Participatory Painting: A Design Research Method?

The MEDIATIONS Conference took place at the RCA in London, marking the close of the TRADERS project (short for ‘Training Art and Design Researchers for Participation in Public Space’). TRADERS focused on “enabling an exchange of experiences and knowledge in the field of participation in art and design – particularly within the context of public space.” The conference focused on the role artists and designers can play in empowering the public in the decision making for and co-creation of public spaces.

At STBY, our design research projects don’t always focus on the design of or in public spaces, but our concern is often with empowering the public in co-creation – whether it’s for a future bicycle parking service or wearable device. During the paper presentations on ‘Multivocality, Design & Public Space’ one presentation in particular got me thinking…

12/12/2016STBY

How can design help to address violence against women? – Join STBY at What Design Can Do Sao Paulo

The What Design Can Do 2016 conference in São Paulo is coming up on 13-14 December. As the research partner of WDCD, STBY was asked to lead a breakout session exploring violence against women.

We have teamed up with social designers Paula Dib and Renata Costa in São Paulo to design the breakout session because STBY strongly believe in collaborating with local design researchers when working in a context that is not our own. It’s a nice opportunity to work with Paula and Renata again after collaborating with them in London back in 2007.

Designers are mostly known as problem solvers and idea generators. But some problems are so complex and ‘wicked’ that even the best solution-driven designers cannot quickly fire off a viable solution. Design research can help designers dig deeper. Such a complex problem as violence against women needs to be looked at it in a new way.…

06/12/201606/12/2016STBY

Using Open Data for Design Research

I attended a workshop at the Open Data Institute in Shoreditch, an organisation with the important mission “to connect, equip and inspire people around the world to innovate with data.” My day-long workshop focused on finding and preparing data and got me thinking about how we as design researchers can take advantage of all the data sets publicly available to us across sectors, from healthcare to product design.

Before diving in to how to make sense of a data set and communicate this to others, we began by looking at the important differences between big data, open data and personal data – and where they overlap. Important to note here is that not all “big data” is ‘open’. Here, open means “anyone can freely access, modify, share and use for any purpose…” (opendefinition.org).

Two methods: story-first and data-first

When you use data as a source, there are two main methods.…

14/11/201622/07/2022STBY

Design for Europe: Powering Social Innovation

The Design for Europe conference is the main way the European Commission implements its Action Plan for Design-driven Innovation. STBY participated in a session on social innovation, with a presentation about the Refugee Challenge at the What Design Can Do Conference.

The focus of the Refugee Challenge was to see if the period between arriving in a host country and waiting for approval to stay can be improved. STBY’s role was to make sure the design brief would trigger and empower applicants to come up with relevant, realistic and creative ideas for solutions.

A recent survey among all 600 applicants revealed that half of them are still working on further developing their ideas. They are highly committed. The challenge clearly tapped into a strong urge for designers to be engaged in solving wicked social issues.

The Design for Europe’s website contains …

11/11/201611/11/2016STBY

Service Design Global Conference 2016

On October 27th-28th, service designers from around the world gathered for the 9th Service Design Global Conference in Amsterdam, returning to the city where the very first conference was held back in 2008.

With 650 participants, it was the largest ever SDG conference, reflecting the way in which the industry has both grown and matured over the past few years. Many of the presenters discussed the rewards and difficulties of being embedded within large organisations, as service design shifts from being a ‘fringe’ topic to the core of strategy and operations.

Service design has also spread far beyond its European roots, and it was fascinating to hear how some of its central concepts are being challenged and adapted in other markets and contexts. The idea of a minimum viable product or service (MVP or MVS) did not go down well in the ambitious and competitive culture of the United…

04/11/201614/11/2016STBY

Celebration and contemplation at the Design & Emotion Conference

This year’s Design & Emotion conference at Amsterdam’s Pakhuis de Zwijger was a great opportunity to pause for “Celebration & Contemplation” – this year’s theme. Speakers included renowned Dutch designers Maarten Baas and Christien Meindertsma. The Design & Emotion Society asks how we as designers and design researchers can explore and integrate the emotional experiences of design through products, services or interactions with new technologies. The conference opened up on a playful and thought-provoking note. We all wrote a research question we’d like explore through the conference events on a balloon. The stage became a sea of purple balloons and design research questions (such as: Sustainability versus design versus emotion?)

Technology-supported emotion measurement

We presented STBY’s Auto-Cam project at a breakout session…

26/10/201626/10/2016STBY

Creating the Future of Public Transportation

How can we learn from and be inspired by innovators in the field of mobility? This is what the core members of the program ‘The Future of Public Transport’ of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment asked themselves. Their team is working on a vision and a strategic agenda for public transport in the Netherlands in 2040. Recently, they finished an extensive scan of technological innovation and opportunities for policymaking. As a next step, they are involving both the established public transport organisations and innovators to jointly explore future directions. Challenges include: How to shorten the (perceived) ‘door-to-door’ travel time’? How to maintain mobility in cities?

In a recent creative session they asked participants to propose solutions and discuss the consequences if these became reality. STBY was invited to join these conversations, and to explore…

14/10/2016STBY

Designing for a world where age does not matter

How can we develop products and services for a world in which age does not matter? Intergenerational design was a buzz phrase at the recent Age Does Not Matter festival in London, and it is a promising approach to the challenges posed by an ageing society. But is it enough?

I had an interesting conversation with my mother recently. She is currently in her mid-sixties and thriving, juggling her role as a successful business manager, zumba classes, gin & tonics with friends and the numerous other activities that put my social calendar to shame. Put simply, she likes to think of herself as more youthful than most youths, and rightly so.

She has recently decided to work remotely for a few days of the week, to, you know, spice things up. I got really excited when she told me this, and immediately mapped all of the trendiest co-working spaces near her house. When I showed her the short-list,…

30/09/201622/07/2022STBY

Video of STBY presentation at What Design Can Do refugee challenge

At the WDCD Live 2016 event in Amsterdam on 30 June and 1 July 2016, Marie de Vos and Geke van Dijk of STBY gave a presentation of STBY’s work as research partner of the Refugee Challenge, helping designers arrive at relevant, viable and effective solutions. The video of Geke and Marie’s presentation is now also online on Vimeo.…

30/09/201611/11/2016STBY

London Design Festival: Research on the move

STBY held a 2 hour workshop as part of the Service Design Fringe Festival on September 20th at our studio in Shoreditch. Here we explored visual methods for design research, building on STBY’s latest publication Viewfinders: Thoughts on Visual Design Research. Participants were invited to play with different technologies and techniques (e.g. GoPro, Narrative Clip) to capture and communicate user journeys.

We worked in small groups to document, edit, arrange, and present visual design research. We then critically reflected upon tactics and approaches for capturing everyday life in a visual and engaging way and the latest technologies used to do so.

During the workshop we proposed a client brief to the participants. We found this evoked participants to engage in the activity with the end goals in mind, considering possible client needs and desires along the way.…

30/09/201630/09/2016STBY

Food for Thought: the Future of Food and Dining Out

The STBY London team had the fortunate opportunity of attending Nesta’s Futurefest 2016. The packed schedule was overwhelming and we left in a state of dizzied inspiration. A few things emerged from the fog of weekend memory, the most noteworthy of which was a debate on the future of dining out. This is a thought on where we are now and where we might be heading in light of this thought-provoking discussion.

On food designers, futurologists and the rising polymaths of the culinary world

The panel alone is worthy of mention in its own right. The session was chaired by Food Futurologist, Dr. Morgaine Gaye, whose work centres around the future of food/beauty/smell from both a cultural, evolutionary and societal perspective. She was joined by Marije Vogelzang, a Dutch “eating designer”. In contrast to the work of “food designers”, Marije’s focus is around the verb ‘to eat’…

23/09/201623/09/2016STBY

Moving Targets and Visual Design Research: STBY at the 9th Service Design Global Conference

The 9th Service Design Global Conference entitled ‘Business as Unusual’ will take place in Amsterdam on 27 – 28 October 2016 and will include a presentation and masterclass from STBY, co-organizer of the conference. In her presentation ‘Moving Targets‘, Geke van Dijk will be sharing principles of agile collaboration with interdisciplinary teams in large organisations, derived from several years collaboration on projects with Google. She’ll focus on approaches that enable research to create deep insights upon which to ground decisions, while keeping up with the speed and dynamism of agile development of new service propositions in these kinds of large organisations.

Sam Miller and Astrid Lubsen will conduct a master class on visual design research, a topic about which STBY recently published the book Viewfinders. Participants…

23/09/201623/09/2016STBY