Category: Design research
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Serious Youth Violence & Social Media
I am Daniel Chapman a PhD researcher with the OU under the supervision of Nicole Lotz, Katerina Alexiou and Theodore Zamenopoulos. In my research, I interrogate and investigate the intricate and delicate problem that is Serious Youth Violence and social media. I am interested in the ways in which social media platforms generate, manipulate, and […]
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Food, shelter and re-designing home
As a new resident in Milton Keynes, I’ve brought along my decades-long curiosity about how people live day to day and how they organise themselves in different places and cultures to meet needs for food and shelter. Since neither can be guaranteed for all people anywhere in a world of deepening inequality, designers committed to […]
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Lessons from a Santaless Sleigh
Having been asked to provide a Design Blog just ahead of Christmas, I wondered how I might combine this yuletide timing with my design research. I have been working on both research and teaching pieces that explore the product, service and system design impacts of emerging electric and autonomous vehicle technologies. That’s not very Christmassy. […]
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Designing the ‘Fry Equation’
Harmonising purpose: exploring the ‘Fry Equation’ and bridging the gap between reform and service design by Rachel A.Wood. Whilst undertaking some literature searches for my design research project, I started to look at significant figures who have worked tirelessly to design, reform, and transform the criminal justice system for mothers in the UK. I […]
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School buildings and politics: a very brief history, and what this tells us about RAAC
The Elementary Education Act of 1870 accepted that education of children in England and Wales, up to 13 , was the responsibility of the state. Social historians have suggested that school buildings since then have been a response to regional and national political influences, both in design and social intent (Maclure,1984; Saint,1987; Lowe, 1997; Dudek, […]
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Contemplating the Future of Public Transport
Miguel Valdez and Matt Cook and I have been asked to write an article for The Conversation on ‘The Future of Public Transport’ and I am grappling with the draft text at this very moment. It’s not that we haven’t been doing very relevant research on the design of transport systems and their implications, but […]
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Celebrating a Decade of Strategic Partnership between The Glass-House Community Led Design and the Open University
Guest blog post by Sophia de Sousa, Chief Executive of The Glass-House Community Led Design Last month, I had the immense pleasure of watching my long-time collaborator and now dear friend, Professor Theodore Zamenopoulos, give his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Citizen-led Design at The Open University. Whilst it was an academic lecture about collaborative […]
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The journey to service co-design
“Inside Mum” – The journey to service co-design in parenting education with practitioners, and women who have experience of the Criminal Justice System I first started looking at research with the Open University in Criminal Justice in the late 1990s, when I encountered a powerful reader text by Anne Worrall (1990) about the experience of […]
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Dare to Hope: a box to support creative ageing
As we grow older, the opportunities to keep growing our creative capabilities and participate in social, cultural and economic life are reduced. Research suggests that active and creative living is a key factor for the health and wellbeing of individuals as they are ageing, but also a key factor for the quality of life and […]
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Cross-pollination Resources
Over the last year the Cross Pollination research project, part of the Placed-Based Research Programme hub, worked in several locations to see how the Cross Pollination approach could enable local organisations to enable their own communities. One of the key objectives for this particular research project was to develop ways to cascade and enable cross-pollination […]
