of a relationship between the consumer and supplier to increase connectivity, understanding and empathy, in order to influence ethical fashion purchasing. However, it is paramount that this CSR information is delivered in a simple way, in order for it to be understood by consumers. This was identified as an important factor due to a fundamental misunderstanding found in consumer understanding of the term ethical, and distinguishing this from closely related sustainable connotations. The approach and methodology utilised in this study was designed to address the problems identified in a new and innovative way, in order to lead to a series of new insights. The study of both the retailer and consumer simultaneously and the utilisation of creative methods attempted to provide a unique approach in dealing with the methodological issues previously mentioned. Due to the nature of the research, it has in the past been approached from a business or marketing perspective, however this study used creative skills and tools commonly used in design research. The value of this research has been evidenced in a results table, where the problems identified were addressed through a series of incremental stages towards change. These have been broken down into long and short-term changes, with the aim to gradually move the industry towards a more socially responsible future.

Understandings of, and objectives for, Interaction Design have been extended over the last few decades. Firstly, a single user-centred focus for Interaction Design is no longer regarded as adequate where any single central focus for design is now questioned. Post-centric approaches such as Balanced, Integrated and Generous (BIG) Design propose to achieve a broadened worth-focused content scope for Interaction Design, where worth is the balance of increasing benefits over reducing costs and generosity of choice. Secondly, there has been a broadened scope for disciplinary values in Human-Computer Interaction research, with the initial engineering and human science values of User-Centred Design and Human-Computer Interaction now complemented by the rapidly maturing creative field of Research through Design (RtD). Thirdly, RtD as a form of creative reflective practice does not have a sequential process, but needs parallel activities that can achieve total iteration potential (i.e., no restrictions on iteration sequences). Structured reflective tools such as the Working to Choose Framework may reveal this potential. An important opportunity remained that a complete challenging case study that integrated these domains (worth-focus) and tools (RtD, structured reflection) was carried out. The case study addressed the challenging social issues associated with supporting care circles of individuals with disabilities. It is original in completely tracking the combination of RtD with worth-focused Interaction Design, supported by established user-centred practices. The resulting research has made contributions through the tracking of the RtD process to: worth-focused design and evaluation resources; structured reflection; demonstration of innovative parallel balanced and integrated forms of iteration; and to future social innovation for disability support.

This research study builds an understanding of the relationship between storytelling approaches and their impacts at a design pitch, where concepts are presented to external clients. Storytelling is an integral part of design, with evidence of storytelling techniques found throughout the design process: from the use of digital media such as videos and animation during design pitches, to the use of personas and scenarios during research and evaluative phases. In building this understanding, a literature review was conducted to explore storytelling from a broad societal perspective and more specific organisational and design perspectives. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees from Unilever’s Household Care and Laundry departments, and Accenture’s Innovation Centre. Discussion centred on identifying storytelling approaches used by designers when pitching product and service concepts, and their relationships to various impacts, with student projects (at Unilever) and consultancy work (for Accenture) focusing the interviews. Thematic analysis was employed to establish themes in approach, building a framework of relationships with their determined impacts. The study’s contribution to knowledge is the presentation of a framework, entitled ‘Design Pitch Storytelling: The Impact-Approach Framework’. It builds on the current understanding of storytelling in design theory by identifying the important role that storytelling approaches play in the presentation of design concepts whilst offering insights into how designers use storytelling approaches in a design pitch. It serves as a descriptive tool offering an alternative viewpoint of the cases that may have a wider relevance to comparable large scale, internationally facing organisations and designers involved in similar design projects. In terms of an analytical process, this research study contributes further original knowledge in that it can be replicated to better understand existing working relationships between organisations and designers working on design projects in different contexts.

In this PhD research by thesis, the author documents his journey that explores modes of operations beyond those predominantly applied at NASA. Specifically, he is looking at designerly and artistic modes of operation, with a research goal to show demonstrable value to enhance NASA’s capability to innovate. This exploration is built on cybernetic perspectives and goal-seeking focused on human centered design within NASA’s space exploration paradigm. The author uses a performative approach through real world examples to highlight and substantiate the benefits of novel perspectives, conversations, and boundary objects, which shows their demonstrable value to NASA. The significance of the research findings is discussed in relations to the state of practice, which is derived from interviews with practitioners across NASA’s organizational hierarchy, combined with personal experiences, and independent research on the topics. The two primary application examples examine strategic level organizational conversations in support of strategic decision-making, and a human centered approach to space habitats that utilizes conversations and boundary objects aimed towards higher-level needs of the astronauts. Secondary examples, as added material, explore designing the design environments through human centered conversations with stakeholders, storytelling, multi-nodal and multimodal conversations, designerly modes of operation in engineering-focused environments, and explore the potential benefits of a design education program to change the organizational culture on the long term. These examples are grounded and substantiated using specifically created boundary objects, which are used as communication tools across multiple disciplines. This research is timely, because expanding humanity into space is an ongoing and inevitable step in our quest to explore our world. Yet space exploration is costly, and the awaiting environment challenges us, the human explorers, with extreme cold, heat, vacuum and radiation—among other conditions—unlike anything encountered on Earth. As a consequence, today’s space exploration, both robotic- and human-exploration driven, is dominated by objects and artifacts which are mostly conceived, designed and built through technological and engineering approaches, to support basic physiological, psychological, and safety needs. NASA’s activities, products, and processes are controlled by rigid procedural requirements, and are highly dependent on government funding. Since the Apollo era, the annual budget decreased by nine fold and remained virtually flat. Resource constraints, funding uncertainty, and changes in the organizational culture gradually led to innovation barriers, and formed a temporally and spatially coupled cyclical wicked problem for NASA. Yet, the aging workforce, still remembering the golden age of space exploration, is hoping and planning for large “fire and smoke” type missions, which puts NASA on an unsustainable path, while perpetuated by technology and management focus to overcome obstacles. Finding new directions may require a second-order cybernetic transformational change, starting with a changed paradigm, which in turn will impact the Agency’s mission and culture, and influence the core processes. In this research the author makes a case to broaden NASA’s worldview today, which is dominated by science, engineering, technology, project and resource management considerations. This can be achieved through novel perspectives gained from cybernetics, and other modes of operation through human centered design and art. While the proposed performative approach is applied to NASA, it is not bounded by it. These perspectives and modes of operation can be applied to any other field, discipline or hierarchical structure within scientific, technological, and social developments. Cybernetic mapping of any environment can provide insights to the connections and the potential for interactions between the various actors within. Understanding the complexities, non-linearity, and competing and often misaligned influences is important to set goals for the system and navigate towards preferable outcomes. Controlling and regulating the variety of these dynamic and responsive systems, in line with the set out goals and objectives, also require considerations and guidance, where cybernetic mapping, conversations and novel shared languages between the actors (in the form of commonly agreed understanding of the meaning), and human center design may play a role. When people are involved in these circular interactions and conversations, human centeredness can lead to transformative psychological impact on a personal level, and strategic advantages at an organizational level.

The textile selection is a crucial part of the design process, for which there is no systematic understanding and no support in place from the designer experience perspective. In the selection, designers need to synthesise technical information, their sensory and affective experience around textiles, and its related meanings. However, currently the textile industry just provides methods to describe, measure, or predict the properties of textiles perceptible to hand manipulation: methods that only partially support the designer. Hence, designers’ selection still relies heavily on experiential knowledge, that is, through processes that remain implicit or inaccessible to conscious articulation. The thesis addresses this gap by contributing new understanding of when and how the textile selection happens in the design process, uncovering tacit processes and embodied aspects integral to it, and secondly, by developing a toolkit to support the designer experience when selecting. The Design Research Methodology (Blessing and Chakrabarti, 2009) was taken as the overarching methodological approach, and was enriched by a further selection of methods. This approach enabled the description of the textile selection in the design process by investigating diverse sectors (fashion, interior and vehicle design), and led to the development of a support for this activity reflecting the reality of designers’ practice. To understand the textiles selection processes, four qualitative exploratory studies were conducted. Study one investigated the textiles selection by designers, taking a Grounded Theory approach, which revealed when (in the design process) and how textiles selection happens (through four emerging themes - ‘Collection’, ‘Interrogation’, ‘Projection’, and ‘Transformation’). These processes were articulated to propose the ‘Quad-core Textile Selection Model’. Study two investigated a facsimile design process, of sports shoes customisation in a retail setting. Through this study the tacit processes were confirmed and better understood, and ‘Projection’ was further elaborated as a phenomenon. Study three investigated an intense moment of selection in the context of a textile fair to understand what sensorial information underpins the textile selection processes. This study revealed the importance of the multisensory experience to textile selection, and the complexity of remembering and communicating such experiences in the design process. Study four explored the embodied aspects of textiles selection emerging as significant through the tactile experience in more depth, using the ‘Elicitation Interview’ (Petitmengin, 2006) method to obtain a first-person verbal description of experiential processes. The latter revealed 3 types of touch behaviour and 3 tactile-based phases of the textile selection process, and their dynamics. These findings enrich the proposed model including experiential and embodied components of the textiles selection that go well beyond ‘textile hand’ (AATCC Test Method 202-2012), and highlight the dynamics and interactions between the textile, the body and the product to be, which emerged as crucial for these processes. Finally, these findings were used as input for designing ‘The sCrIPT Toolkit’, comprised of instructions that facilitate focus and elaboration of the textile experience in the textiles selection. To conclude, a reflection on the pedagogical potential of this tool is presented, based on explorations within various sectors in academia.

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The production of acoustic music bridges two senses - touch and hearing - by connecting physical movements, gestures, and tactile interactions with the creation of sound. Mastery of acoustic music depends on the development and refinement of muscle memory and ear training in concert. This process leads to a capacity for great depth of expression even though the actual timbral palette of each given acoustic instrument is relatively limited. By contrast, modern modes of music creation involving recorded music and digital sound manipulation sacrifice this immediate bridge and substitute more abstract processes that enable sonic possibilities extending far beyond the acoustic palette. Mastery in abstract approaches to music making doesn’t necessarily rely on muscle memory or ear training, as many key processes do not need to happen in realtime. This freedom from the limits of time and practiced physical manipulation radically increases the range of achievable sounds, rhythms and effects, but sometimes results in a loss of subtlety of expressiveness. This practice-based PhD asks whether it is possible, and if so how, to achieve an integration of relevant sensor technologies, design concepts, and formation techniques to create a new kind of musical instrument and sound creation tool that bridges this gap with a satisfying result for musicians and composers. In other words, can one create new, multi-dimensional interfaces which provide more effective ways to control the expressive capabilities of digital music creation in real-time? In particular, can one build on the intuitive, logical, and well-known layout of the piano keyboard to create a new instrument that more fully enables both continuous and discrete approaches to music making? My research practice proposes a new musical instrument called the Seaboard, documents its invention, development, design, and refinement, and evaluates the extent to which it positively answers the above question. The Seaboard is a reinterpretation of the piano keyboard as a soft, continuous wavelike surface that places polyphonic pitch bend, vibrato and continuous touch right at the musician’s fingertips. The addition of new realtime parameters to a familiar layout means it combines the intuitiveness of the traditional instrument with some of the versatility of digital technology. Designing and prototyping the Seaboard to the point of successfully proving that a new synthesis between acoustic techniques and digital technologies is possible is shown to require significant coordination and integration of a range of technical disciplines. The research approach has been to build and refine a series of prototypes that successively grapple with the integration of these elements, whilst rigorously documenting the design issues, engineering challenges, and ultimate decisions that determine whether an intervention in the field of musical instrumentation is fruitful.