DESIGN AND SEMANTICS OF FORM AND MOVEMENT, XI EDITION

In recent decades, design has faced great challenges and profound transformations. Its traditional approach to crafting and shaping the tangible world has been revolutionized by the way this very world has changed, becoming infused with digital technologies that have made it smarter, more interactive, and more connected.

Recent technological developments have generated even more rapid and extreme changes. The emergence of AI, machine learning, flexible electronics, miniaturized and implantable sensors, and hybrid synthetic- biological materials have not only provided designers with new design ingredients, but also generated new cultural and social landscapes in which they must design.

This edition of the DeSForM conference will explore the implications of these recent and emerging technological transformations in the practice of design, with a particular focus on the aesthetics and human experience of these new systems.

Designing beyond intelligence means that the design of such advanced and smart ecosystems should consider issues beyond mere algorithmic thinking and functionality. Scholars in the design field should start reflecting on the connections and mutual relations between the performance of these intelligent ecosystems and their physical appearances, aesthetics, interaction modalities, and personalities. In doing so, they will be able to address the design of ecosystemic user experiences.

Call for Papers

Designing for connected and expressive artificial ecosystems

DeSForM has traditionally dealt with the design of new, dynamic and interactive artifacts supported by the rise of intelligent systems (sensors, processors, algorithms, actuators, smart materials, etc.). Such systems are becoming more and more complex and sophisticated, giving birth to new forms of digital-physical hybridizations, i.e. dynamic ecosystems where advanced materials, sensing technologies, artificial intelligences, data, and humans are deeply interconnected and mutually shaped. These emerging hybrid ecosystems have already reached a point where their understanding, design, and evaluation ask for the development of new approaches and tools, as the experiences they create are far more complex to foresee and assess.

In this edition, we challenge scholars in this field to start thinking beyond designing for and with intelligence embedded into single artifacts, to broaden their focus and start addressing designing for distributed, hyperconnected, and complex intelligent ecosystems, and how their meaning, experience, and ethics can be approached in this new landscape.

This evolving context of design calls for new design skills and ways of thinking that go beyond the traditional field of design, as well as the creation of multi-disciplinary and adaptable teams able to envision new interactive, interconnected and even unpredictable systems.

The emergence of AI, robotic solutions, and big data connected with the spaces, objects and people we interact with everyday, will create new landscapes for future generations of designers. This will require designers to adopt new lenses in the design and evaluation of emerging technology, and it will necessitate that designers equip themselves with new ethical paradigms.

This conference will face the need to explore new frontiers for design, where emerging forms of distributed intelligence become design material. This material should be fully investigated in terms of tangible manifestations, implications and impact on the design process, user experience, and social consequences. The conference will be structured around four main topics: Experiencing Complexity, Interacting with New Intelligences, Societal Impacts & Design Ethics, and Future Roles of Designers.

Conference topics

Submissions should be focused on one or more of the following themes. In addition to these topics, contributions addressing the general conference interests (i.e. designing meanings, semantics and aesthetics of smart, dynamic and interactive artifacts) are also accepted.

EXPERIENCING COMPLEXITY

  • The role of aesthetics in dynamic digital-physical ecosystems
  • Designing and evaluating user experience in complex digital-physical ecosystems
  • Systemic design
  • Design tools to tackle complexity in technology-enriched systems

SOCIETAL IMPACTS & DESIGN ETHICS

  • Algorithmic decision making, autonomous systems and their impact on user experience and behavior
  • Designing for transparency and reliability
  • Emerging technologies and their effects on society
  • Design tools for ethics 
  • Future challenges for design

INTERACTING WITH NEW INTELLIGENCES

  • How artificial intelligence transforms artifacts (objects, spaces) and their interaction modalities
  • Embodying artificial intelligence through design; tangible forms and appearances of AI
  • How products’ aesthetics and user experience will change through AI:
    • At home, living experience in the private domain
    • At work, working experience in the semi-public domain
    • In society, connected experience in the public domain

FUTURE ROLES OF DESIGNERS

  • In designing for complexity
  • In creating new forms of artificial intelligence and interactions with them
  • In designing for society
  • In designing with technology for social innovation