Category: Design engagement
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Christian Nold: Mapping, Generative Coding, Science and Technology Studies and Systemic design
Hi, my name is Christian Nold and I started at the OU in September 2021 as a Lecturer in Design. In this text I want to introduce myself and offer a few themes from my work that might be relevant to both design teaching and research such as mapping, generative coding, Science and Technology Studies […]
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Creative Activism, COP26, Emerging and Forgotten Voices
Today is the last day of COP26 and, being based in Glasgow, I thought it would be a good time to share some thoughts and images. I don’t want to write about COP26 itself, but rather about how creative activism has reshaped the city space and visually and emotionally engaged people in the last two […]
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Working towards gender equality at the School of Engineering and Innovation
I am very proud to say that the School of Engineering and Innovation, which Design is part of, has received an Athena SWAN Silver Award following its recent submission to AdvanceHE. Athena SWAN is an internationally-recognised gender equality initiative, acting as a catalyst for change and cultural transformation, which enables staff and students to achieve […]
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Incubating Civic Leadership
Much of the research we do at the Design Group is driven by a sense of care for people, our places and the planet, and an aspiration to use design to enthuse and empower people to create better futures. We often focus on the struggles but also creativity of everyday people, especially those that are […]
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Some Research Conclusions… with Playmobil!
My research is investigating ways to reduce carbon emissions from heritage buildings while retaining their heritage values, I have mostly completed my data collection and am now in the process of analysing it all. Once again the OU Graduate School are running a research poster competition that includes a multimedia option and this seemed like […]
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Homeworld ’81 revisited
The Homeworld ’81 BBC Future Home 2000 Last month I attended one of the online events celebrating the 40thanniversary of the Milton Keynes Homeworld ‘81 exhibition. Yes, I am old enough to have been there (so was Robin Roy and a number of other old timers from the OU). Indeed, as I was covering the […]
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Co-designing inclusive design education
How can we shape an inclusive design education that is responsive to the diversity of students’ needs, interests and professional and personal context? This was a question we started exploring yesterday in an online workshop with students from our current Design and Innovation qualification. We feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to hear […]
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Claiming our turf. Making spaces safe through inclusive urban design.
Over recent weeks the media has been full of women sharing their stories about their experience of sexual harassment, and the statistics are shocking. It’s shocking too, that women, myself included, are not surprised by them. 97% of young women have been the victim of sexual harassment and, over the last decade, a woman has […]
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Ensuring effective user input in design
Stephen Potter and Lisa Bowers Here are a couple of perspectives on how we can engender effective user input in design – one being the experience of doing this as part of three major research projects, and the other in terms of design teaching. Firstly, the research examples. A good many years ago Steve Potter […]
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Meaningful participation through digital engagement
When COVID19 forced us to retreat into our social bubbles and our homes, the government needed to make plans so that people could still participate in planning matters that concerned them. Therefore, they issued emergency planning procedure guidelines for local authorities to ‘make any temporary amendments that are necessary to allow plan-making to progress, and […]