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Previous research has evidenced that communication design students wish to engage further with sustainable practices but struggle to understand how (Newton and Ellis, HER conference 2023). Whereas other design disciplines (fashion, product, furniture) can often focus on a “physical” output, communication design embraces multiple outcomes, distributed throughout a range of platforms, representing an area of industry and study which can prove difficult to define. This study aims to add further clarity as to how students consider sustainability aligned to their practice.

Previous focus group research sought to uncover how communication design students implicitly consider “sustainability”, uncovering that their knowledge is limited. Suggestions from participants emphasised that it was the role of the institution, not the student, to fully integrate sustainability into practice and to define methods they can deploy. This paper notes a subsequent workshop conducted with 33 Level 5 undergraduate students asking them to reflect on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 12/13 in relation to meaningful practice and institutional responsibility.

Workshops demonstrated the need to engage with sustainable thinking throughout every stage of development. It is clear that students demand more from academic staff at programme level, and from the institution at large, to provide further solutions to sustainability concerns which are relevant to their specific practice.

Discussion surrounding pedagogical practice across communication design lacks interrogation, yet the discipline represents a significant aspect of both design and contemporary society. It is paramount that methods for reinforcing implicit engagement with sustainable best practice within students, their development and their future beyond university are therefore developed.

Organizations facing issues related to growth, innovation, and strategy are embracing design thinking, a problem-solving process. This study explores 40 design thinking initiatives and identifies operational practices emerge and empirical categories across various contexts. Quantitative analyses of the initiatives and qualitative interview data are used to distinguish four configurations of action analogous to races: training, emphasizing learning-by-doing; marathons, capturing personal reflection over a long project; relays, highlighting team collaboration; and sprints, reflecting fast-paced product innovation. The initiatives are differentiated as designer-led versus team-driven and, low-urgency versus high-urgency. Implications of practicing design thinking in Organization Development and Change are discussed.

There has been a recently growing interest by architects in practice-based research and the impact of research. At the same time, several post-graduate architecture programmes with practice-led research agendas were founded. This shift towards architectural design research is analysed using the notions of “process-driven research”, “output-driven research” and “impact”. The study aims to investigate and unveil the link between graduate programmes and graduates with a research interest and to test the tripartite model of “process-driven research”, “output-driven research” and “impact” in the context of small architectural practices.

The study uses a qualitative and exploratory research approach that includes 11 in-depth interviews conducted in 2020, during the first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom (UK) selected interviews were architects representing (1) members or alumni of practice-related graduate architecture programmes in London and (2) founders of London-based small architectural practices within the last decade.

While focussing on the London context, the paper offers transferable insights for the key potentials of practice-led design research in small architectural practices and the actions that might improve research practice.

This paper addresses a lack of studies on how design research differs between diverse types and sizes of architectural firms, why emerging small architectural practices increasingly engage with research and how this shapes their practice. This knowledge is important to fully understanding architectural design research and its strengths or weaknesses.

The combination of mobile devices and innovative tools offers new possibilities for the development of a community of practice for design makers. Mobile learning has become an essential method that design makers should adopt. The main content of this study is to explore the characteristics of learning behaviors and learning needs of creative design makers' group in forming a community of practice in the era of mobile learning.

This study conducted questionnaire research on the potentially associated or directly associated population of design makers. The process of the study also combined observational and interview studies to compensate for the lack of questionnaire research.

Based on the support of mobile learning technology, design makers share and co-create to achieve individual development and evolution of learning organizations, and produce creative value. Design-maker communities of practice form common communities in the framework of informal organizations to support continuous individual learning. Convergent interests or concerns in making things, real-world contexts based on makerspaces and hands-on practice based on real projects are the basis for forming design-maker communities of practice. A variety of open-source hardware, software and platforms that can support mobile learning are important for the development of design-maker communities of practice. The design-maker community of practice needs group factors, activity development, physical and technical resources, spatial support and institutional norms to enhance learning behaviors and satisfy learning needs.

The discovery and construction of these associated factors can help creative design practitioners form a lasting and virtuous organizational development. This study facilitates the formation of a social network for learning and knowledge sharing among design-maker communities of practice. It enhances the innovation ability and enthusiasm of design makers according to the population characteristics and learning needs of design makers. This study also facilitates the generation of a positive adaptive maker culture and maker spirit within design maker organizations.

A critical attribute of open educational practices (OEP) is the pursuit of open scholarship which comprises the release of educational resources under an open licence scheme that permits no-cost access, use, reuse, adaptation, retention and redistribution to others. The degree of openness in relation to this attribute will depend on the context and culture of the place and the people in it. When left to chance, the adoption and practice of open scholarship by educators is at best sketchy. For optimum impact, a design-based approach is essential. A central focus of such an approach will need to target educators’ belief systems and practices about their scholarship. Any such work will involve researchers collaborating with practitioners in real-life settings to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to report on how the development and use of such a design-based approach, implemented by the Open University of Sri Lanka, impacted the adoption and uptake of open scholarship among teachers in the Sri Lankan school system in terms of changes in their use of instructional resources, pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices.

The study adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (Reeves, 2006), which involved researchers collaboratively working with practitioners in real-life settings to improve their educational practices along three aspects – instructional resource use, pedagogical perspectives and pedagogical practices. Based on the four stages of the DBR approach – analysis, solution, testing and refinement, and reflection, a professional development intervention programme was designed and implemented to support teachers on the integration of open educational resources (OER) and adoption of OEP in their teaching-learning process. Data collected throughout the process using multiple strategies such as questionnaire surveys, concept mapping, lesson plans, focus group interviews, self-reflections and “stories”, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

By the end of the intervention, significant changes were observed in teachers’ use of instructional resources, their pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices. While resource usage has shifted from no or low usage of OER to reuse, revise, remix and creation of OER, the pedagogical thinking and practices of teachers moved from a content-centric and individualized patterns to more constructivist, context centric and collaborative ways. The diffusion of OEP was prominent along two dimensions – enhancements in the individual practices in innovative OER use as well as collaborative practices of sharing of resources, knowledge and good practices.

The systematic and flexible methodology adopted based on the DBR approach via a framework designed as a contextualized, process oriented and a self-reflective enquiry has been very useful to support changes in OEP among practitioners over time.

This iterative process allowed the researchers to function as “designers”, while investigating real-life issues in collaboration with the practitioners through reflective enquiry to further refine innovative practices towards OEP. This provides valuable insights for improved design solutions for future interventions in similar contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a critique of value sensitive design (VSD) and to propose an alternative approach that does not depart from a heuristic of value(s), but from virtue ethics, called virtuous practice design (VPD).

This paper develops a philosophical argument, draws from a philosophical method (i.e. virtue ethics) and applies this method to a particular case study that draws from a narrative interview.

In this paper, authors show how an approach that takes virtue instead of value as the central notion for aiming at a design that is sensitive to ethical concerns can be fruitful both in theory and in practice.

This paper presents the first attempt to ground an approach aimed at ethical technology design on the tradition of virtue ethics. As such, it presents VPD as a potentially fruitful alternative to VSD.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the current understanding of organisational conditions that facilitate service design. Specifically, the focus is on organisational capabilities, interactive practices and individual abilities as units of analysis across service system levels. Grounded in design principles, the paper conceptualises and delineates illustrative service design conditions and introduces a respective service design capability-practice-ability (CPA) portfolio. In doing so, an emerging microfoundations perspective in the context of service design is advanced.

Conceptual paper.

This paper identifies and delineates a CPA that contributes to service design and ultimately customer experiences. The service design CPA consists of six illustrative constellations of service design capabilities, practices and abilities, which operate on different organisational levels. The service design CPA builds the foundation for in-depth research implications and future research opportunities.

The CPA framework suggests that if an organisation seeks to optimise service design and subsequent customer experiences, then individual- and organisational-level (cap)abilities and interactive practices should be optimised and synchronised across specific CPA constellations.

This paper provides the first microfoundations perspective for service design. It advances marketing theory through multilevel theorising around service design capabilities, practices and abilities and overcomes extant limitations of insular theorising in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how designers and engineers practice design while Making. Motivated by their roots in constructionist learning principles, Makerspaces are increasingly used as sites to learn design, especially in undergraduate engineering education programs. However, there has been little work on how trained designers Make and how design emerges in their Maker practices.

In this paper, a conceptual framework is constructed to identify design practices within Making informed by theories of human-centered design and designerly ways of knowing. The framework is used to analyze narratives of ten experienced designers and Makers to understand how they enact design while they Make.

The rich and compelling narratives of the participants support the proposed conceptual framework, providing qualitative evidence for how designers practice and know design while Making. This study also reports on a strong theme of realizing purpose and personal meaning while Making across the participants’ narratives that sheds light on the unique and educationally meaningful value of Making, as in Making being a venue for agentive constructivist learning.

As an educationally meaningful practice, Making can be explored from several lenses, and this research solely uses a design lens.

The motivations of the study are twofold. First, to understand how designers practice human-centered design and use design knowledge while Making. Second, to support the epistemological legitimacy of Maker knowledge by establishing connections with design knowledge.

This paper contributes to the limited body of scholarly work to conceptualize experienced designers’ Maker practices. Work in this area can inform learning outcomes and performance expectations in educational settings.

Science museums provide a context for developing and testing engineering activities that support visitors in creating personally meaningful objects. This study aims to propose that narrative design elements in such engineering activities can foster empathy to support engineering engagement among girls ages 7–14.

Taking a constructionist approach to engineering design, the authors present results from an observational study (n = 202 girls) of engineering activities across three museums that were designed to foster girls’ engineering engagement by integrating narrative elements aimed to foster empathy in activities. Using quantitative counts from observation protocols, the authors conducted statistical analyses to explore relationships between narrative, engineering and empathy.

Linear regression demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between empathy and increased numbers of engineering practices within museum activities. Additionally, this led us to explore the impacts the potential narrative design elements may have on designing for empathy – multiple linear regressions found both narrative and empathy to be independently associated with engineering practices. Overall, the authors found that using narrative to design activities to elicit empathy resulted in girls demonstrating more engineering practices.

The authors offer design ideas to foster aspects of empathy, including user-centered design, perspective-taking, familiarity and desire to help.

Tracing the development of a parallel-engaged pedagogy of care that extended and adapted the critical and transformative pedagogies of Freire, De Sousa Santos and hooks to the South African context. The development of this transformative pedagogy addresses the local conditions of an architectural design studio at a postcolonial, post-Apartheid and post “Fees must Fall” protests South African university. This pedagogy used practice-based design research to build a more conscious, critical and careful design practice in both students and educators.

The pedagogy was developed through participatory action research, over five years, from 2019 to 2023 including two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parallel and active engagement of students and educators within a nurturing and caring environment evolved from year to year, through a conscious and critical reflection on the process. Student surveys, reflective essays and focus groups unearth the impact of the parallel-engaged pedagogy of care.

The parallel-engaged pedagogy of care was shown to support and scaffold students becoming more conscious, critical and careful in their design practices validating diverse lived experiences as generative for design and important for social justice and transformative equity.

The parallel-engaged pedagogy of care is part of a global shift to more transformative pedagogies that address student diversity and decoloniality.

Through dismantling traditional hierarchical teaching modes, the pedagogy is more student-led, agile and adaptable. Through centring and demonstrating care in the pedagogy, students are encouraged to develop both self-care and care in their design practice. This is especially critical in the South African context where the cultural capital of the institution, with its roots in colonial and Apartheid education differs from that of the majority of students of colour.