Category: Design research
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What underpins creative and successful innovations?
I am currently writing a book covering a well-trodden path – creativity and innovation – with design as an essential link between these two activities. These are topics that have interested me since joining the Open University in the 1970s and have been the subject of much of my teaching and research since then. For…
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Discovering the Smallest Particle of Design and how that Pleases Santa
A bit of a festive post to end the year on how the smallest atom of design is and Santa are related. But first: What is the smallest possible particle of design process? At The Open University Design Group, this question has baffled at least one design education researcher for at least a minute. In…
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Reducing carbon from older buildings: the need for holistic heritage approaches or… hot water bottles, curtains and lifecycle carbon
My research is investigating ways to reduce carbon emissions from residential heritage buildings while retaining their heritage values. It is generally acknowledged that many more buildings can be considered heritage buildings than merely those designated in planning as listed or in conservation areas. It is unclear how many buildings fall into the ‘heritage category’ but it…
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Art History and Design in Dialogue: Abutments and Confluences
Design at the Open University has always bridged knowledge systems and approaches from the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. The Design Group connects to other schools within STEM but also to other faculties and schools at the Open University. The new Special Issue in the Open Arts Journal ART HISTORY AND DESIGN IN DIALOGUE:…
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Design @Open YouTube channel
We have curated a collection of videos authored by OU Design staff and students on our newly opened YouTube channel. https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/channel/UC5dwgQTcTO0bCgA1Oiu-TBQ/playlists The collection introduces research projects, qualification engagement events and seminars. We seek to grow the collection, and each month we will introduce a Design academic in a video interview. In October, I interviewed Prof…
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Civic action during and beyond COVID – challenges and opportunities
It is without doubt true that the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our ‘normal’ way of life, our work and the way we communicate and socialise with others. Many people now increasingly face important economic, health and mental wellbeing challenges and some groups within our society are hit worse than others (e.g. women, and BAME groups).…
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Reflections on participatory design at the OU- in a Design Emergency
There are a few advantages that stem from the current pandemic. As well as momentary improvement in air quality and watching wildlife re-occupy some urban environments, conferences that previously we would have had to travel to, can now be joined on a mobile phone. This opens up many possibilities – conversations taking place across the…
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OU Design Summer School 2020 – Week 2 (and mostly 3 if I’m honest…)
OK, so in the best traditions of being an OU student: life got in the way of what I wanted to do; I realised that what I wanted to do was probably a bit, and I failed to meet my own deadlines… But part of being an OU student is that with these difficulties come…
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OU Design Summer School 2020 – Week 1
A few of us are working on an OU Design Summer School this year and we already have a great bunch of students working on this. It’s a bit of an experiment in terms of trying to get a community of learning going with a whole range of individual learning goals. I’ll blog separately about…
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The Challenge of Re-Opening a Community Garden – The Covid-19 Crisis and Access to and Uses of Green spaces in Cities
Now that the UK lock-down has been eased, although we observe increasingly local lockdowns being actioned, we can start to look back at what impact the Covid-19 crisis had and continues to have on social life in cities. In this short blogpost, I want to share some initial thoughts on the access to and uses…