List of papers could be found here:
http://dccconferences.org/dcc18/papers.html
THE EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DESIGN COMPUTING AND COGNITION (DCC’18 or DCC18)
Bringing artificial intelligence, cognitive science and computational theories to design research. July 2018. Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
Last week I was privileged to attend the conference in an amazing city, Brisbane. With the intertwining theme of design, technology, arts and science’; the congress showcased an array of design research. The sixth International Congress of IASDR (International Associations of Societies of Design Research), with five member organisations: DRS, DS, CID, JSSD and KSDS.
My favourite ones are: designing vases with the use of smartphone, smart clothing and the three keynote sessions. Apart from that, sessions which are related with my own research (interesting ideation methods, design problem framing, Kees Dorst’s “Frame Creation and TRIZâ€, Kokotovich’s “Re-imagining Reflection-in-action and Co-evolutionâ€, sketch ability and visual diagnostics for protocol studies); provided me with confident to pursue what I am doing at the moment. I had a chance to talk to Goldschmidt too, which was an absolute pleasure and made the journey to Australia a worthwhile exercise.
I had the opportunity to present a paper entitled “Contribution of smartpens to design studies in capturing design process” (page 2001 on proceedings), more of a methodological reflection of the pre-pilot and pilot studies. Disclaimer: authors are not affiliated with the company, and generalisation for other products may be appropriate but untested. Let me know if you are keen on exploring about the pen or have any experience you’d like to share 🙂
ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on technical and methodological aspects of using smartpens to capture sketching activities in the idea generation stage. Aiming to consider a more effective way to capture designers’ decisions, moves, verbal and non-verbal cues; the paper attempts to provide a critical appraisal of how smartpen-based recording system are able to improve small-scale observational studies’ rigorousness and increases richness of data. Comparison of conventional pen-and-video and smartpen devices are illustrated, by conducting two think-aloud design sessions using both mechanisms. Advantages and disadvantages will be analysed to provide balance views of the two tools. In general, both are able to capture sequences of thoughts, including moving through one page to another. Preliminary findings show that smartpens are somewhat superior in terms of: obtaining unobstructed views of the sketching process as result of participants’ hand/shadow or glare, pencast (replayed video) aids exploration of design strategies investigation, auto-synchronised thinking aloud (verbal) and sketching (actions) foster the effectiveness of study, minimal use of a single recording device and also possibly promote exploration in shading, textual aids, contextual aids and other cues of sketches. However, pen-and-video tools are more efficient at capturing hand gestures. Some recommendations for future studies are also suggested.
Note: Photography of Brisbane can be found in my Flickr.
I had a chance to be in Bangalore, India during ICoRD (International Conference in Research into Design) on 7-9 January 2015. There was an amazing workshop about publishing delivered by five panellists who have tremendous experience as editors in international peer reviewed journals in design. The workshop focused on pertinent issues around writing and publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals. Some hands-on tips too from the experts, in form of brief presentations. I made some scribbles as a self reminder too.
Panelists were (in order of appearance): Prof. John S. Gero, Prof. Bernard Yannou, Prof. Dr. Lucienne Blessing, Prof. G.K. Ananthasuresh and Dr. Gavin Melles
What should be in journal paper:
– title (informative, specific and attractive)
– abstract
– motivation
– background
– aims
– significance (if it is successful, what will you do?)
– experiment design
– results
– discussion
– conclusions
– acknowledgements
– references
– figures (includes purpose, content, representation, scale, readability, references and location and caption of the figures)
What should be in journal paper (building up from previous panel):
– bibliographical analysis
– your issues
– your models
– scientific enough? prove it:
originality: multi domain? novel/not? efficient?
repeatability: provides enough data
criticability: provides criteria for relevance, efficiency, applicability
applicability: issue, scalability, outperformance in certain contexts, consequences in
companies. Give examples.
– take time to save time. polish it. reviewer’s time is precious
– check: writing style, journal spirit and requirement
– for PhD student: how to divine successive and linked issues, bibliography, models, proposed design experiment, proposed chosen archival journals.
– prerequisite: the message of study
– style issues
– do not submit the first draft- reviewer’s time is previous
– look at journal guidelines
– read literature in English
– start with structure
– use consistent terminology
– show you took a great care
– read aloud your manuscript
– content issues
– set the scene (aim of paper is not the same with aim of study!)
– what you have done and.. why
– what is the PhD study about, write for the reader
– look back at the aim, at the end.
Messages from “kind reviewersâ€:
+ what insights/suggestions you bring to the community?
+ how do you tell the story?
+ is it worth our effort?
Link to his site about technical writing: http://www.be.iisc.ernet.in/techwriting.html
– on selecting journals, publish at where we learn from
– do not fit? Make a case/ send a letter
What should we, the writers, aim for:
– appealing argument (reaching out, like joining a dinner party)
– writing is a forethought not an afterthought
– reviewing the field you are in
– clear ‘hook’, provocative abstract
– moderate claims (contribution on an ongoing conversation)
– do not submit first draft
– recognisable abstract
– max impact, less words
– narrative
 Note: please be considerate if you re-post or re-use the materials.
ICoRD (International Conference on Research into Design) 2015. Bangalore, India.
The poster was presented after the brief podium presentation; during tea time.
Tedjosaputro, M., Shih, Y., Pradel, P. & Niblock, C. (2015). Multidisciplinary Design Behaviour Using Sketching and Mental Imagery: A Literature Review and Considerations for Future Research. In: Chakrabarti, A. (ed.) ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries Volume 1. Springer India.