Recreating the industry by trans disciplinary research through design

With the advent of new technologies and digital production methods, business challenges have drastically altered. Today, industry copes with an ever higher and more complex development processes. The Industrial Design Center of Ghent University Campus Kortrijk has a very intense collaboration with industry partners in order to recreate industryU+2019s challenges by the method of trans disciplinary research through design. Transdisciplinarity is achieved by bringing all involved stakeholders U+2013 experts, designers and end-users U+2013 together in an iterative co-creation process. Prototyping plays a central role as integration and communication method throughout the development cycle. Moreover during every iteration a co-experience is obtained by all involved stakeholders by directly interacting with a prototype in a real U+201CmakeU+201D or U+201CuseU+201D context. These interactions gradually reveal affordances and disturbances by iterative adaptations. The research through design principle is a double loop learning method. In the first iteration loop, the project is gradually enveloped towards a specific goal using adaptive strategies (designing). If the goal is not fitting with the expectations and requirements a second order loop is formed in order to find the real goal using adapting strategies (research, reflection). This particular method will be illustrated by some specific cases in the domain of developing medical devices.

Publication year:2016