Multidisciplinary Aspects of Design

The aesthetics of industrial objects has traditionally been framed by the diatribe opposing beauty and utility. Modernism has privileged a simple but functional aesthetic, following the motto “less is more”. In the second half of the twentieth century, new aesthetic categories emerged that enhanced playfulness, irony, and memory. At the turn of the century, industrial production faced the challenges of environmental sustainability: this is how ecodesign has come about. Originally quite a niche, this new trend is now practiced by many brands. Design today is geared towards natural fibres and recycled materials, reconciling beauty with the ethics of responsibility. Given these premises, this essay aims to outline a theoretical framework for the aesthetics of industrial objects, which goes beyond the useful Vs beautiful dialectics. In this regard, centre stage is taken by the notion of frugality. Already prominently featured by the sociological and anthropological debate, this notion is now also part of the architectural discourse (see the Manifesto for a Happy and Creative Frugality). As it combines beauty, health, and well-being, frugality provides an aesthetic-functional category, and it can notably provide a theoretical model for the production of sustainable objects and clothes. Nevertheless, the challenges faced by design in the ecological transition are broader. They concern in fact a different way of relating to the environment and designing lifestyles. In this regard, frugality can also become an ethical-aesthetic measure of life and a healthy way of inhabiting the world.

The mimetic and imaginative dimension of the object defines the very essence of objects and their use. Their interaction is seen in an exemplary way in that specific object with which every human being begins their relationship with reality: the toy. The aesthetics of the toy thus makes it possible to ascertain how mimesis and imagination cooperate and/or conflate in the constitution of the object. To investigate this dialectic, the essay examines Alma Siedhoff-Buscher’s toy Bauspiel: Ein Schiff in which imagination becomes the center of the child’s user experience. Leaning on a number of theoretical considerations on the toy, from Plato to Benjamin, the essay seeks to emphasize the aesthetics of toy as a space of creative freedom even in its opposition to the mimetic declination of the object understood as the adult’s ideological interference in the child’s world. Imagination, expressed in play, thus becomes the configuration of a possible world that, in Siedhoff-Buscher’s perspective, the mimetic object would seem, on the contrary, to deny.

The essay addresses the reasons why fashion design is manifesting an increasing interest in the marine environment as a context where to identify new materials for fashion, focusing on the particular case of seaweed. Through a field research, which involved MA fashion students at Università Iuav di Venezia, it is possible to demonstrate how an object such as seaweed fabric is not only a response to the need for new sustainable materials for fashion, but it is also interpretable through the framework of new materialism in a posthuman perspective. These fabrics, perceived as vibrant, represent a stimulus to redefine fashion design and its relations with environment, territories, people, and bodies. In the experimentation with seaweed, nature becomes raw material for constructing aesthetic and cultural imagery in a multispecies landscape.

This manuscript narrates a pedagogic experience in a Furniture Design course at the American University in the Emirates (AUE). Senior students enrolled in the Interior Design Program tackled a studio project which was about designing a piece of furniture inspired by a pavilion of their choice pertaining to Dubai World Expo 2020. The direct learning outcomes were assessed through technical drawings and three-dimensional printed physical models scaled one tenth proceeded by real scale prototypes of the chairs. The indirect outcomes are considering these material objects, the furniture items, as tools of memory, holding symbolic and cultural connotations. The design process would allow a space of reflection on contemporary practices and rethink prototypes as tools for analysis and research. Beyond functionality and aesthetics, objects become means of communicating personal findings, translating urban, architectural, cultural, and social attributes. This research will demonstrate through combined research strategies how products of the real and the imaginary give material form to memory.

What happens to a squeezer, a coffee maker, a corkscrew, when they leave the kitchen and become part of a film set? What happens when material culture is transformed into visual culture? What new roles, meanings and connections to the subject, do objects find themselves constructing in the content continuum of virtual media?This paper attempts to answer, albeit partially, these questions by using a specific case study, namely the analysis of the presence of some of the most famous Italian design objects, the kitchen objects by Alessi, within the American filmography of the last twenty years.The ultimate aim is to reason in terms of meaning and narrativity according to the methods proposed by sociosemiotics and cultural studies, in order to identify new characteristics and functions that design can perform within an experiential context that is already dominant: the world of images.

In 2008 UNESCO has recognized Puppets as expressions of intangible cultural heritage and, since then, thirteen traditions from around the world have been included in the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. In the last decades puppets have been object of study and cultural fascination. This paper aims at suggesting an unprecedented perspective in reading, displaying and narrating this priceless intangible cultural heritage, by both outlining its aesthetic, and symbolic values, and enhancing its processual and material features. These thoughts open a research path that applies the point of view and the tools of multimedia design to tell the narratives, the craft and production traditions of objects that have crossed the history of humanity. The aim is to create a multimedia archive filled with audiovisual artefacts produced by hybridizing documentary media (photographs, videos and interviews) with fictional productions (drawings, scripted dialogues and animated sequences). To test the validity of using hybrid languages and visual codes a didactic experiment will be described. Students of a Multimedia design class were asked to design an archive of audiovisual artefacts that stage under a new perspective the cultural roots, materials and production processes of a tradition worthy of being visually narrated.

Anonima Castelli’s historical archive is an interesting resource for studying the industrial production of furniture in Italy between the 1950s and the 1980s.This article aims to illustrate a preliminary study for a research project dedicated to the archive and the historical production of the Castelli company. The drafting of the research hypotheses was preceded by a few educational experiences carried out as part of the Degree Course in Design at the University of Ferrara, organised in collaboration with the company; these experiences confirmed how worthwhile these archival sources were for inspiring the creative process.The thesis asserted here is that, as well as historicising the phenomenon of Italian design based on documentary sources, company archives are also able to encourage the revival of production processes with the aim of re-issuing the objects present in historical catalogues.This way, the original project designs become documents that are useful both for historians and for designers and entrepreneurs interested in making these “memories” operational again.

This study delves into the relationship between the subject and things by regaining the anthropological and cultural values that have become embedded in objects already theoretically investigated by other disciplines (philosophy, literature, history of art, cinema) but here presented together with the works of designers that from the 19th to the 21st century managed to give a voice to things. This presentation springs from multi-annual research undertaken by the author at the universities of Bologna and Parma. After selecting twenty-four everyday objects (like mirror, ring, chair, table, telephone, suitcase, door), the research carried out for each one an analysis of its symbolic and cultural values and required students to create a graphic concept map to be intertwined with other maps, therefore with other objects, in more complex structures. This essay focuses on one object, the mirror, in order to explain thoroughly the survey method. Delving into the cultural values of objects gives the material landscape that surrounds us a critical perspective, which is essential to the comprehension and the project.

In the last 20 years, the industry of sex toys has grown exponentially within the Western online market, giving life to new forms of communication regarding topics such as sex and sexuality. However, if on one hand the online sale of sex toys and its related communication allow (once again) the spread of political narratives, on the other they seem to reinforce an individual and self-determining conception of sex and sexuality which preclude its broader understanding within societal norms and omit forms of collective and shared practices related to such topics.To understand the consequences of this paradox, the paper will focus on sex toys as carriers of political narratives related to sex and sexuality, reflecting especially on the role of that online communication might have on their diffusion. To achieve this, the paper will take into consideration the visual communication of MySecretCase as a case study and analyze it through the visual methodology proposed by Gillian Rose [1, 2]. Through the analysis of the communication design strategies adopted by MySecretCase, we aim at interrogating whether—if confined in the virtual space—sex toys can still be considered as carriers of political and collective values, reflecting on the role of communication design in shaping the symbolic narrative around these objects.

The primary objective of the narrative, which spans the 1960s and 1990s, is to verify the contribution of industrial design – through the objects it uses (telephone sets but also fittings) and in their implications of function, form and production [1] – as a lever both in the private market (which Italtel Telematica used) but also considering how, beyond the object, the investment was part of a broader strategy of expansion of the telecommunications sector in Italy. The telephone, an element of connection par excellence that accompanied the physical and immaterial transition from mechanical to electronic and digital technology, in its parallel evolution with the development of communications technology, turns out to be only a piece, albeit an emblematic one, an instrument of cultural and social representation that satisfies the functional, symbolic and communicative dictates of every era.The essay therefore proposes a reinterpretation of the encounter between a fundamental player in Italy, Italtel – formerly Sit-Siemens (IRI) – with one of the nascent forces of the 1950s, industrial design, the new discipline that, in the years of the economic boom, promised through ‘good industrial product design’ the achievement of market success. The role of design as a catalyst for innovation and as one of the main drivers of Italian innovation in the Sit-Siemen and Italtel entrepreneurial venture is thus argued.

Art, in the strictest sense, and industrial design, are associated with many other phenomena, activities, and objects in lists that constitute the field of visual studies. From this subsumption, the traditional hierarchical preeminence of pure or fine art over industrial design, and the corresponding disciplines that deal with them, seems to be reversed.As the means of recording and disseminating images of everyday life have further developed – and the visual domain of private and social spheres has been able to disproportionately expand its audiences – a self-reproductive function has gained space over the merely utilitarian, aesthetic, or symbolic function, meant in a traditional sense. It is precisely for self-reproductive purposes that the privileged ‘prop’ is not a work of art but a product intended for use.On this basis a design theory which takes this function into account can adopt a decisive task: it can offer a contribution to the delineation of a general political theory of visuality, that is completely different from a theory of the social use of images.Coherently with these aspirations, this essay puts four different objects through an ‘extended’ analysis: a type of 6th-century Attic kylix, the cradle of Napoleon’s son (1811), a cardboard cot of the 60s, and a ring light used for selfies and vlogging.The perspective unbarred by these broadened analyses is different than that which can be delineated on the basis of traditional classifications and forces a different set of questions the object needs to be asked.

The Functional Account of Design Aesthetic Appreciation (FADAA), a recent position on design in analytic aesthetics, attempts to establish a sui generis aesthetic theory of design that is somehow distinct from that of the fine arts. This account recognizes that, in evaluating the aesthetic dimension of design, not only form but also function and use are critical variables. However, FAADA has yet to question the status of being a user—usership—as well as the aesthetic strategies we use in our everyday interactions with designed objects.I will look into the possibility of broadening the FADAA debate on design appreciation by (1) acknowledging the role of the perceiving subject in interacting with design objects and (2) including instances of alternative use as possible critical use practices without diminishing the aesthetic significance of function. To this end, I will introduce the concept of “everyday design,” which refers to an interpretative act by the user that generates an excess of function in relation to the context of use and the user itself.

The growing and ubiquitous presence of digital objects raises issues of interest from the points of view of both Aesthetics and interaction design. In fact, such issues concern the perceptual dimension that defines our relationship with digital objects, the reconfiguration of the sensitive experience that their development implies, their hybrid ontological status, and their possible role in developing innovative forms of aesthetic education combined with design thinking.In the contemporary debate, digital objects are intended – on the one hand – as designed objects that incorporate and employ digital technologies [1–3].On the other hand, they are interpreted as virtual bodies, interactive digital images that become a phenomenon of the binary representation of an algorithm which interacts with a user [4]. Within the former perspectives, digital objects display a quality that broadly belongs to technical devices, meaning their openness to forms of interactivity, and their sensitivity to contingency. In the latter, the features of intermediacy and virtuality are considered the defining characteristics of digital objects. The growing complexity of digital objects is, in fact, re-defining the relationship between materiality and distance, provenance and pertinence, suggesting an interactive conception of agency that allows forms of aesthetic experience in which imagination, sensibility and intuitions can be displayed within relational structures. By showing the results of a research project focused on digital materials and their transformation, which involved children aged 8 to 11 years old, this contribution aims to discuss the possible role that such objects can play in developing new forms of aesthetic education.

The design object finds in photographic representation a way - parallel to that of graphics - to the indispensable process of design reading. Photographic research has long been intertwined with the process of cultural qualification of the design object. The project that photography brings to bear on design is a visual narrative which, through an immediately comprehensible language, stands as a true parallel narrative, interrelated, yet not necessarily coinciding altogether with that of the written word. The object begins to circulate through the different channels of communication - from corporate catalogs to advertising pages and magazines - reaching distant people and places, sometimes even before the physical object enters the channels of distribution. This symbiotic relationship means that the object is very often accompanied by a valuable wealth of images, documenting and communicating its value system and its design, production and commercial processes, enriched over time by the shots taken by several ‘hands’, that is, by different authors who offer the opportunity for a multifaceted reading of the product. This text intends to give an example of the added value that photography represents for design through a series of paradigmatic cases (such as Gio Ponti’s Superleggera or Ettore Sottsass’s Valentine), which traverse the history of Italian industrial design from its early stage.

Through an applied research project in the field of contemporary design, the essay identifies and illustrates the passage of three philosophical transitions: the idea of the object as a design project (Flusser, Sottsass, Mendini) – first transition -, crosses over to the realm of the thing (Heidegger, Bodei, Rigotti) – second transition – until it reaches the notion of the hyperobject (Harman, Morton), – third transition – involving human and non-human entities.Through reclaiming for design the possibility of becoming a trigger for divergent thinking, the object acquires new human and dialogic qualities. The transition from the object-function to the object-thought [1] transforms the meaning of the product to the extent that it is no longer a passive element of dialogical discourse but rather the triggering actor of that same process of confrontation. In this perspective, the object transforms from an exclusive commodity with normal function into a thing full of meaning and expressive possibility. Such objects are connected to the individual and the intellectual relationship they establish. From a posthuman perspective (Braidotti), they are narrative subjects of a reflection increasingly striving for a pluriverse coexistence beyond humankind itself. (Haraway, Caffo).The last transition, to the hyperobject, is illustrated through a design experience at the boundary between these three value transitions. The final hyperobjects designed have their primary meaning to interrogate and raise awareness around diverse relationships – with ecosystems, beyond the human – unhinging an outdated idea that sees the object forcibly relegated to the world of practical and tangible consumer commodity.

In addition to fulfilling their primary function, the so-called “status-symbol” objects also vehicles of deeper meaning. Among them, yacht have been often seen as a tool to convey messages of different content throughout the years. The aim of this study is twofold: to show the evolution of yacht design meaning during the last decades, and to outline the future one, according to the redefinition of the concept of luxury goods, category of which yacht belong. The study results confirm that the yachting sector is starting to adopt new perspectives toward sustainability and that, to succeeded in this, the multidisciplinary of design is an essential aid, if not the only possible way to tackle the challenge to convey new messages.

Design needs to recognize cultural content as embedded values to trigger meanings beyond functionality; these values can be discovered and reinterpreted for the contemporary society. In this context affordance will be declined into cultural affordance as a concept and framework within which meanings could be better detected, resonated and understood. Some examples from Iran and Egypt are given to explain the theoretical framwork, while in the continuum some tools for detecting those meanings are introduced as well: interactivism, storytelling and reflective translation as intrinsic memory keepers of tradition and culture of a given context. The article aims to conclude with some manifestations which could shape the direction and scope such a concept. The scope of discussion is to go beyond a naming of mere heritage and assigning artistic value to them.

In the 1980s, Anna Maria Fundarò, founder of the Sicilian design school, carried out a study on the craft activities still active in Palermo’s historic centre, for reactivating a new and specialised material culture through design. Fundarò’s vision anticipated the concept of “design for the territory”, which is now widely applied in the design community, especially in relation to local contexts rich in traditional knowledge, non-formalised design. At the same time, since it is connected to new technical opportunities and sustainable strategies, artisanal and neo-artisanal production (newly supported by the digital manufacturing) is currently part of an innovative and evolutionary scenario regarding this discipline. Starting from a consideration about the renewed relationship between traditional productions and design, the paper focuses on the cultural and narrative processes of artefacts whose masters are craftsmen, still operating in certain urban historical environments; the paper emphasises the capacity for design to activate new and extraordinary meanings, through processes of deconstruction and re-contextualisation. In order to verify the relevance of Fundarò’s methodologies and lines of research, many work spaces, materials, techniques and products have been detected and surveyed; during this documentation process in the historic centre, today mainly devoted to tourism, many artisans have been interviewed, involving them and their artisan skills and know-how in the project itself. The experience was greatly affected by the outbreak of the pandemic and the heavy restrictions it entailed. Several of the on-going projects acquired a strong relational and storytelling connotation when exploring new domestic and autobiographical aspects.

The discipline of design is today marked by a profound transformation of design processes and methods arising out of the comparison with scientific research methods (from biotechnologies to artificial intelligence), calling into question even the formal dimension of the object which has been the fundamental characteristic right from the origin of industrial product design. The conceptual and creative process benefits from this comparison, and also from an analysis of the system of objects and reference models. In this way, research, with the connection between different fields, and the relationship with the past, and therefore with the various repositories of artefacts and traces of experiences, represent two fundamental elements. As a result, it is important to enquire, both from a historical and operational perspective, into the role not only of collections but also of archives as tools, objects, spaces of collection, stratification and the exchange of traces, that is, of segments of the work of the designer, but also of the laboratory, and therefore closely connected with the process.Within the conference processes section, therefore, it has been considered necessary to reflect on the role of the archive which, for the discipline of design, represents its origin, since, to different extents, it brings together and preserves the traces of processes and, thanks to the different structures and compositions of each archive, imposes a constant questioning of what is design; in this paper, such reflection will be made on a limited sample of specific ‘Personal Archives’ or ‘Personal Papers’, focusing on the 1970s, to highlight themes and methodological approaches.

The essay analyzes the poetics of Enzo Mari in the light of postcrocian aesthetics, in particular Umberto Eco and Luciano Anceschi’ contributes.The field of reflection of the essay, conducted on several levels (both meta-artistic and intra-artistic) is polarized around some expressions and some key words, explications of issues perceived as urgent.First, a rethinking of aesthetic experience on the basis of the results of psychology and the phenomenology of perception.Secondly, a rethinking of the status of the work of art, which becomes “open work” or work “with multiple outcomes”; to characterize the work is a semantic stratification, a multiplicity of meanings that requires an active user, able to enter the work and trace an interpretative path. Thirdly, a rethinking of the aesthetic-social impact of art capable of activating an “aesthetic education”, a new and more conscious experience of the “environment”, be it natural or cultural: artistic objects, as well as those of design, have a transformative power of ordinary space-time, and consequently of the habits that mark it. This creates a very close link between aisthesis, poiein and praxis, between aesthetics, artistic operation and life, in its ethical and social aspect.

This contribution stems from a reflection developed in a field that lies between interior architecture and psychology and will touch on the relationship between memory on the one hand and perception, sensory experience, creativity, and the relationship between people and inhabited spaces on the other. Special attention will be devoted to the role of design in urban regeneration and its dialogue with the historic city. Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice will be presented as a case study on which rearrangement concepts will be proposed, in the perspective of its possible reinterpretation through interior and spatial design.

This research is part of the scientific discipline of Design for Environmental Sustainability and Industrial Design, and deals with the topic of the relationship between bio-inspiration and ecodesign as a promising synergy for the design of industrial products.This contribution describes the methodological process addressed to investigate, analyse and quantify the contribution offered by bio-inspiration, an approach considered to be a driver of innovation aimed at increasing the environmental sustainability of products.In order to understand and verify the real advantages that the bio-inspired approach can offer, in terms of environmental sustainability, to the design of industrial products, a bio-inspired redesign of a sustainable product in possession of environmental quality certification was undertaken, in order to quantitatively assess the product’s life-cycle environmental impacts through the standardised LCA methodology.In order to achieve the stated objective, the research was conducted with different methodological approaches and operational tools according to the research phases, interacting with experts from different fields and scientific disciplines which allowed the acquisition of complementary technical-scientific knowledge.

In recent years, new market rules have forced changes in how companies relate to their customers. It is necessary to create new solutions precisely adapted to customers’ needs. To do this, companies must expand their boundaries and adopt a transdisciplinary approach. In this panorama, the adoption of Strategic Designmeant as an approach to creating innovative product-service systems that characterize the company and its market positioning - appears fundamental and decisive. This paper deals with a practical case of application of the Strategic Design approach from a company operating in a non-traditional sector. The aim is to show the fundamental steps the company took in order to develop a new strategy thanks to the adoption of Strategic Design. As a result of adopting Strategic Design, the company created a new offer comprising a coherent and innovative product-system. This paper presents the positive implications emerged for the company from its adoption of Strategic Design.

The recent health crisis and the phenomena linked to environmental upheavals have aroused great interest in the theme of emergency and the need to systematise it.The “Design for Emergency”, not yet well defined and in continuous evolution within the scientific discipline of Design, is today at the centre of the cultural debate to find a more precise definition, limits and possibilities, good practices and necessary interdisciplinary relations.After an initial introduction to the topic, the essay intends to define and discuss, through selected case studies, the design’s contribution within critical contexts, through the reinterpretation of two terms, the “cycle” and the “wave”, discussed in the essay “Designing in the Post-COVID Era” (2021) by M. Bianchini, P. Bolzan and S. Maffei [1].The two terms, used by the authors to describe a range of phenomena, would influence differently the actions, methods and design strategies aimed at developing innovative and effective solutions and products to cope with emergency conditions.

This contribution explores the idea of exhibition formats, both physical and digital, dedicated to design and focused on narrating the experience of the design process. It begins in particular with the analysis of a selection of exhibition models to define the story of Italian industrial design – later simply “design” – as a process and not as an individual product, looking into museums such as the permanent collection of the ADI Design Museum in Milan, as well as opportunities for reconstructions or exhibitions beyond the confines of physical space which rely on the forms of digital archives. In this regard, the two selected case studies shed light on the possibilities offered by the combination of heritage digitisation and data interoperability technologies used to build archives. By making it possible to search a gigantic volume of information relative to materials that belong to different conservators – from institutions to individual users –, these solutions extend the possible construction of new and renewed storylines centred on reconstructing the design process. The cases studied here involve two recent research studies finalized towards two archives: the project to reconstitute the Ettore Sottsass Jr. Archive based on the materials conserved at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, conducted by the Università Iuav di Venezia in collaboration with Centro ARCHiVe, and the case dedicated to the Griffo typeface, which retrieves and expands the material preserved at the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione.

Between 31 May and 23 September 1973, the exhibition Domus: 45 ans d’architecture design, art,1928–1873 was held in Paris. It occupied an entire floor of the Pavillon Marsan in the Louvre, involving the entire editorial staff of the magazine. The exhibition, subdivided by decades, used panels, a collection of objects, and original artworks to illustrate the history of Ponti’s magazine from its foundation to 1973.It presents different levels of interpretation that are exemplary of the way of telling the Italian design in an international framework practised since the years of the first issues of “Domus”. On the one hand, the placement of the magazine’s interests in a temporal flow, in the form archive. On the other hand, the curatorial choice clearly privileges the cotè reserved for the visual arts, both in the reproduction of articles and reviews published over the years and thanks to the extraordinary contribution of exhibited artworks by Marino Marini, Max Bill, Renato Guttuso, Ben Sahan, Chillida, Tinguely, Armand among others.The thesis of the paper is that this has been a mode of the Italian project that shapes its narrative code as a transformism calibrated to the culture and mood of the host countries with the aim of presenting a compact and coherent image (the Made in Italy, the Italian way or the Italian line depending on the situation) but also to adapt it to the foreign public, both the generalist -and possible buyer- and the specialist.

In the contemporary informational/digital landscape, the attention dedicated to data analysis has necessarily place the accent on the impact they have on design process. We no longer speak only of formal design, but of its communication, or even more about the way in which this good will reach the final consumer. In this scenario, the need to manage the methodological/design process by virtuously involving both the material and immaterial aspects, connecting, evaluating and re-evaluating existing knowledge, research and business in the best possible way, is clearly evident.The proposal intends to present and discuss the research “MaToSto - Communicating and promoting entrepreneurship starting from the historical brands of the territory” which has seen a precise methodological structure aimed at promoting and qualifying the heritage of the historic Turin brands, to define criteria, tools, and project outcomes aimed at their enhancement also from an entrepreneurial point of view.From the set of 25.000 company trademarks, registered from 1927 to 1970 at the Turin Chamber of Commerce, the researchers started a project using the organizational, creative and visual tools typical of big data analysis, including: a quantitative research on defined product categories, the implementation of a processing method, data filtering and selection for visualization purposes, a taxonomic analysis on figurativity to hypothesize a classification based on tags useful for archival research, and – nevertheless – useful to drive impactful heritage marketing actions.

This contribution brings together and compares selected works by artist Claudio Costa, architects collective Superstudio, and photographer and designer Mario Cresci. It discussed the way in which they engaged with rural material culture in 1970s, a time when Italy was rehabilitating its pre-industrial heritage. Despite their respective differences, these works adopted multiple media to make rural artefacts talk and provide existential, educational, socio-political, and cultural models.

The paper highlights some issues in relation to air and how it is used in different forms of project planning. Air, a protagonist to be explored in the multitude of possibilities it offers to design, is initially analysed as a primary element by determining its role within the strategic processes activated by nature. Secondly, defining it as a material having its own entities and specific autonomy capable of expanding and enriching contemporary design possibilities.The goal is to define possibilities, potentialities and characteristics of air by investigating it through the use of three specific lenses: air as raw material; air as infra-material space –material among materials–; air as transformative matter –air that gives form–.The methodology used presupposes a specific literature review and a critical analysis of case studies, in order to be able to cluster them into thematic areas useful for interpretive reconstruction.From these premises, the interactions with air-related design are investigated through sensory perceptions. The path, steeped in suggestions, lays foundations for defining role and possibilities of air within design culture through the relationship between case studies, objectives, and the identified areas of intervention.

In this paper we discuss the use of evasion design, an overlooked expression from Superstudio, as a tool for shaping the future and understanding the Novacene Era. We propose evasion design as a tool to orient RTD (Research Through Design) activities for future exploration in educational and business environments, where a team not only needs to understand what a future scenario might be, but also needs to create a public discussion around its inherent values. Evasion design is here presented and explained in its differences from speculative design, but also in its sharing qualities and purposes in expanding the design practice. The result is a framework that combines both the potential of an alternative visual-based imagery and a guiding conceptual approach in rethinking the narrative of the future. By hybridizing codified methodologies of speculative design and the approach of evasion design, the paper shows the results of several workshops, conducted at institutions and universities, where the hybrid process is implemented through a specific methodology.

The physical contact with the material, the giving of form while simultaneously verifying material consistency, curvature, and three-dimensionality, is an indispensable component of the designer's personal process in shaping the object to be produced. The physical model is the tool that has enabled designers to develop and validate their projects for successful industrial production. The paper explores the role of the physical model as a design tool and its contemporary evolution. It has, through the influence of increasingly advanced digital tools, acquired various functionalities, radically transforming the prototyping process. The model has increasingly become virtual from physical by means of more computational parametric and generative modelling software. With the evolution of rapid prototyping technologies into rapid additive manufacturing technologies, there is a shift from verification model to finished product, with performance characteristics comparable to an industrially manufactured object. This investigation made it possible to explain the main stages of change in the prototyping process in three graphics, where the constant shift from physical to digital can be seen. From a time-consuming process caused by making physical models mainly by manual work, to a short and digital process, making the main verification steps virtual.

This paper sets out to shed light on the process that guided Cinzia Ruggeri in the elaboration of a unique clothing project that was eccentric to the 1980s Italian and international fashion scene, a process that allowed this stilista to activate collaborations with exponents of the world of art, design, literature, and music without disavowing the specificities of the fashion design practice. Cinzia Ruggeri was an atypical player inside the fashion system, presenting her creations at the Milanese prêt-à-porter fashion shows of the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, stating her autonomy from seasonal trends and her sincere interest for change. Far from considering fashion a reflection of social and cultural changes, Ruggeri understood the power of fashion in affecting and bringing about these changes. Fashion, so inextricably linked to the desire for novelty, and clothing design so intimately connected to the body, allowed her to address the gestures, behaviours and therefore the experience of reality in transformation. Over the years she experimented with shapes and materials, creating objects that could be intellectually and physically enjoyed, pervaded by a signature trait – the “felicitating factor” – stemming from her direct and shared experience in creating her fashion project.

The contribution supports the following thesis: the use of semiotic methods of the structural school in applications of Artificial Intelligence allows to deal with aesthetic and historical-critical issues with greater documentation capability. In particular, the contribution concerns an actualisation of the axiology of spatial enhancement built by Jean Marie Floch assuming it as a fundamental semantic framework to construct an interior morphology valid in the various areas of interior design.Floch’s semiotic analysis allows us to better specify the notion of “environmental affordance” developed in James Gibson’s phenomenology of ecological perception. Following Gibson, the authors indicate an ‘environmental’ specification of the “affordances” and pose the question of their objectification and measurement.For the purpose of this objectification and measurement of environmental affordances, the contribution advances the hypothesis of using some Artificial Intelligence applications usually employed, nowadays, in the processing of large data sets of digital documents, to achieve creative, critical, historical-archival aims.In conclusion, the contribution outlines some fundamental conditions of possibility of such an objective measurement by describing some initial characteristics of an artificial system of recognition of morphological categories of interior spaces starting from huge data sets of documents.

This paper discusses the critical forms of design futures scenarios; these forms aim at debating, interrogating, and questioning future visions rather than extrapolating on the status quo. They aim to problematize future issues in order to enact social change and mitigate the consequences and implications of today’s actions and decisions.

Narratives have increasingly come to the forefront of both design and innovation management. As a fundamental scheme of the human cognitive process and mode of communication, the role of narratives has been emphasized in relation to design and innovation processes. Although recent contributions have explored some characteristics of narratives and storytelling in both design and innovation, the literature remains lacking in understanding how narratives by design can affect innovation processes. Drawing from the creative process literature and narratives in design and innovation studies, this study analyzes how design experts employ design narratives at both the personal-cognitive and social-collaborative levels of creative process. The study aimed at building a basic analytical construction of the roles of design narratives in creative processes. Through an explorative and qualitative study, the authors explore the roles of design narratives through the lens of the collective knowledge of 17 design experts. Data collection was conducted using an explorative-systematizing expert interview, supplemented by secondary data, such as existing interview data and archival data, in the three design foundations in Italy. As a result, three aggregated personal-cognitive themes were identified: taking original perspectives as frame tales, weaving problem and solution pairs, and making storyworlds and senses. On the social-collaborative level, three themes emerged: orchestrating idea recombination, an imaginary and aesthetic manner of tension and conflict management, and contextualizing and generating narrativity. This study contributes to the design and innovation literature in terms of narratives by exploring and constructing basic themes regarding the role of design narratives in creative processes.

The interactive digital narrative (IDN) is an interdisciplinary field connected to narrative studies, design, human-computer interaction, and gaming. In this contribution, IDN is investigated from the designer’s perspective; it deals with the use of prolific artificial intelligence (AI) support systems in this area, highlighting the need to examine their potential. However, the features and essential components of the AI support system are not systematically categorised. This paper fills the aforementioned gap by providing a literature review of twenty academic contributions that make it possible to identify the types and categories of AI support systems, narrative elements, and types of creativity. The study is conducted keeping at the centre the relationship of collaboration between the human and the AI system concerning the production of narratives. As the main contribution to knowledge, the literature review identifies the problems and the gaps and underlines future research directions.

Facing global challenges and managing technological and scientific development require to imply critical reflection at all levels of transformation to create more thriving societies. This paper addresses the issues behind designing in complex societies. It introduces a novel approach to generate scenarios, envision, and contextualise the not-yet-existing technological artefacts through storytelling and prototyping, to anticipate the possible ethical and societal implications of technological development and mediations in social-human-environment-technology assemblages and interactions. The authors describe the critical approach with the Protocol for designing consciously and an Envisioning tool exploiting the Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) films as a trigger for critical discussion among the design researchers and practitioners. The Protocol and Envisioning tool aim at supporting the design researchers and practitioners adopt pluriversal perspectives and deal with the complexity, to deliver consciously designed artefacts. In this paper, authors show how the critical approach can be implemented in design and research projects and discuss the benefits and purposes of introducing such an approach in the current design research and practice.

This chapter aims to encapsulate the core elements of the keynote presentation on experience and interaction designs, primarily those using augmented reality, virtuality, or a mix of physical and digital elements. My interest is not in creating cutting-edge technology, but rather in seeing how people react, engage, think, move, and feel when they engage with designs by myself and colleagues.The contribution I make is to use performance theories and practices in design, especially design for mixed reality experiences, so that I can bring specific tools to bear on the creation and analysis of those designs. ‘Performance’ can be the kind practiced by professionals. It can also be the behaviours of people who take on the role of audience member or bystander. It can also be ‘performance’ in the ways that people ‘perform’ their everyday lives.Performance often aims to be thought-provoking, but (aside from Bertolt Brecht and those who use his politically minded Verfremdungseffekt) it virtually always aims for an emotional response through engagement with the aesthetic choices that have been made. This chapter provides a basic theoretical grounding and a specific example of how performance can lay out a richer design space for personally meaningful experiences.

This article describes how the 4 period rooms of the city museum in the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom were redesigned using storytelling and how this design has been received by visitors. For this redesign, rooms were reframed as sets of the story of Marie Anne van Arenberg, Marquise of Bergen op Zoom, and the objects as props to stage her story, which was full of secrets and of unexpected turning points. The visitor is enticed to discover cues to unlock these secrets in order to get a grip on her story while exploring the museum space. This is however not a treasure hunt, nor simply a game, but an exploration in which visitors are invited to discover and to create meaning and a journey into what matters to them. To this end, they have indeed to resort to their own frame of reference and to their personal life story in order to come to a narrative closure at the end of their visit. We used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to understand the visitors’ lived experience, both emotionally and sensorially at different moments and situations during the story-driven experience and to understand how the chosen design helps tell the story and how visitors use their personal context and frame of reference to make sense of it.

This paper aims to present and discuss how the teaching of visual identity and experience design in Communication Design education may be developed within a speculative design framework. By adopting this approach, students can experience the ethics of design practice and explore alternative design values, forms, and representations. They become familiar with design as a problem-seeking and problem-finding practice, which encourages the development of concepts, scenarios, and results without any predetermined function. Assuming an open approach to final results and learning more about a design field to be intended as an open context with blurred borders.They base the project’s development on the principle of learning by doing, which consists of thinkering, making mistakes and repeatedly trying to improve the results and acquiring competencies and skills. This method pushes the students to experiment with visual expressions and user experiences between two and three dimensions. They could range among many techniques and technologies, from analog to digital ones. Consequently, each design had to be theoretically discussed and physically verified by making prototypes.By defining a design process and discussing the implications of an anti-disciplinary approach, the aim is to inquire how such framing may destabilise conservative methods and consolidate new practices into Communication Design learning.

In the context of the contemporary social and ecological crisis, this contribution proposes a reinterpretation of current fashion design educational programs through a bio-inspired perspective, with the intent of guiding next generation fashion designers to successfully face such issues. The investigation delineates the theoretical subsoil to frame the topic by illustrating some key concepts connected to ‘fashion futuring’, ‘making kin’, plant neurobiology, collective authorship and co-design, translated within fashion studies. Specific plant neurobiology and botanical definitions are then applied to the qualitative analysis of two peculiar didactical case studies: the Master in Co-diseño de Moda y Sostenibilidad at the Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny de Valencia (Spain); the course in Biomoda at the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Proven the evidence that nowadays the needs of the planet and those of the fashion labour market must be realigned, the ultimate goal in education must be to train professionals capable of pursuing principles of sustainability. This is possible implementing redirection practices in a ‘futuring’ perspective, by operating as a collective parental-like organism establishing multidisciplinary dialogues. The vegetal metaphor allows weaving analogies between specific plant attitudes and today’s essential design requirements. Such aspects are not only useful to visualize and guide the creation of collective paths and sharing dynamics, but also to enhance the structuring of emerging experimental academic fashion curricula on the model of the fashion designer-plant hybridization.

The experiences produced using environments, physical or cultural objects, change significantly in relation to the characteristics of the users, their skills and limits, as well as change in relation to the aesthetic preferences and the context of use, chosen according to the effectiveness and/or enjoyment of use.This text intends to address the issue of accessibility to a cultural asset in a museum context [12, 13], to highlight how designing a variety of experiential ways, of experiences based on different sensory registers, leads to broadening its accessibility also to users who, by necessity or by choice, they require specific conditions of use.The paper highlights and exemplifies – taking conventional cases and experiments conducted in the teaching of communication design – synaesthetic translations from the visual/figural to the auditory/verbal, and from the visual to the tactile applied to communicative artifacts, highlighting how the concept of translation – between sensory registers, between devices, between graphic formats – is the foundation of every experience that intends to be accessible.

What happens when an object is consciously designed not to suggest how to interact with it explicitly? This research theme is controversial and peculiar. It is rooted in the concepts of agency and affordance of objects and their interfaces, proposing a change of perspective. Rather than conceiving functions clearly expressing themselves, embedded technology allows an extension of the possible levels of manipulation on seemingly silent objects. This implies a semantic reconfiguration that begins with aesthetics and impacts interaction. Operating at the level of attribution of meaning, these objects challenge the ecological approach, resulting in a misleading design. The topic is tackled from the point of view of the communication designer and design researcher who look at the design of interaction and interface. The study relies on the lessons learnt and knowledge from a five-year-long research-through-design experimentation, triangulated with evidence emerging from the analysis on five relevant cases.

The unprecedented situation of the COVID-19 emergency has challenged traditional in-person interaction, forcing researchers to rethink participatory experiences, designing new tools, and readjusting the existing ones in order to adapt them to a virtual environment.This paper delves into tools and methods of remote inclusion and participation to foster the exchange of opinions among people and the construction of a shared imagery that represents the viewpoints of the community involved. In particular, it examines the dynamics implemented within the European initiative UIA-Urban Innovative Actions for the project WISH MI-Wellbeing Integrated System of Milan that deals specifically with actions to contrast juvenile poverty in Milan, and it involves the DCXW research group (Communication Design for Welfare) of the Politecnico di Milano Design Department and the Municipality of Milan as the lead partner. Through the case study, a series of tools and communication design techniques for remote participation are presented, highlighting the approaches taken to preserve humanity and closeness in online interactions, and especially emphasizing the new opportunities that the virtual environment can offer.

The paper presents “ADESSO - Aesthetics of Design for Social Innovation”, foundational research that aims at investigating the sensorial insights and the aesthetic experience related to services, relationships, environments, communication strategies, and spaces within Design for Social Innovation approaches, highlighting the impact on processes and outcomes.As Design for Social Innovation deals with all that design branches can do to promote and support social changes towards social and environmental sustainability, such processes are usually typified by a strong dematerialization of the design object itself: they own a relational and dialogical perspective. As the object itself of the design process has constantly been expanded, mainly towards its intangibility, the focus on the value generated by the experience of artefacts and places has found its area of investigation. Also, a decreased authorship has progressively turned the designer’s role into participatory-design-led practices. Indeed, Design Aesthetics has mainly dealt with product design and the related sensorial involvements, and no specific studies have so far included Design for Social Innovation.Focusing on these three principal axes of change for design research, ADESSO starts by investigating the aesthetic experience generated throughout sustainable and participative cases, stressing the importance of differential contributions to the whole process.

In a post-pandemic context, the application of user experience design to employees’ perspectives represents one of the stimulating challenges both among design practitioners and researchers. The paper discusses novel approaches that Design may implement to support organizational transformation. How can Employee Experience Design be applied to support organizations in redefining working scenarios? A qualitative analysis has been run to address this question, with a Participatory Action Research method through observations and tests developed with the support of the HR department of the Corporate Investment Banking division in Intesa Sanpaolo.Findings show how identifying key trends in employee perceptions and critical touchpoints, designing a set of experiential options and experience models to be tested, and engaging employees in the process of reflection in a collaborative design context can enhance the gradual redefinition of a qualitative employee experience. Moreover, the paper proposes a framework for design intervention in an organizational context, aiming to stimulate future opportunities for design practitioners and researchers to intervene in how people experience working routines.

Addressing design education programs according to the goals for sustainable development indicated by the ONU Agenda 2030 requires the update of contents and methodologies. The paper deals with why design theories for behavior change (DfBC) should be considered in design education at the university level, with a particular focus on service and interaction design. It also reports, as a case study, the results of including DfBC in a UX Design course, where students were engaged in the design of solutions aimed at supporting change of behaviors for sustainability. The experiment shows the potential of these theories as valuable educational content; it also enlights the need to develop further ethical discussion on the use of brain sciences in design.

Covid-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of cultural institutions. They have tackled the temporary shutdowns of their spaces shaping digital cultural experiences, to go beyond their ‘walls’ and enter their audiences’ homes with the aim of fostering existing relationships or creating new ones. Focusing on Italy, this research poses the question: how has the pandemic changed the design of cultural experiences? The five case studies track the evolution of cultural experiences during the health emergency. The assumption is that the pandemic has shaped the supply side as much as the demand, generating possibilities and scenarios for cultural experiences that could coexist with traditional modes. The cases are selected and interpreted based on a survey conducted from July 2020 to January 2021. The results suggest that online and onsite cultural experiences are converging, with important implications for accessibility and inclusion.

In the context of our evolving data-driven society, controlling the current abundance of data and the resulting flow of information does not circumscribe actions from disciplinary boundaries. Many recent theories factually underline this fact contributing significantly to the definition of valuable tools, methodologies, and processes. Numerous cross-disciplinary contributions support an ever-expanding field of knowledge in its many applications, the benefits of which are evident from an economic, social and cultural perspective. Furthermore, they seem to reveal the potential of a material transformation of data: re-materialising data, giving it physical shape and staging it in public spaces to create more emphatic relationships. This plastic experience would make people feel the data, not just watch and observe it. The paper proposes an analytical framework, helpful in exploring the opportunities offered by data design: what technological innovations make the development of new data communication languages possible? What spatial dimension does the experience provide? What value, what meaning do they bring? The framework offered here intends to be a thinking tool and inspire renewed data interaction design practices. A better understanding of what interaction in data design is, and how it can enrich the quality of interaction in data-informed product-service systems which empower those who use them. The goal is to open up the dialogue amongst parties interested in making the human explicit in the data ecosystem.

A good communication strategy of an artefact must connect a multitude of elements, both in terms of content and shape, and make them become a vehicle between the company and the consumer. The proposed contribution, resulting from the “Meta 4.0” research, suggests an exploration of innovative methodologies, tools and technologies to communicate and sell a product. In the context of the Industry 4.0 aims, the proposal is that technologies associated with the virtualisation of scenarios and products - augmented and virtual reality - can be useful tools and possibilities for achieving the required aim. In fact, the adoption of augmented and virtual reality technology in the context of communication would facilitate cognitive processing on the part of buyers, making them more interested in a product. The contribution explores the practice of vision through transformative technologies as a relational, cognitive and sensory expertise, attributing to the designer the role of interlocutor in the dimension of the visual imaginary in the duality between virtual and real. Therefore, designing the virtual in an incessant desire to find innovative experiential dimensions with the media, to make visible the centrality of the individual in the relationship between subject and transformative technology. The practice of vision refers to the actual conditions of viewing, including the social conditions of perception, which are the subject of anthropological research. The aim is to present the basis of a theorised language that defines possible intervention scenarios for the figure of the designer within the design of the intangible image.

With the growing popularity of service/social robots in different contexts and for many users, it becomes one of the future challenges for research to achieve a higher level of acceptability through the characterisation of the interaction with the machine, both from an expressive and functional point of view. A characterisation will depend on the type of user, work context and tasks to be performed by the machine. In this scenario, telepresence robots require an in-depth characterisation study, as they are machines intended to represent the extension, and therefore the personality, of remote subjects, mediating their communication. Through an analysis of case studies, this paper aims to provide an overview of approaches to telepresence robotics’s physical and/or cognitive characterisation. The use and application contexts dynamics will be explored to build support for experimentation.

The paper analyses a user research process combining educational and professional dimensions, through a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and a renowned Italian travel experiences B2B intermediary looking for new ideas to face the next challenges of the market. The design process widened the initial scope and revaluated the client's brief, enhancing the re- search and creating new scenarios for future implementation. The design brief was to reframe the role of the travel agency in a digital dimension, in- tercepting needs and opportunities in a changing and complex context such as travel sales.The final output made it possible to identify six scenarios and project areas that summarise evolutive models for the future of travel, which confirm the trends that emerged from the research and intercept new stakeholders, high- lighting limitations and opportunities to design a new user experience for the travel sector in a post pandemic age.

Operazione Arcevia (OA) is an urban settlement project, born for the purpose of the social, economic, and touristic regeneration of a marginal area in the Marchigiane hills, characterized by its postwar exodus. Conceived between 1972 and 1974 on the initiative of the businessman Italo Bartoletti, like every newly constituted city it was designed with a political and cultural identity by the architect Ico Parisi in collaboration with two renowned critics (Cripolti and Restany), a psychologist, and a large number of artists (Arman, César, Ceroli, Soto, Staccioli, among others). OA remained in its germinal phase, and this was indeed its final result, the fruit of participative work presented at several exhibition events: Venice 1976; Rome 1979). In this ideal city imagined by the erudite group of operators, along with its utopian aspects, there are also practical ones and design hypotheses that can still inspire and provide food for thought: the close collaboration between planners and artists; anti-monumental intentions for art with a social nature and characterized by shared practice; built-up urban relations and the landscape dimension; the coexistence between productive and residential communities and temporary communities, both touristic, in terms of hospitality, and as a secular space in which to take refuge. Cooperating together with Parisi and the critics were 33 artists who together created tavole progettuali (design boards) that combined design, technical design, photographic images, and collages, i.e. fully-fledged works of art and creativity.

Enhancing the widespread cultural heritages of our territories is not only a moral imperative and respect for the values established over time but an increasingly felt need to direct local development towards more sustainable strategies for the environment and communities.The culture of design, especially in Italy, has questioned what its disciplinary contribution can be, in addition to the specialist approaches such as exhibition, communication or lighting design. In national financed research carried out precisely on these themes (D.Cult research: Design for the enhancement of cultural heritage. Project strategies, tools, and methodologies, 2002/04), two elements emerged that managed to briefly define the operational and strategic characteristics of design in this field: the planning of experiences and relationships [1].In this contribution, the attention is to the role of souvenirs in these systems: from iconic objects, often of low material and aesthetic quality, they can instead play a significant role in the processes of use and design-driven enhancement [2].From an evolved perspective, designing a souvenir means establishing a synergistic and cohesive relationship with the territories and their values. Not only with the tangible cultural aspects of the natural and artificial landscape, historical and artistic testimonies, and material culture but also with the rich intangible heritage made up of knowledge, traditions, and know-how [3, 4]. And it can take on different roles in product, storytelling, communication strategy and activation of experiences.In this way, the souvenir becomes a “touchpoint” of a territorial development strategy that relates different cultural systems and brings value to local economic and production chains, even those not directly linked to tourism, such as the many forms of material and cultural production, typical of that context [5–7].Through analyzing some exemplary case studies and presenting some design experiences, we will draw a map of the possible “connective” roles of meaning and actions that a new generation of souvenirs could interpret.

Many public places in our cities, such as cafés, restaurants, dairies, theatre foyers, wine bars, brothels, bookshops, discos, art galleries, street corners and squares, have been historic and ritual points of reference for artists communities. Such environments whose particular “atmospheres” have created ideal places where these authors have met, known, admired, fought, and enjoyed themselves. Places in which they may also have shared fundamental moments as well as artistic and design intuitions. For different eras, yesterday as today, we pinpoint historical maps of the various cities with all the design studios together with the residences of the artists and architects themselves. If we draw the lines connecting these points, folding them along the different streets and squares these personalities might encountered, we then have created an intricate network of paths full of exciting twists and turns. It is easy to discover that some of these intersections correspond to public places where these personalities, more or less consciously, shared their lives, their passions and at the same time their projects and artistic researches.

The narrative vocation of design represents a crucial key for the interpretation of some contemporary cultural expressions such as making history, representing through different media, archiving and exhibiting.This essay explores narratives in three different “dimensions”: narrative as a scenario (that envisions new contexts, behaviours, uses, spaces); narrative as a tool (that creates new ways of triggering innovation), narrative as a process (that codifies methodologies dealing with complex issues).Narrative – be it implicit or explicit - is at the basis of all design interventions as a story is an authorising device, a tool able to systematise each element and direct it to a specific direction.Creating the strategies for a story as a design infrastructure means generating attention and stimulating memory, as narratives trigger curiosity and cognitive participation in the audience.Words and pictures are at the basis of imagination, as they design means for envisioning what is not there yet: conversations, dialogues, verbal and visual texts. Cognitive artefacts are media devices able to articulate a narrative repertoire and foster the process of innovation.

The paper explores the evolution of interaction design and digital communication – with a focus on the phygital space and the enhancement of people experience – both from the theoretical as well as a design point of view, based on a phenomenological and critical mapping of recent and paradigmatic case studies. In doing that, it introduces, presents, and discuss the possible role played by the phygital space as a narrative device exploring possible combinatons – space, narrationa and technologies – of space-based, multimodal storytelling mediated by blended experiences and devices.

This paper aims to address the power of worldbuilding practice in promoting shared and collective imagination, activating a process of cultural and narrative change.Specifically, the work presents a collaborative, social project entitled ACTS—A Chance Through Sport, whose main aim is to promote sports in prison as a tool for social reintegration, according to a multidisciplinary approach combining architecture, engineering, and design competencies. The focus is the work conducted by the Imagis Lab research group (Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano) regarding the role of narrative-based strategy in enhancing the transmission of values and messages through worldbuilding practice. Far from being a narrative gimmick for selling stories, it can allow people to participate in and interpret culturally situated narratives providing ownership.As such, the first part of the paper will describe how the project ACTS—A Chance Through Sport has addressed the role of narrative-based processes in promoting inclusion. Then the second part is devoted to presenting the narrative-based design framework: practical strategies for rethinking stories in practice that we have developed in our research since 2013.

This paper examines what the “narrative task” of Communication Design, in its infographic declination, may be in the different stages of “doing research through design”. That is to say that - crossing simultaneously the fields of theory and praxis - design research is required to elaborate a visual language capable of coherently presenting the entirety of its development (from the meta-design to final products) made up of data processed in the ante, during and post phases. In other words, the actual, useful and inalienable results of doing research must fully include the communicative and visual design of its “process” that unfolds throughout its desk and field actions. The theme of the “representation of research” therefore becomes the core of the paper, which highlights how the descriptive development of the actions and manifestations of research proceeds through visual models known as process and result models. What is proposed, in fact, in this contribution, is a reflection on the visual models that describe research in its phases, through different tools such as scientific drawing, hypothetigraphy and infographic presentation, the latter to be understood as a conceptual and visual synthesis of complex processes.

The golden age of corporate identity and logo design has always found wide space in visual communication histories as a crucial moment in the evolution of the graphic design profession in a modern direction. This focus in the last ten years has been confirmed by the publication of monographs, magazines and reprints, the launch of digital archives and publishing houses dedicated to the story of ‘logo-modernism’. If, on the one hand, this interest in the narrative of the modernist corporate identity season has made it possible to access images, information and biographies that were hitherto known little or nothing, on the other hand, they have perpetuated the presentation of this season according to a ‘heroic’ reading fuelled by the ‘formal lens’ and ‘visual satisfaction’. In doing so, historical narratives have often ended up showing graphic artefacts as decontextualized objects. Presented as ‘works of art’, logos were detached from the social context in which they lived, from the meanings they took on in the real world, and from the economic and political messages they conveyed.Starting from the reconstruction of the historiographical debate that has run through the discipline since the 1990s, this contribution proposes to extend the historical narrative of logo design and the season of corporate identity manuals, trying to also include the dialogue between the end users and these canonical artefacts of graphic design history. Analyzing the way in which public opinion during history has related to logos by loving them, contesting them, modifying them, rejecting them, memeifying them, allows us to look at the trademarks of modernism as cultural objects, as mediators of social relations. Finally, this contribution proposes the social history approach as a lens to open up history to a more inclusive narrative and to look at logos as ‘open works’.

Packaging sector is a complex system: it is a phenomenon with a high degree of economic and cultural cross-sectoriality, a multi-dimensional object that involves a plurality of specific players in an interconnected value chain. Packaging is also a driver and an accelerator of the social, economic and environmental phenomena in which it is immersed. In a context consisting of several crises, the paper explores how research in Advanced Design - an articulated system of practices used to design processes, products or services in complex scenarios to outline possible futures - can help to embrace change, accelerate systemic and responsible innovation and narrate it in companies operating in complex, multidisciplinary sectors such as packaging. The hypothesis is that it could take place through an Advanced Design-led project such as an Observatory: an ecosystemic monitoring system, which collects case studies, gathers and processes knowledge and disseminates it in narratives that can be understood by all the actors in the supply chain, contributing to the creation of a network that connects the actors. After describing the methods and practices of ADU's Packaging Innovation Observatory, the applied research developed by the Observatory for Giflex is described: a work example that starts from data and interprets them with the aim of defining an identity and value profile of flexible packaging, and creating value stories to be told in the context of dissemination and promotion.

The concept of narrative has radically changed how the content of events devoted to enhancing cultural heritage is offered. This evolution not only concerns the curatorial but also and above all the design aspects, with a revision of the very realization of exhibition environments. Within the design discipline of exhibition design, the narrative corresponds, therefore, to a conceptual principle of coordinated and relational habitability between space, content, and user, which is structured synchronously as scenario, tool, and process, and finds resonance in the implementation of digitized experiential modes.Where the narrative and the digital are integrated, the innovative concept of phygital exhibition design develops, based on their mutual interaction.Here, then, we elaborate on some key concepts and tools (paradigm shifts and semantic statements) whose interaction has generated and consolidated this new scenario, such as:- the narrative script;- the storytelling principle;- the action of transduction;- the added value of specification and articulation.

The paper presents the application of the research project “MEET - Multifaceted Experience for Enhancing Territories” at the “Museo del Territorio di Riccione”. The project aims at enhancing the local cultural heritage by involving institutions, professionals, and citizens in the realization of a co-designed interactive exhibition. The enhancement considers the narrative processes strategic for the inclusion of and broader access by different types of public and for a more effective learning process. After explaining the different types of narratives used in the installations, the contribution lists all the phases of the project, synthesised in a visual roadmap. The contribution is then carried out by mentioning all the stakeholders involved – together with their role – the cultural assets enhanced, the development of the process that brought to the creation of the audio-visual content and the realization of the exhibition path. Finally, in the conclusion, the research team presents the result of the qualitative and quantitative evaluation phase conducted through questionnaires useful to understand the actual appreciation and the effectiveness of the project.

The paper develops a comparative analysis of the cultural and creative competencies within the educational offer of the University of Bologna, using multiple sources and tools. This contribution is based on the hypothesis that the narration around the value of the cultural and creative disciplines in academia needs to be critically reviewed. This path of observation, mapping, narration, and visualisation resulted in being consistent with the critical role that cultural and creative disciplines have played at the University of Bologna since the 1970s; by developing unprecedented educational models and impacting the territory through the generation of new economic models and the development of a diverse system of cultural and creative industries. The methodological approach of the research is based on a comparative analysis of the main documents regulating the cultural and creative economy on the international, national, and regional levels. The second stage of the research process was built on an explorative strategy based on desk analysis to create the dataset. The question arose about how to make a database accessible to a broader audience: the conclusions show that data visualisations, as a creative tool, can enable story-doing processes and thus create awareness and value.

In 2019, a memorandum of understanding has been signed by the Visual and Graphic Design Laboratory (part of the Design and Territorial Culture Master’s Degree Course) and the Study and Documentation Center operating on the Island of Ustica. The above-mentioned agreement officialises a synergic relationship of exchange between the Course and the Center, which has always been active in promoting knowledge and divulgation of the many island’s patrimonies. This knowledge allows both professors and students from the Design School in Palermo to access data, documents, and present research through publications, as well as having access to archival, textual and iconographic materials. The projects developed within the Laboratory, from 2018 to 2022, concern the development of artifacts in the fields of visual identity, editorial graphics, infographics, and interactive graphics. The afore-mentioned projects are all based on a digital archive, built through the collection of fragments during the first phase of the research. Territorial identity signs are re-interpreted according to new unprecedented points of view.

Knitwear is a consolidated industry in Italy and, at the same time, a typical expression of the Made in Italy paradigm linked to the ideas of craftsmanship. While, on the one hand, knitwear is associated with the idea of craft and manufacturing traditions, on the other hand, it is nowadays produced by numerical control machines (CNC) where the technological contribution and the level of automation are very relevant. The convergence of physical and digital environments, at the heart of the Fashion Industry 4.0 debate, is an established feature of knitwear design practice.In the contemporary industrial scenario, knitted items are produced on digitally programmed machines through sophisticated software, and the manual contribution of the individual operator during the knitting phase is reduced to a minimum. In the light of these premises, this contribution questions the opportunity and value of the integration of digital technologies in the storytelling of traditional manufacturing without losing the power to evoke Made in Italy’s values such as quality, aesthetic refinement, and exclusivity. To analyze these issues, the authors report the case study of SMT – Società Manifattura Tessile, a leading knitting company where the technological presence equals that of traditional manufacturing craftmanship, keeping both elements at balance. The case study suggests the importance of the contemporary knitting craftsman to increasingly develop communication skills to make the relationship between technology and manufacturing explicit and possibly smoothly blend it with the Made in Italy archetypes.

The contribution refers to the research topic of materials experience by framing a methodology related to the way materials are catalogued and interpreted in design.The study specifically concerns the design for the sustainable management of production residues in the tanning supply chain and is aimed at their semantic valorisation as material resources.Starting from the interpretation of by-products as the material legacy of a know-how, the valorisation takes place through the application of a specific method based on the definition of expressive-sensorial parameters. The project prefigures the prototype of a cataloguing system in the shape of a multi-level map.As a matrix of design possibilities belonging to a territorial culture, the tool intercepts values such as identity and recognisability of a know-how processes, whose by-products become evidence of it and represent the “material” of the project that acquires physical form in the tangible surface of the artefacts.

Regardless of the increasing number of initiatives and activist counter-narratives aimed at fighting the hetero-normative patriarchal beliefs, the current Italian social structure still justifies gender-based violence, while the number of abuses remains chiefly unaltered. Within such a complex framework, this study intends to advance the discussion on how IDNs can contribute to sensitive topics such as Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) to trigger social change, showing the relevance of involving its protagonists for better addressing such a complex and urgent issue, increasing the possibilities of encouraging positive shifts in ideals and behaviours. This study reports on the co-design of an IDN that involved both survivors and volunteers from an anti-violence centre, and how their engagement provided fundamental insights on the necessity to describe survivors’ struggles sensibly and invite bystanders to reconsider their opinion on gender-based violence victims. Building on procedural rhetoric and narrative immersion, the artefact targets non-victims, putting them in women’s shoes to emphasise how violence is never caused by the victim’s choices but by those of the perpetrator. Ultimately, the results of the testing on 83 people who assessed the artefact with pre- and post-experience questionnaires are presented and discussed, showing the IDN effectiveness in tackling the topic and creating a meaningful experience.

In recent years many studies focused on steering behavioural change to face the climate crisis. A significant part of these opted to deal with mobility habits, i.e. prompting citizens towards more conscious and sustainable choices. One widely used approach involved game techniques to hack the habit loop by exploiting the similarities that keep players hooked. In this context, narrative can be key in engaging people’s emotions. It can facilitate the integration of game elements and emphasise the tension that arouses emotional reactions and fuels the desire to play. Several examples of games with distinct narratives exist in the context of individual mobility.After conducting several field research, it emerged that mere game mechanics of ‘prizes for sustainable travel’ would not have been able to generate lasting behavioural change besides severe scalability limitations.The proposed research originated from previous work and focused on creating an entirely novel narrative able to change the experience of moving around the city by leveraging those values that encourage people to rethink their daily choices. These reflections lead to MUV, a digital game that turns sustainable urban mobility into a sport and citizens into athletes competing in various disciplines such as walking, cycling or public transport. According to their performance, they can level up from amateur to professional, gaining fame and honours. This approach demonstrated significant engagement and impact results, particularly concerning CO2 savings. Therefore, the ‘mobility as a sport’ narrative proved crucial to involve citizens actively, make them feel part of a cohesive movement and nudge them to build greener and healthier habits.

In a complex and changing world, design is called to act to nurture and provoke critical reflections regarding wicked, complex, and interconnected issues, becoming a sensemaking agent that, exploiting its speculative methods, uses narratives as an inquiry tool, as a co-design tool, and as a provocative tool. Through the presentation and analysis of a provotype designed by the authors, the research aims to define new speculative tools for human-non-human collaborations and highlight how design narratives may be involved within more-than-human discourses.

This paper aims to propose and stimulate a critical debate on the multidisciplinary aspects of communication design, focusing on the contribution, mutual learning, and synergy of audiovisual storytelling, transmedia design, and game design. We assume the narratives as the common ground for developing design processes and practices for addressing complex socio-economic challenges.In particular, we focus on the role of design within inclusive and co-design processes proposing the narratives as a framework and the co-created stories as both contemporary cultural expressions and design practices. In light of case studies and examples from our research and educational experiences at the School of Design and Department of Design (Politecnico di Milano), we propose to look at the designer as the drama manager of the design processes, capable of facing the challenges of tomorrow. In doing so, we discuss the gap between authorship and agency that occurs whenever design operates in social innovation contexts, collaborating with non-designers – artists, experts in other disciplines, or people and communities at the margins of society.

The role of narrative in the construction of an interaction design project is relevant since the very beginning of the discipline, when scholars in the 1990s pointed out how the whole dialogue between human and computer was developed like a theater work. Actually, the use of narrative was, and still is, focused on the unfolding of the user experience with a product/service, following the story arc and using analysis and prediction tools like journey maps. If this approach corresponds to the state of the art for many scholars and practitioners, there is a large debate on in the process that involves storytelling techniques, especially during the concept generation and the branching of the interactions between people and artifacts’ system. In particular, design fiction and speculative design give a strong relevance to the creation not only of a story line but, above all, of the world building, where people and artifacts interacts inside a sketched out future scenario, letting the audience free to speculate, for example, on impacts on the society, ethical issues, acceptance levels.In this situation the narrative approach can be included into the interaction design process during all the phases, in order to foster designers to generate future-able artifacts strictly connected to Personas depicted as they were characters, placed in verisimilitude-based worlds.The paper will describe the results of this methodological experimentation focusing on the differences occurred to two different projects: basic research, research for a company.

The rapid process of digital transformation and servitization experienced on a global scale in recent decades, further accelerated by the pandemic crisis, has radically altered the life experience of societies, with technological innovations leading to the emergence of new ethical and legal challenges. The issue of digital literacy and the acquisition of basic skills for responsible use of the internet has become one of the most urgent prerogatives in international government programs to address psychosocial phenomena such as those related to online grooming, cyberbullying, cybersuicide, cyber racing, or online scamming. The proposed work introduces the use of participatory game design as an empowerment tool for young students. The case study of the NetWalking project, developed by an interdisciplinary team of practitioners and researchers in several secondary schools in the city of Palermo (Italy), describes the experimentation of co-design activities of an edugame with a conversational interface (chatbot), which exploits the logic of nonlinear storytelling to actively engage students in playful learning activities, contributing to the development of hard skills (STEM) and soft skills (self-assessment, teamwork and information management).

We are experiencing profound changes on a global scale and a different way of connecting with places, memory, and atmospheres. Adaptation is a necessary process.In this context, the need to update languages is real and urgent [1]. There is a growing demand for new terminologies to disseminate ongoing changes and communicate them to professionals and the public. Neology is one of the main ways a language, and therefore a culture renews itself through a different narrative approach.Design becomes the chosen field of experimentation and activation of new practices and theories that aim to bridge the gap between what we experience in the present reality and what, intangible, can only be captured by combining words.It is within this framework or reference that the present paper illustrates the Mnemosphere project, interpreted through the lens of a new wor(l)d formation research. The project is based on the interdisciplinary design of a terminological combination.Mnemosphere appears as a compound word that is still searching for a shared definition and a detailed characterisation but represents a potential theoretical and practical strategy that can be applied and developed in many ways.This contribution focuses on the transition from a word-formation to a concept-formation recognising Mnemosphere neologism input as an active research tool to stimulate reflections, foster experiences, trigger design practices, and research actions in different contexts. After describing the theoretical framework, the paper will outline the main research activities to blur semantic boundaries within the new word actively.