How do we understand each other? The last year and a half of living through the COVID pandemic has made us more aware of our proximity to each other. In the global community we see a deep understanding of our common humanity yet also the inherent problems that can arise from having different viewpoints and opinions. As we seek to understand how to overcome confusing or inaccurate messaging, politicized or polarized communications, we systematically have expanded our community by incorporating personal communications with our international neighbours in the form of ZOOM, Google Meets, or Microsoft Teams meetings in ways that are unprecedented, and which allow for increased collaboration and connection. Many times, in past editorials, the sense of community and shared knowledge has been mentioned as a core ethos of the Design Journal and the European Academy of Design. In a rather sizable 25.1 edition of the Design Journal, the unintentional theme of communication and levels of understanding emerges as a fundamental undercurrent to all the papers. The authors invariably ask how we make ourselves understood and how do we seek to understand the unknown?
Cultural relevance and context are a necessary focus for design researchers and practitioners to have when considering the end use of a product. The methods of research such as ethnography, focus groups, or interviews are essential tools for collecting information for designers yet underestimate the use of cultural products in design thinking. Jan Oliver Schwarz and Bernhard Wach created an empirical study to examine why a collectively understood cultural product such as movies or literature were not seen as a valuable design tool enabling an ease of communication and understanding. Their article ‘The Usage of Cultural Products in Design Thinking: An Assessment of an Underestimated Approach’ discusses the results of a 302-participant study. While the role of cultural products is not as prevalent as other forms of established research, the outcomes of the study point to an added design thinking tool that may be used to help us to better understand the end user.
In Katja Fleischmann’s ‘Design Education in Transition: A Multidisciplinary Design Classroom with Non-Allied Disciplines’, the extension of how design thinking and practice can function as a nexus between disparate subject areas is examined. This paper first frames the requirements of future design professionals to work in both a broad perspective, or the T-shaped designer, but also simultaneously have a specialization that can work within a multi-disciplinary group offering a skill or sets of knowledge when needed. Having a positive experience of creating designed outcomes within a set of easily relatable disciplines, Fleischmann engaged disciplines that were of a much more diverse set of skill sets and knowledge bases, and which had never participated in a multi-disciplinary environment. Through interviews of five other academics in these seemingly incongruent disciplines, gaps were exposed in how to best facilitate any collaborative problem solving. The future requirements of diverse disciplines coming together to solve the issues and needs of tomorrow are too great to ignore and therefore offers a new opportunity for a possible solution.
The article ‘Teatime: Exploring Ways to Support Diverse Narratives on Sustainability Through Design’ by Laura Gottlieb and Jennie Schaeffer utilised the Communities of Inquiry Framework to explore the ways in which we might encourage collaboration. The authors created a novel experience around the socially binding experiences of drinking tea, sharing snacks, talking, and sharing of ideas amongst a group that might not otherwise come together. A group of 25 people, composed of researchers, and adults and youths from the public, were brought together to participate in the playful yet focused set of activities that facilitated a deeper sense of compassion and interconnectedness.
Koumudi Patil and Uday Athavankar in ‘Design Precedents to Design Innovation: Category-Based Reasoning in Problem-Solving’ enter an exhaustive discussion of the balance of historical design precedents and the influence of change or innovation in a culturally relevant practice. The ethnographic study focuses on wooden toymakers of Banaras India that have traditions for hundreds of years and are rooted in the community of makers and consumers. Within the historically bound community of toymakers the deep traditions of types of toys could be categorized and serve as a model for iterative sets of changes derived either from an internal or external influence. In examining the slow process of change the authors seek to understand the balance of rules or precedents that often unconsciously affect our sense of true innovation. As the authors suggest, the lack of understanding of what has incrementally come in the past may limit the innovative potential for the future.
In a more literal interpretation of the question ‘How do we understand each other?’ Shaima Elbardawil introduces the requirements of legibility of roadway signage in ‘Legibility Research of Highway Signage Typefaces: A Critical Review and Potential Design Centered Approach’. The review of established practices in typography, signage, illustrations, maps, and symbols suggest that beyond merely relying on real-life highway experiences of drivers that a multi-method approach be incorporated to provide a more specific and calculated sets of results.
The final article in this issue, ‘Customization of E-textile Sensory Tools for People with Dementia’ by Jeanne Tan, Amy Chen, Li Shao, Heeyoung Kim, and Lan Ge engage a generation on the other end of life. Dementia patients need sensory tools to engage and entertain, however it is difficult to fully ascertain if any designed outcome is fully successful given the responsiveness of the patients. The article examines two different iterations of projects made for dementia patients, one with only tactile and visual stimulation and one with sounds and light enabled by e-textiles. The continued project creates opportunities for further study on the efficacy and approaches of designing products that have so many associated constraints.
The PhD report continues with the theme of designer’s effect on understanding. It is authored by Qiang Li examines the ‘Effects of Different Types of Digital Exhibits on Children’s Experiences in Science Museums’. Essential to the educational process is the ability to engage and hold a child’s attention especially in a museum which can either be intellectually stimulating or overly didactic and intimidating. Technology offers designers the opportunity to not only understand the scope of interactive and experiential requirements but can offer needed solutions to hold a child’s attention and most easily convey a large amount of information.
The issue closes with ‘Photography and Design: Materializing the Ephemeral’; an insightful and analytical book review of Yanai Toister’s book ‘Photography from the Turin Shroud to the Turing Machine’ by Jonathan Ventura. Ventura rightfully frames the importance of the book on the relationship of visual culture and design, yet also addresses areas of further clarification.
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Noël Palomo-Lovinski