Category: Design research
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Engaging children in design
As part of a research project that aims to explore the processes of empowering people to design (www.empoweringdesign.net), the research team has occasionally explored different ways for engaging the children of participating families in the design of community spaces. This typically occurs in workshops and open day events where children of adult participants engage in […]
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What’s new in aircraft design?
This week I attended the Royal Aeronautical Society 6th Aircraft Structural Design conference (https://www.aerosociety.com/events-calendar/6th-aircraft-structural-design-conference/) hosted at ‘We the Curious’ in Bristol. The conference aimed to address the challenges faced by designers of next generation aircraft, including environmental constraints, advanced manufacturing and materials as well as new design approaches. Smart and efficient mobility with reduced environmental impact […]
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Envisioning Futures of Design Education
Do you know how design should be taught in the future? Our recent paper in the journal Dialectic reports on a workshop we held with a group 6 design educators and 40 international participants to explore the future of design education. To spark off the discussion, the 6 design educators presented 4 provocative future […]
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PhD Fellowship Opportunities at the Energy DTA
Energy research opportunities at The Open University (OU) through the DTA3 COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme. The OU is a partner on the successful bid for the ‘Extended University Alliance Doctoral Training Alliances (DTA) in Energy, Applied Biosciences for Health and Social Policy called The DTA3 COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme. This is […]
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Design Star Methods Day
For the last two years we’ve hosted a research methods day for the AHRC funded Centre for Doctoral Training ‘Design Star‘. This year we focused on exploring the relationship between ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies in our own research … through the making of personal ‘thinking positions’ pyramids and placing them on a landscape describing different paradigms of approaching research, […]
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‘It’s OK, to want to be ordinary…’
Recently one of my colleagues, for the purposes of this blog let’s call her Helen, is nearing two notable landmarks in her life. One is her fortieth birthday and the second is her final ophthalmic consultation to register her as blind. For most of her life, Helen has been visually impaired, but she then became […]
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Memories of Lionel March (1934 – 2018)
Memories from friend and former-student, Chris Earl: Lionel March was a scholar and artist. He inspired generations of students and colleagues to combine the formal and the creative in planning and design. His contributions to theory and practice ranged from mathematics to painting, from computation to stage set design, from architectural history to architectural practice […]
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On Lionel March and abduction
Design at the Open University, has a history that brings together different research traditions and thematic areas. One of those research traditions is focussed on mathematical and computational studies of design and can be traced back to Lionel March who was appointed Design Chair at the OU in 1976 and founded the Centre for Configurational […]
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Designing successful consumer products
I have always been interested in design, and as a child I was fascinated by the old washing machines, cookers and lamps in London’s Science Museum. As a teenager I wanted to be an architect, but decided to do engineering, which spanned my interests in design and science. This led me to study mechanical engineering […]
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EqualBITE – Gender Equality in Higher Education
Over the past 2 years I’ve been working with the original BITE team (Judy Robertson and Alison Williams) and colleagues at Edinburgh University (Lara Isbel and Daphne Loads) to produce EqualBITE: Gender Equality in Higher Education. (PS It’s available FREE to download from the publisher’s website (so stop reading this and go get it now!): […]