Underground stations, while offering necessary access points to public transportation service facilities, offer great opportunities of urban dinamization. The paper presents the results of a design project aimed to improve the travel experience of passengers in the local transportation system. The design activities were based on ethnographic research on field, demonstrating that the quality of social interaction is a relevant component of the travel experience, also influencing emotions and psychological wellbeing of passengers; the design solutions were provided in terms of innovative collaborative services and produced a variety of suggestions about the potential role of non tangible solutions in the creative improvement of public spaces. The paper presents the results of the ethnographic investigation, outlines the design methodology employed, and reports some designed solutions.

Underground stations, while offering necessary access points to public transportation service facilities, offer great opportunities of urban dinamization. The paper presents the results of a design project aimed to improve the travel experience of passengers in the local transportation system. The design activities were based on ethnographic research on field, demonstrating that the quality of social interaction is a relevant component of the travel experience, also influencing emotions and psychological wellbeing of passengers; the design solutions were provided in terms of innovative collaborative services and produced a variety of suggestions about the potential role of non tangible solutions in the creative improvement of public spaces. The paper presents the results of the ethnographic investigation, outlines the design methodology employed, and reports some designed solutions.

ICDC2012 Glasgow

THE DESIGN OF NARRATIVE JEWELRY AS A PERCEPTION IN ACTION PROCESS

The creation of jewelry involves processes, which are often very experimental and intuitive, encompassing both the creative process and production techniques. In this paper, which is based on a recently realized research project in narrative jewelry, we will reveal and reflect on the process of creating and producing a series of jewelry pieces, based on a narrative musical work - The Carnival of the Animals. Due to the nonlinear process of the project and the co-evolution of drawings, narrative illustrations and jewelry pieces, the project is part of the emergent paradigm of design methodology. Taking into account the dominant role of perception in the creative design process, we will explain and reflect on the jewelry project through the application of the Perception-in-Action Model, which is based on the emergence of design solutions in a co-evolutionary process guided by perception.

ICDC2012 Glasgow

Emotion: New DNA in design process

This paper presents a design methodology to captivate emotions in the design process. The
paper shares examples from the student projects for designing houseware products. The
goal was to design consumers’ products that would have substantial and stable emotional
connection. It aims to design a product lasting longer. The emphasis was on the emotional
bond between the consumer and product. The element, ‘emotion’ has been started getting
attention in the design research process in order to compensate the conventional design
process activities. This paper provides the three components for deeper understanding of
consumers' needs in order to implement emotion in the design process.
1.'Security Blanket Theory(S.B.T)': Providing psychological comfort to the users and the
product lasts longer by adding feeling or emotions as design elements obtained from the
users.
2. ‘Metaphor Investigation and Interpretation (Mi2)’: Metaphors reveal the vital cues for
what the customers genuinely want and mean.
3.'Emotion Equalization (E2)' is required in the design process in order to make the product
last long.
By integrating the new components in the design process, the students had an opportunity
to think about the design process as whole experience, a moment the consumers purchase
products, and even after using the products. As a result, the students tried to establish
emotional bonding between the users and products rather than designing outside of
appearance.

DRS 2012 Bangkok

Towards a Formal Evaluation of Creativity in Parametric Design Process: A pilot study

Parametric design has become an emerging research issue in the design domain. However,
our current understanding of creativity in the parametric design process is very limited.
This study presents a formal approach for describing and identifying cognitive thinking and
activities for evaluating creativity in parametric design process using protocol analysis.
This coding scheme is based on the creative acts: Representation, Perception, and
Searching for a solution. Also, it provides Geometry and Algorithm categories to capture
the cognitive activity in the parametric design process. The effectiveness of this formal
approach was examined in a pilot study. The percentage of coverage of geometric and
algorithmic cognitions results in a better understanding of the parametric design process
over a time period. The normalised value of the coverage percentage allows us to explore
three levels of design cognition in terms of creativity. This research contributes to the
development and verification of a formal approach for evaluating creativity in parametric
designing. With this formal approach, this research provides a promising procedure, not
yet available, of capturing cognitive activity and identifying creative patterns in the
parametric design process.

DRS 2012 Bangkok