Category: Design research
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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…
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Celebrating the diversity of research in the built environment
A few months ago I took part in a ‘video challenge’ being run by the international, open access journal, Buildings & Cities. The challenge was for PhD students and those who had recently completed their PhDs to explain ‘why their research matters’ in a two minute video aimed at a general audience. The purpose of…
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Designing Intelligent Mobility
This week I received a long-awaited early Christmas present. My Design Group colleagues, Matthew Cook, Miguel Valdez, James Warren and I had written a chapter entitled Towards an Intelligent Mobility Regime in the second edition of the Elsevier book Intelligent Environments. As often happens for a major internationally co-authored publication, this has been almost…
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The inclusive design studio
I have been fortunate to experience diverse studio-based education approaches in different parts of the world and in different modes (hybrid, virtual, community-based, etc.). I position myself as a design education scholar with a particular interest in diversity and the socio-cultural contexts of designing. As a Senior Lecturer in Design at the Open University, I design online studios and…
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Celebrating our Gurnos
On a lovely sunny Saturday at the end of September, people on the outskirts of Merthyr got together to celebrate the place and community of Gurnos. The celebration was the outcome of several activities in partnership with the Open University in Wales as part of two different projects: the Creu Cyffro Community Renewal Funded project,…
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John Christopher Jones: In Memoriam – by Nigel Cross
The first Professor of Design at the Open University, the pioneering, internationally renowned and influential design researcher John Christopher Jones died on the 13th August 2022, in London, at the age of 95. John Chris at his 80th birthday party, Hampstead Heath and at the 50th Anniversary DRS conference, Brighton, 2016 (Photos: Robin Roy) Known…
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Sense and the city
New OU Design Group Publication! Sense and the city: An Emotion Data Framework for smart city governance Christian Nold http://oro.open.ac.uk/83446/ This paper demonstrates what emotion can ‘do’ when citizen actively use emotions to participate in the problem framing in smart city governance. The paper offers a framework of smart city participation with emotion data by…
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My Design@50 Research story
Last month, Jeff Johnson and I were interviewed in the online event OU Design Research @50. In the discussion, ably steered by Claudia Eckert, Jeff and I reflected on how design research has developed at the OU and what is distinctive about the OU’s design research approach. I thought for this blog it might be useful…
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Art-Based Research Methods, STE(A)M and Global Challenges
Over the past two weeks, I shared some thoughts about Art Based Research (ABR) methods with students and colleagues. I thought I would also write my reflection here. Personally, I have always been driven toward ABR for my need to think through making and my passion for the arts. But aside from my strictly personal…