Materials and Modifications
Asynchronous Session
Closing the Opportunity Gap with Playful Learning Landscapes in Cities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Debra Ruben,
Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis
This paper explores an innovative approach to urban design education that addresses societal inequities through playful learning landscapes. College design students engage in a community-focused experiential class to create interactive STE(A)M and literacy installations in underserved neighborhoods. The process challenges students to shift from personal aesthetics to co-creating designs that meet community needs and cultural contexts. Key aspects of the participatory design process include spatial integration through guided neighborhood tours and mapping exercises; cultural representation via community stories and artwork, addressing specific community needs and concerns and fostering multi-generational appeal and inclusivity. Students learn that authentic community engagement is crucial for creating meaningful, sustainable playful learning spaces. Residents become equal partners, ensuring cultural resonance and desired learning interactions. This deep involvement extends beyond input-gathering, as community contributions shape all aspects of the installations. The immersive experience provides students with real-world impact while developing proficiency in participatory design. The resulting child-friendly spaces become organically woven into the neighborhood's physical and cultural fabric, benefiting both students and the community. This approach demonstrates how design education can address societal challenges by creating equitable learning opportunities in urban environments.
Crafting Visual Hierarchy for Achieving Simplicity in Visual Communication View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Jinsook Kim
Visual hierarchies are fundamental strategies in visual design that establish relationships and order among elements. This research explores simplicity through the lens of visual hierarchies, examining how cognitive perception both shapes and is influenced by the relationships and order of elements. It identifies key principles of dominance, such as meaning and its boundaries. By analyzing visual compositions that employ visual hierarchies across diverse contexts, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of simplicity in visual communication design and its implications for practical design knowledge.
Emotional Design Applied to Learning Scenarios: A Systematic Review View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Bernardo Providência,
Cristina Prado Acebo
In the context of the new active methodologies and in view of the need to update current learning scenarios, this paper presents a systematic review of the state of the art of emotional design applied to learning scenarios, with the aim to know the influence that the physical environment has on learning and to know how to use the different learning scenarios to maximise the students’ experience. We have chosen the emotional design approach because in active methodologies the students, who are accompanied by the teachers as guides, are at the centre of the teaching-learning process, being even more relevant for the design of learning scenarios to take as a reference the users, their experience, and their emotions. To achieve these objectives, and following the PRISMA methodology, a bibliographic search was carried out using the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and Science Direct. This study includes 24 articles and discusses these in three-category taxonomy: theoretical aspects, measurement methods and design applications. This review presents the state of the art and identify the key points and new lines of research, as even though the topics are broadly researched, they are not being researched as a whole.
New Materials for Design: A Sensory and Perceptual Analysis of Transparent Wood View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Eva Vanessa Bruno,
Doriana Dal Palù,,
Beatrice Lerma
This research presents an analysis of Transparent Wood (TW), a material currently under development, focusing on its perceptual and sensory aspects—specifically through sight, hearing, and touch. The objective of this study is to examine the current perception of TW to enhance its adoption and acceptance before its market introduction. Advances in material innovation contribute to sustainability, performance, and the meaningfulness of new artifacts, yielding benefits not only in academia but also in the real-world context of businesses and end-users. In this context, the research falls within the domain of Design for Material, which intersects the fields of Design and Material Science. The study employs a protocol drawn from the scientific literature for evaluating perceived quality through a sensory test administered to 80 participants, referred to as “material tasters”. The data were collected during a two-hour workshop in which participants, provided with TW samples, performed three distinct actions for each selected sense, and selected four adjectives from a predefined list that they deemed most appropriate. The collected data were subsequently analyzed for each sense and cross-sensory, identifying guidelines to improve the future communication strategies related to the perceived quality of TW. Concerning limitations, results may be influenced by the geographic homogeneity of participants and preconceived notions of traditional wood and other transparent materials (aspects currently under further investigation). The proposed guidelines will undergo validation in upcoming focus groups involving designers and architects, ensuring a broader and more diverse perspective on the material's potential applications.
