Programme

This workshop is appropriate for anyone who facilitates or participates in peer feedback sessions
as part of a design project.
In project-based design capstone classes, we often ask student teams to provide critique and
feedback to their peers in the class. This helps receiving teams to get multiple perspectives on
their work, and, hopefully, helps the reviewers to develop a more critical eye towards their own
work. In practice, it leads to mixed results, as some students engage in the process while others
treat it superficially. To address this, we created Perspective Prompts, which are similar to
personas, representing different points of view. Students assume different roles, based on the
Perspective Prompt they are assigned, and give feedback from that perspective.
We use these Perspective Prompts in a workshop where teams are building initial design
specifications. We print their first rough drafts in large format, post them to the classroom walls,
and ask students to circulate and provide feedback. We recently began to give students
Perspective Prompt cards, which illustrate particular roles and factors to consider. For example, a
UL Inspector card prompts students on safety features and failures, while an Instructor card
prompts students on factors like signifiers and mental models. Giving the students a defined role
to play, with supporting prompts to consider, helps them to think more deeply about the
specifications and to offer more detailed and meaningful feedback. It also helps to keep them
engaged in the feedback activity.
This workshop will allow participants to experience the impact of the Perspective Prompts, and to
explore options for creating their own prompts for different applications.
Learning Objectives

1. To understand the approach of using a persona-like framework, referred to as Perspective
   Prompts, to encourage and improve student engagement while providing feedback to peers
2. To experience how assigning students defined roles with supporting prompts can impact
   engagement when providing feedback to peers
3. To identify ways to apply the concept or Perspective Prompts to additional assignments or
   activities

Human-centred design has played a prominent role in the design world for several decades. The user is placed at the centre of the design process and designers recognise, among other things, the need for inclusive design to consider physical disabilities, mental health, gender neutrality, etc. However, a specific human aspect remains underexposed: how cultural background and today’s super-diverse society affects users’ needs and, more fundamentally, the design process of the designer himself.

As the world becomes increasingly global and diverse, the current generation of designers will have to design for a very mixed cultural context other than their own. As such, it is important to be aware of cultural differences and how they shape the perceptions of both users and designers. Designers need to become aware that they too are shaped by their cultural background, customs and values, and that this shapes their view of the world. Even within their own cultural context, it is valuable for professional designers, researchers and students alike to design culturally aware, as more and more societies face increasing diversity where boundaries between cultures blur and merge.

Awareness and confrontation with one’s own cultural bias is at the heart of this workshop. During this workshop, we present an educational serious game that makes designers and student designers think about cultural differences, the need for superdiversity in design and the responsibility that comes with it. The serious game introduces them to various features and design principles of culturally sensitive design in an activating and playful way. The game is a physical board and card game and is based on literature research, psychological frameworks and expert contributions. Initial tests were conducted by design student as part of the inclusive design course at the Faculty of Design Sciences of the University of Antwerp.

Participants in the workshop will work in groups to learn about the serious game, which consists of three levels. The first level introduces them to cultural differences and confronts their own cultural biases. Level two delves into real-life situations where a design failed because the cultural context was not sufficiently considered. Finally, in level three, participants learn how to apply this acquired awareness in the design field. Before the game begins, care is taken to ensure that all presenters feel safe and respected. With our participation in E&PDE 2023, we hope to draw even more attention to Design for Diversity and wish to further refine our serious game.

Diversity and Inclusion have been a persistent challenge in Engineering, as women, disabled, ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ engineers experience engineering as less inclusive (Royal Academy of Engineering 2017). For example, decades of research highlight that women remain underrepresented in engineering and design fields (Papafilippou, Durbin and Conley, 2022), and as a result, their experiences in collaborative design practices are often characterised by marginalization and exclusion. Similarly, research on neurodivergent engineers, indicated that although they have unique strengths which align to engineering, such as creative thinking and attention to detail (Engineering Council, 2022; Loiacono and Ren, 2018) they might encounter difficulties in collaborative design practices due to the traditional focus on conformity and uniformity (Papafilippou and Downes, 2023).

Unfortunately, the marginalisation of minorities does not apply only on the workplace, but also on engineering undergraduate programmes, as they are often perceived as unwelcoming for underrepresented and minoritised students, who are often subjected to sexism, racism, stereotyping and isolation (Fouad et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2021). However, this, apart from contributing to the under-representation of minorities, also causes problems with collaboration, teamwork, and group projects, which are central both to the profession of engineering and engineering curricula (Isaac, Kotluk and Tormey, 2023). Nevertheless, there is limited work and research on ways to support educators to train engineers in a way that is inclusive and supportive for all, attributes that become particularly pertinent in the field of design which is concerned with the importance of appropriating empathy in practice (Lavaf-Pour, Barakat and Chatzimihali, 2022).

The aim of this workshop is to provide a space for a critical discussion and practical guidance for the academic community to promote and support an engineering and design education that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve. In the workshop, participants will first reflect upon the early findings of a study that evaluated students’ perceptions of team collaborative behaviours during design thinking processes without the application of a specific collaborative design framework (Leon and Laing, 2022) as well as some relevant findings from other research projects on the experiences of female, expatriate and neurodivergent engineers. Then, the participants will engage in discussions about the barriers and enables to inclusion. Lastly, through adopting a stakeholder engagement framework and fishbone diagramming the participants will be invited to analyse the causes and effects of exclusionary practices and identify solutions to promote inclusivity. In this way, we hope, through a problem-solutions analysis, to create a co-designed framework and a roadmap to support the future of inclusive design education and practice.

The workshop participants will be invited to form an international working group as well as co-author an academic journal paper outlining the outcomes of this work.

Recent developments in education have led to a shift in focus from knowledge acquisition to the successful application of the same knowledge, meeting demands of society and industry. Design has emerged as an effective approach to implement the diversity and complexity of practical applications into education. While design education is reputed for simulating real-world challenges that taps on ‘know-how’, we find that an equally powerful offering is in the facilitation of ‘know-when’. The design process when adopted (as a whole or in parts) in education offers avenues for acquisition and trans-disciplinary application of domain-specific and generic competencies. With this growing recognition of design and its integration into a wide variety of courses and curricula, educators have expressed challenges when having to identify, foster and assess design competencies relevant for their courses. In this workshop we will introduce the Design Competency Framework (DesCA) developed by the authors as a solution to help educators identify design competencies that can be incorporated into their course along with design tools and methods to facilitate teaching, learning and assessment of these competencies. With over 100 skills, 80 knowledge components and 65 attitudes categorized into 12 abilities associated to the design process, the DesCA framework will be the basis for an interactive discussion on the use of such a competency-based approach in design and design-related education.

This workshop welcomes everyone interested in design and design-related education, in particular educators, and those involved in curriculum development. It could also benefit design learners, researchers and those in practice.

Irrespective of the discipline, all education aims to make students more competent through the acquisition of competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and further development of newly acquired or already held competencies (Kouwenhoven, 2012). Many desired competencies can be effectively acquired through introducing design in education (Conley, 2004, 2011; Gribbin et al., 2016). It has been stated that it is an educator’s role to identify these pertinent competencies and direct their curriculum toward nurturing them (Bakarman, 2005). However, there are difficulties they face in doing so—such as the lack of consensus on what precisely competency is (Bakarman, 2005; Conley, 2011; Gribbin et al., 2016; Weinert, 2001), challenges with identifying competencies and assessing their development (Silva et al., 2020; Thandlam Sudhindra et al., 2022), the variation in expectations within teacher teams and often the lack of curriculum design expertise (Huizinga et al., 2014). In response, the DesCA framework is being developed to help educators select, teach, and assess competencies through design and design-related courses/curricula in higher education (Thandlam Sudhindra & Blessing, 2021).

(20 participants), Wednesday, September 6th, 12.00-14.00 h

Guided tour of the Sagrada Familia Workshops, to get an explanation of how the work in the famous basilic is being done and how it has evolved over the years. The workshop spaces are very reduced, so the group will be divided in two and take turns visiting the workshops and museum.

Meeting point: at the Sagrada Familia Basilic, at the metro station exit at the corner of the streets Provença and de la Marina, at 11:50.

(Free participation), Wednesday, September 6th, 17:30-18:30 h

After the workshops and before other networking and mingling activities, we will be delighted to show you around our facilities. We will do 3 or 4 groups starting every 20 minutes approx, depending on the number of participants that arrive.

Meeting point: By the reception desk at Elisava, La Rambla 30-32, access Joaquim Xirau square

(Free participation), Wednesday, September 6th, 18:30-19:30 h

Temes de Disseny #39 – Emerging Habitats: Design as a Worldmaking Agent 
Elisava Research invites you to the presentation of the latest issue of Temes de Disseny, that explores emerging habitats and design as a worldmaking agent across a variety of scales, settings and disciplines. Can design leverage its worldmaking potential, using its symbolic and operative apparatuses to proliferate various versions of the world? Can design maintain and even multiply plural worlds in the face of global homogenisation? Contributing authors manifest these fundamental and intertwined questions through a rich and diverse set of contributions compiled from radical design practices, applied research, case studies, practice-based reflections, and pictorials that are far-reaching in their intersectionality and forward orientation.

The event will be presented by the Guest Editors of this issue, Roger Paez and Mariana Amatullo, together with the Editors-in-Chief and the Managing Editor of the journal.

There will also be a brief introduction of the Call for Authors for #40, about the ethical, theoretical and practical perspectives comprising the role of the designer in the 21st Century.

(Free participation), Wednesday, September 6th, 18:30-20:30 h

For those of you that join us on the 6^th we will have pre-conference drinks and mingle at the Elisava terrace.

Meeting point: Terrace on the 1^st Floor, Elisava, La Rambla 30-32, access Joaquim Xirau square

Saturday, September 9th, 2023 
10.00-13.00 h   
(20 participants)
Meeting point: corner of the streets Ronda de Sant Antoni and Comte d’Urgell at 10:00

Interpreting and adapting the ideas of the local Agency of Urban Ecology, in recent years Barcelona’s municipal administration carried out several urban interventions like the Superblocks, the Green Axes, and the generation of new Urban Glorias Park, aimed at mitigating the effects of climatic change on urban environment, reducing traffic, and testing a post-oil urban model based on different uses of the public space not only connected to traditional mobility. The visit will focus on area around the Sant Antoni Market and Consell de Cent street, in the Barcelona’s Example.

Saturday, September 9th, 2023 
10.00-13.00 h      
(20 participants)
Meeting point: corner of the streets Ramón Turró and Ramón Trias Fargas at 10:00

Focused on the area of the Pompeu Fabra University Ciutadella Campus, this visit guided by the Elisava Design for City Making research group explores different forms of spatial transformations which involve architecture and design, based on concepts of permanent and temporary interventions where heritage, spatial values and users play important roles. The visit will focus on three projects in a single block: at the UPF library (Clotet-Paricio), an adaptive reuse of a heritage building; the UPF classrooms (F451 arquitectura), a long-lived temporary building; and the RAW project (Elisava DxCM), an ephemeral intervention in a school playground.