Design Discourse Research Articles

K and output: Two Student Publications in Light of Mid-Twentieth Century Graphic Design Education

Previous historiography of graphic design education in the mid-twentieth century is shaped by published theories and educational principles of a limited circle of design teachers. As a counterbalance, this article stresses the relevance of a marginalized source: design student magazines. It juxtaposes K and output, published in the early 1960s at the Basel School of Design and the Ulm School of Design. Both magazines intended to open critical debates at their schools, but took opposite paths regarding design, editorial concept, content of articles, and critical engagement with their respective schools' design philosophies. An analysis of their reception and context reveals the magazines' corrective potential for design education by raising crucial issues within the design discourse of the 1960s.

The Hidden Transcripts of Graphic Designer to Power of Agency in Denpasar City

The phenomenon of free design discourse raised by companies or printing agencies as a gimmick to face business competition has caused controversy in the graphic design field. Indirectly, this discourse affects the public mindset and becomes a negative stigma against the graphic designer profession. The free design phenomenon is considered to be a threat to the existence of graphic designers and we should stand to fight it. The formulation of the problem raised includes the form of hidden transcripts, the factors that cause hidden transcripts, and the implications of the hidden transcripts of graphic designers to agency power in Denpasar City. This research uses a qualitative approach and is studied with semiotic theory, discourse analysis theory, and knowledge power relation theory. The purpose of this research is to answer the form of hidden transcripts, the factors that causing hidden transcripts, and the implications of this hidden transcripts. The results of the analysis show that the forms of resistance media used by graphic designers are works of art and text with critical tones. This form of hidden transcripts is implied into conventional media and digital media. The factor causing hidden transcripts is the competition between two groups, the group that rejects free design (the idealist group) and the group that practices free design (the pragmatic group). The implications of hidden transcripts include: agents found this situation (competition), so that they can’t make a design for free again, hyperreality of free design, disharmony of relations between graphic designers and agents, and polarization of ideological battle arouse.

Industry, science education, and teacher agency: A discourse analysis of teachers' evaluations of industry‐produced teaching resources

AbstractThis study examines teachers' evaluations of teaching resources produced by industry to support science and technology teaching. The aim is to contribute to an understanding of how teachers negotiate the usability of industrial school initiatives for compulsory school science and technology. These evaluations are conceptualized in terms of teacher agency and educational governance. The collected data consist of focus group interviews where Swedish lower secondary school teachers discuss the usability of industry‐produced teaching resources. A discourse analysis was conducted and five discourses discerned regarding teachers' practical evaluations of industry‐produced teaching resources: (1) the curriculum discourse, (2) the educational design discourse, (3) the practical discourse, (4) the correct science content discourse, and (5) the partiality and bias discourse. The teachers draw on the different discourses to different degrees, and the teacher agency achieved in specific situations will vary. Based on the results a tool aimed at strengthening teacher agency in the practical evaluations of teaching resources from the industry is proposed. The study also contributes to a critical discussion on the influence of industry on the local education policy arena and suggests directions for strengthening teacher agency in situations where teachers evaluate and make decisions about the use of industry‐produced teaching resources.

(Re)Thinking Design with New Materialism: Towards a Critical Anthropology of Design

The article proposes an empirical and discursive understanding of design as engaging and intensifying uneven power relations. By affiliating with the ontological turn in anthropology, such re-defined reading of design acknowledges design's complicity with extractive capitalism while aiming to open up possibilities to think design otherwise. In recent years, inspired by the resurgence of materialism, abstract notions of design as mediating practice between human and environment have gained popularity. Yet, these more-than-human-centred design theories tend to obscure the material and immaterial infrastructures that still shape human and nonhuman realities. By utilising the example of sand's transformation into land and tracing its journey across sites, actors and continents, the infrastructures of planetary transformation – as well as what eludes them – are investigated. Turning matter into medium emphasises thresholds and ruptures in the human-material relationship and thus transcends both a socially constructed and material reading of reality. Through a historical and empirical relocation of the current more-than-human-centred design discourse, the research presented in this article aims to support the establishment of a critical anthropology of design.

A Flattering Robopocalypse

A Flattering Robopocalypse

Body As Architecture: Designing the Stout Body in the Age of Standardization

This article explores the curious intersections of stoutwear design, Gestalt Psychology, and architectural discourse in early twentieth-century American fashion media. In doing so, it focuses principally on trade media, style guides and advertisements that grappled with the perceived flaws of the stout woman’s physique and how sophisticated design principles, if properly handled, could create the appearance of bodily slenderness. By moving beyond the biological determinism of contemporary obesity discourse, this article argues that ideas about stoutness and, more specifically, what constituted a stout body, were produced through attempts to contain, control, and correct the fat, female body in fashion design discourse. By further embedding this research within a broader consideration of the relationship between bodies, dress, architecture, and modernist design thinking, this article argues that the mediums and discourses of fashion can open up pathways for thinking about the body itself as “designed.”

Emergent Urbanism & Beyond: Times of Transformation and Paradigm Shifts with a Twist on Heritage Urbanism

This paper is the product of reflections on the consequences of the latest discoveries of Emergent Urbanism that the authors identify as the specific issue dominating today's urban planning and urban design discourse, arguing that urban planning and design not only results from deliberate planning and design measures, but how these combine with infrastructure planning, and derive from economic, social and spatial processes of structural change. In the paper we reflectively also discuss ideas about urban heritage, urban planning & design, and how heritage and planning & design can contribute to urban development. Urban heritage is understood as an infrastructure comparable with other infrastructures that provide an arena for urban planning & design and urban social and economic development. Moreover, the paper includes a remodeled and novel, short discussion and standpoint about five contemporary urban planning & design ideals that dominate the contemporary planning & design discourse, and their different views of the past and urban heritage. The paper concludes that in any given situation and context, the dominating urban planning & design ideal define the specific urban heritage, and, thus, influence how we will understand the past—today and in the future but also the paper maintains that, we must equally recognize how forces of economic, social and spatial structural change contribute to shaping the contemporary urban landscape.

Design Discourse: An Outline of the Terminological Apparatus

Design is a relatively young field, increasingly in demand in modern culture – not only within its professionally established limits but also as a technique for generating new ideas and products in business, education, urbanism etc. Strengthening the professional boundaries of design as a form-building activity whose purpose is harmonization of human material environment can be done through a discursive approach. It provides the opportunity to “equalize” the material and ideal origins of design. This article explores the implementation mechanisms and the specific language means of design discourse. The necessity of giving conceptual status of such terms as “concept”, “sketch”, “layout”, “module”, “thing” and various others is shown. This research into the social-communicative aspect of design allows to develop an original and relevant system of concepts that can help not only to analyse the design processes and forms but also to establish its limits. This could help to address a number of more concrete theoretical problems, including specific design methods that distinguish it from artistic, architectural, marketing and general research methods.
 Keywords: design, design discourse, design thinking, form, objectivity, project, project implementation, concept

Design Thinking in Responding to Disruptive Innovation: A Case of Cork Stopper Industry Veteran

How can the design thinking approach assist incumbent firms in developing response strategies to gaining momentum disruptive innovations, along the lines of effective exploiting the established technologies and corresponding product/service? Such exploitative response strategies, implying successful strengthening and leveraging the disrupted firm’s existing technology without embracing the disruptive elements, have been to a large extent overlooked in the disruptive innovations literature. Using an inductive analysis of a critical case (a major cork-stopper veteran), the current study aims at developing a systematic understanding of exploitative strategic options and the role of design thinking in enabling them. The findings shed light on the effectiveness of the design thinking mindset to respond to disruptive innovations. In addition, we present evidence that a design thinking method can be successfully applied to process innovation. Finally, we demonstrate that to achieve a radical innovation based on design thinking principles, the establishment of design discourse is required.

Towards a Grammar of Design Motives

Designers routinely justify or substantiate their design decisions and need to persuade various stakeholders that their verbalized rationales are legitimate and appropriate. This paper thus starts from the assumption that verbal justification, as a major part of any design process, may be interrogated from a rhetorical perspective. Furthermore, insofar as designers are socialized to provide “proper” justifications for their design actions, their selectively expressed rationalizations can reveal ideological orientations within the larger design community. To interrogate the discursive framing of design actions, this paper introduces Kenneth Burke’s theory on a “grammar of motives.” This paper shows how a “grammar of design motives” can be utilized to analyze and critique design justifications and enhance designers’ awareness of how they articulate themselves rhetorically. Furthermore, as an interpretive guide, Burke’s framework can reveal patterns in design discourse, providing clues about dominant discursive conventions and, by extension, more deeply held conceptions of good practice.

‘The blue dot thing’: a discourse analysis of learner interlanguage in instructional design

ABSTRACT We used audio-recorded interactions from a co-design of early designers working together making a language learning app to map discourse practices onto an operationalisation of an early stage of design learning in instructional design. A previously published typography of design discourse operationally defined the discourse practices of an advanced beginner stage. We asked, How did the discourse practices of early designers emerge when they engaged each other in the act of designing? We searched transcripts for examples of nine discourse practices in design that were previously established by the literature which suggested these discursive practices might appear in design language in use. We found that these practices often did appear, but ranged in discursive proficiency, suggesting the existence of an interlanguage of design. This discourse analysis informs scholars of design learning as to the variability in the emergence of discourse practices in design. To illustrate these insights, we present five diverse excerpts that illuminate the breadth of how design discourse emerges in early designer’s discussions. From these data, we concluded that there is an interlanguage of instructional design that maps unevenly across discourse practices of the advanced beginner.

Front End Projects Benefits Realisation from a Requirements Management Perspective—A Systematic Literature Review

The recent notable emergence of a body of research in requirements management on one hand and benefits realisation has contributed to addressing a growing need for improved performance in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) projects. However, front end design (FED) as one of the vital processes in the project life cycle and delivery has attracted limited research to date within this understanding. This paper aims to map current evidence on requirements management in facilitating benefits realisation from an FED perspective. This is to bring about an updated and unified position on requirements management for its impact on design decision making. A systematic review of the literature covering the last ten years (2008–2018) aims first to build understanding and support identification of these emergent conceptual positions and secondly underscore essential requirements and their categorisations that impact on design discourse in FED. One hundred sixty-one peer-reviewed journal papers in the areas of benefits realisation and/or requirements management and/or FED based are identified on a pre-determined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Thirty-six requirements are identified as important in influencing use case changes important in design decision making broadly grouped into nine major categories. Following analysis, this research finds little evidence supporting an integrated requirements management practice and understanding to support design decision making. The research further finds bias in current research discourse towards four requirements categories (technical, economics, governance and environment); and 14 requirements, dominated by three strategic values, collaboration and project governance, with over 80% share of literature. The least 14 requirements such as “flow of spaces, social status/aspiration, mobility and integrated design” among others only account for less than 10% of literature. The authors argue for new research to bridge this gap, highlight the essential role of requirements management and broaden understanding to improve benefits realisation, particularly for FED processes.

Fences of childhood: Challenging the meaning of playground boundaries in design

Scholars have criticized the capacity of playgrounds to support children's participation in public life. Fences of childhood, such as walls, fences, and enclosures, dominate children's “public” spatial experiences in the global north. Challenging well-established critiques of the fenced playground as a space that segregates and controls childhood experiences, this study offers a novel and nuanced perspective, emphasizing the qualities of the playground fence that support play and playful connections, on, through, and around it. Employing an ethnographic methodology, this study includes 167h of observations in three typical urban public playgrounds in Greece and 65 semi-structured interviews with 124 participants. Drawing on recursive thematic qualitative analysis, the fence emerges as a blurred boundary, that is, an element that transgresses assumptions and questions spatial classifications and hierarchies. Rarely the subject of design discourse, these findings are particularly significant in design disciplines globally and offer new understandings on the possibilities afforded by the playground fence. Emergent themes, namely, indeterminacy, climbabilty, playability, and porosity, are proposed as principles to guide fenced playground design as part of a fundamental reconceptualization. This reconceptualization positions the fenced playground as a public space infrastructure, supporting intergenerational interaction and play as well as children's presence and play in the public realm.

Design Exposition Discussion Documents for Rich Design Discourse in Applied Visualization.

We present and report on Design Exposition Discussion Documents (DExDs), a new means of fostering collaboration between visualization designers and domain experts in applied visualization research. DExDs are a collection of semi-interactive web-based documents used to promote design discourse: to communicate new visualization designs, and their underlying rationale, and to elicit feedback and new design ideas. Developed and applied during a four-year visual data analysis project in criminal intelligence, these documents enabled a series of visualization re-designs to be explored by crime analysts remotely - in a flexible and authentic way. The DExDs were found to engender a level of engagement that is qualitatively distinct from more traditional methods of feedback elicitation, supporting the kind of informed, iterative and design-led feedback that is core to applied visualization research. They also offered a solution to limited and intermittent contact between analyst and visualization researcher and began to address more intractable deficiencies, such as social desirability-bias, common to applied visualization projects. Crucially, DExDs conferred to domain experts greater agency over the design process - collaborators proposed design suggestions, justified with design knowledge, that directly influenced the re-redesigns. We provide context that allows the contributions to be transferred to a range of settings.

A Utilitarian Decision—Making Approach for Front End Design—A Systematic Literature Review

The complexity of construction processes often means interaction between various stakeholders, activities and tasks in order to deliver the expected outcomes. The intensity and dynamics of front-end design (FED) mean decision techniques and methods are important in supporting projects benefits delivery more importantly those based on utility of decision making. This paper explores a new utilitarian decision-making approach based on a systematic literature review of FED decision making. It presents the state of the art in design decision making concepts and analysis of tools over the last 10 years (2009–2019). From a total of 111 peer-reviewed journal papers, fifteen decision-making techniques are identified as dominant in design decision making, broadly grouped in four major categories as explanatory/rational, Multi Criteria Decision Making techniques (MCDM), Hybrid and Visual methods. The review finds that the most applied of the MCDM is Quality Function Deployment (QFD); while among the rational/explanatory techniques is set-based design (SBD). While there is limited application of Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) in decision making, the paper finds that the robust consistency and structured approach better captures the intricate dynamics of FED; including modelling of the subjectivity, interdependences and uncertainty in design discourse.

How do students conceptualise the college internship experience? Towards a student-centred approach to designing and implementing internships

ABSTRACTAt a time when colleges and universities are anxious to prove that their graduates are employable, internships are being increasingly touted as valuable ‘high-impact’ practices. However, how students themselves conceptualise internships is poorly understood, which inhibits the inclusion of their voices in the employability discourse and considerations of program design. In this study we use the freelisting method from cultural anthropology to analyse data from students (n = 57) in three US colleges, using saliency analysis, thematic analysis, and social network analysis techniques. Results indicate that the most salient terms in the cultural domain of internships were: ‘experience,’ ‘learning,’ ‘paid,’ and ‘connections.’ Students discussed these words in utilitarian terms (e.g. something to ‘get’ for one’s resume), as important aspects of career- and self-exploration, and to highlight the importance of compensation. Differences in the complexity of student accounts were evident between students who had taken an internship and those who had not. These findings highlight how common definitions of internships reflect a homogenous and aspirational perspective that is inconsistent with student accounts. We conclude that students’ insights about internships are important to consider to re-frame the employability debate to include student perspectives and experiences, to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to internship design, and to facilitate student self-reflection.

Type-Cast? Insights on the Rhetorical Fluidity of Iconic Type

ABSTRACTOver the past few decades, numerous prominent authors in various spheres of design discourse have discussed the rhetorical potency of type “icons” and how they come to embody cultural connotation. As icons, typefaces offer a universal language system—an expansive visual vocabulary that immediately references what we already know of their context. Iconic typefaces and their letterforms are subject to a process of narrative interpretation where what we “already know of them” is in a constant process of resignification. Here, critics tend to follow a Barthesian view that, as mythic structures, letterforms’ narratives are continuously used and reused as signification in different contexts. This widely regarded view presumes that iconic meaning develops as a chain of signification, where one narrative builds onto the next. This, however, leaves little explanation for instances where symbolism embedded in iconic typefaces develops in unexpected ways. In this article, I therefore investigate and unpack other means by which iconic typefaces evolve rhetorical meaning. By referring to examples throughout, I explore typical perspectives on iconic type in the Barthesian sense, but also trace different processes of signification. In doing so, I aim to offer alternative insights into ideological type as a more fluid rhetorical entity.

Developing Design Discourse in Soviet Print Media: A Case Study Comparing Estonia and Lithuania, 1959–1968

This essay analyzes the different serial publications that disseminated design knowledge in the Baltic States between 1959 and 1968, in order to understand the mediation of “design” as a developing discipline in local print media. The essay compares two Soviet peripheral states, Estonia and Lithuania, for a better understanding of the variations and similarities between different and local design cultures. It demonstrates that, although the two states had their own distinctive design systems, which manifested in the structure of the publications, these design publications mirrored similar structures of modernization. Relevant information was presented in ways dependent on their intended audiences. For specialists, Western information was presented in a balanced and direct manner, whereas in articles written for the general public, modernism was mediated either via abstract guidelines that referred to the need to be “contemporary” or through references to European Socialist material culture.

A Critical Exploration of Agonistic Participatory Design

Agonism is often described as a means for designers and citizens to reveal and contest hegemonies in society. This paper explores how agonism used within participatory design processes can enable participants to question power structures embedded in projects, express diverging views and renegotiate project frames. The potential for reaching the democratic ideals of participation thereby increases. However, there are challenges with agonism that are yet to gain momentum in the design discourse. The purpose of this paper is to identify these challenges. This is done by reflecting on a community-based tourism development project in Kenya. The reflection illustrates that not everybody may feel comfortable with sharing views in democratic forums, that people have varying preconditions for engaging in agonism and that a multitude of hegemonies exists within projects. It also highlights a need to reflect on the transferability of agonism, at a time when participatory design moves across cultures.

Laypeople's Collaborative Immersive Virtual Reality Design Discourse in Neighborhood Design.

The article discusses design communication and participation of laypeople in a virtual participatory urban design process. We speculate that an immersive virtual environment facilitated instrument can allow laypeople to take part actively as designers in the early stage of urban design ideation and generation. We have developed a design communication framework where laypeople can participate in design discourse on a neighborhood's future urban form. The strategy describes an urban design intent, which is informed by the development procedure of an instrument and workflow to engage participants. The integration of the instrument and the engagement procedure enable continuous designing of urban form by laypeople. A protocol analysis has been undertaken to investigate design communication. A coding scheme is applied to investigate, analyse, and understand how laypeople communicate with the design instrument and control design in the virtual environment. Through engaging non-experts, the research impacts on the perceptual affordance created by immersive 3D buildings artifacts and verbal conversation. The protocol analysis validated the setup so that subsequent studies can address the meaningfulness of such design conversations.