Design research snapshot

The design group is multidisciplinary and engages in a wide range of research, including on sustainability, education, inclusion, systems thinking, arts and activism.

Working at a distance, it is difficult to keep track of what everyone is up to, and so, we have monthly meetings to discuss our projects and papers. Do look out for more in-depth blogposts in the future on any of the topics below. Contact us directly if you want to know more, or if you want to get involved. Most of us also supervise PhD projects. (Just add ‘@open.ac.uk’ after the names below).

Nicole.Lotz
I am working on a funding proposal in collaboration with German partners. We are proposing to look at the development of designer identity in hybrid environments, how the future designers’ attitudes, practices and ideas change with the environments they learn and work in, that is online, blended or face to face settings. To understand the impact of increasingly remote work practices in design is important to supporting our future designers and the ideas they produce.
Then, together with Muriel, my PhD students, I am analysing the qualitative data we collected from interviews, experience, and diary studies to develop cases of how mental health impacts on student progression in design and the awarding gaps as well. I hope this is going to inform the development of our new Design Programme in the making.
Oh, and finally, we are publishing a book chapter from the Hyperlocal learning networks project that was funded by OU Research and Enterprise in the north of Mexico. Taking a decolonial perspective, we report on the use of offline mobile learning in a marginalised community during the pandemic. We focused on the educational practices in the community context, including the dialogic opportunities created among participants in creative making activities in their homes.

Christian Nold
I have a new book chapter out with Routledge called ‘Aesthetic Strategies for Engaging with Environmental Governance’ written with Karolina Sobecka – http://oro.open.ac.uk/80368/ . The chapter is part of a collection about science and technology studies and art. The text discusses how artists can use surprising strategies to engage with environmental governance. Using a ‘mirroring’ strategy we show how to replicate the work of geoengineering scientists but restage it in an open-ended experimental and inclusive way. While within a ‘friction synthesis’ strategy we show how it is possible to seduce policy makers with technological data that sneaks in qualitative methods and grassroots activism via the backdoor. These are two examples of aesthetic strategies but there are many more that would be useful to catalogue as a public resource for making the world differently.

Lisa.Bowers
There are two or three things in the in the pipeline now. Iam currently collaborating with an entrepreneur and private company using the funding from Innovate UK – design foundations.
We are working on a proof of concept, and we are proving a concept for considering how low latency and haptic interaction can be used for distance learning, particularly sight impaired users. We are working with a studio concept which creates moulded forms akin to vacuum former. Participants are people with no sight perception, and we are inviting them to create a virtual 3D forma and then to force aa 2D piece of virtual fabric across a pro forma. Once this is complete the participant can lift the 2D fabric away from the pro-forma mould and they can continue to model and sculpt it using the haptic tools. We are alpha testing a new kit (HAPLY), which offers a 3 degrees of Freedom (3DoF) haptic pen which users can use to facilitate the modelling task. The haptic pen will allow the users to magnate to 2D/3D objects, and once in contact with the object it allows users to ‘pin’ the material in place.
We are hoping to create a proven concept for a touch-based studio from this study, that OU users can download from a cloud and work wherever they are in the UK or abroad. It is also a great system for the education of non-sighted design students. The system enables the sight impaired participant to hold and work on the same object with their tutor thereby, enabling the student to examine their model/prototype in detail examining cracks and crevices to improve their design.
I am also working as a consultant on a ARHC project called ‘the Gloaming’. It uses an Oculus, and a glove and users stand in a warehouse space in one country and someone else stands in either South Africa or Australia and both users can feel and touch the other, shake hands. My research with this project is set around inclusivity consultation working out how people from all walks of life with all ability needs can be involved and how the project team can work with users, so that they will not feel inhibited or frightened or disorientated by using the virtual kit.

Alessandra.Campoli
So I am working on a project about migration and the idea of home. It is focused on women migrants, women that moved to the UK from these different parts of the world. I am using an art-based approach because I am working on the idea of bringing art into STEM, to transform it into STEAM. We are asking the migrants to answer several questions around the idea of home and belonging, and engage in creative activities, ranging from identity boxes to draw in their migration lines, or choosing objects that represent the idea of home. We aim to create a virtual platform and a final exhibition. So far, we have engaged about 3035 women from different regions.
I am working on a paper on art-based research methods for a workshop that will be in June. I think yes, and especially integrating our based research into teaching and learning.
And the last thing. I am working with them with the Environmental science group and north of Scotland. We are working again on using art-based methods to communicate their scientific research around carbon sinks in the peatland.

Derek.Jones
I am still finishing off the corrections to the PhD to think of turning it into a book on distance design education. I am working on another book proposal with international colleagues on design studio properties. This is studio matters. Then, I am chairing two tracks for the forthcoming DRS Bilbao conference in June, one and design futures for design education, and the other one studio and properties. Oh, and Clive and my audio feedback paper should be published in the next month. It was 6 long years in the making, and we are finally getting it out there.

Claudia.Eckert
I am working on three grand proposals. One is an EU bid with the Business School about electric buses in the EU and Uganda. The other one is a proposal with Cambridge on systems modelling for the NHS. We try to figure out how to put buffers into staff allocation. This is all related to Engineering systems modelling. Finally, I am writing an EPSRC network proposal on ethics and engineering. I am currently gathering people and trying to familiarise myself with the various ethics communities. I also try to put a proposal in to the eSTEeM deadline to look at the difference between engineering knowledge and design knowledge. I have observed that students from the Design Innovation module (T317) only produce design methods rather than engineering methods when they take Engineering modules. This related to my more theoretical work on engineering knowledge. And then I am trying to finish a couple of papers urgently. One is on the trends in product development to 2040 and the other one is on networks of sustainable small businesses. And finally, I am proud to say that one of my PhD students submitted after 10 years of part time study.

Robin.Roy
I’m involved an action research project. A new housing development, including flats, houses, shops, community buildings and a co-housing scheme called Love Wolverton, is starting in 2022 on the old Agora site in Wolverton. I work with Wolverton Community Energy to help develop a community microgrid, a system design of solar PV panels and a storage battery linked to heat pumps and e-car charging facilities. We are collaborating with the developers TOWN, and the development is now funded by Milton Keynes Council.
A New Year’s resolution is to finish my new book on Creativity, design, and Innovation. One of the case studies, you might have seen on Dragons Den on 27th January, is about a couple who designed a special bag for dog walkers and got funding from one of the dragons to further grow their business. I use this case as one example of everyday innovation. The book will examine what makes creative innovations successful across the spectrum from transformative innovations like the smartphone, through Modernist buildings like Milton Keynes former central bus station, to more everyday ones like the dog walking bag.

Alice.Moncaster
The focus of my research is improving the environmental sustainability of the built environment. At the moment, I’m just finalising a report as part of the International Energy Agency EBC Annex 72 on ‘Assessing Life Cycle Related Environmental Impacts Caused by Buildings’; our particular report is on Understanding the impact of individual, industry & political decisions on transitions towards environmental sustainability. I’m currently supervising three PhD students looking at different aspects of reducing carbon emissions from buildings and building materials, all of whom are due to submit this year. I’ve also just started working with Buckinghamshire Council as part of a big six-year Defra-funded project to look at improving resilience to groundwater flooding and community engagement. I’m working on this with a research fellow, and we are advertising at the moment for a funded PhD student. I’m developing a bid to the EPSRC with geotechnical colleagues from Leeds and Cambridge about using the heat from tunnels for heat pumps, as the above- ground person in a below-ground project. I’m hoping to continue to focus on adaptation to climate change and retrofitting buildings and communities for low carbon and resilience, and I particularly enjoy research which combines an understanding of society and behaviour with technical solutions.

Maxim.Lamirande
With the last year of the PhD data collection is all done, I have a couple of publications out of it. So, it is all about notions to designing inclusively. Using the open innovation model by Valkenburg and Sluijs, (desirability, feasibility, viability, etc.) I am trying to investigate the enablers and barriers to inclusive design as it happens in real world practice. Now it is just a matter of writing up this thesis, but I have a couple of ideas about what I want to do afterwards.
I want to start a bid on socializing technologies, going back to my prosthetics and orthotics roots in a way. I want to advance from the medical model of disability to a more social model of disability. The environments in which people live have a huge factor on how they use their products, so one of them might be that you know people need to use orthotics, but they choose not to because they are visible, so they will not go to interviews with them because it is not a sort of representation of them. It is they think that you know it. It reflects poorly on them, so the project would be about experimenting and working with industry partners to develop some experimental products and really trying to push the boundaries of, you know, how we deal with people’s interactions in the real world with the assistive technology that they use.

Georgy.Holden
At our last research writing day, I have been picking up on an old paper I needed to do corrections on around interviews I did with students on the use of OpenStudio. I have been doing a scholarship project with a colleague with Arts History on developing a booklet and game for helping Masters-level Art History students to learn how to how to put an argument together. The game works in a way that you extract and analyse bits of evidence, and then you randomly put it together and the whole point is that we are trying to develop a method that might be useful for students doing projects.


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