Perspectives on Design and Digital Communication IV

Protecting and enhancing informational privacy is crucial in user-to-user interactions, particularly through instant messaging apps. Careless and malicious handling of personal information can harm users’ well-being and dignity. However, there is a need for a better understanding of the relationship between informational privacy and UX design in both design practice and academic research. This paper aims to bridge this gap and explain how privacy can be achieved through meaningful UX design. The research presented in this paper focuses on Confide, an instant messaging app promoted as the ‘Confidential Messenger’. In a lab test involving the app’s actual usage, we first subjected it to a privacy assessment. Then, we analyzed Confide’s UX through a heuristic assessment followed by an authors’ UX report. The research revealed that users’ freedom to manage their privacy settings leads to a meaningful UX. The methodology proposed in this paper is appropriate for investigating how designed products combine informational privacy and good UX design due to its replicability and scalability.

Entutela is a prototype legal interface built to allow anyone to draft and file a tutela (a writ of protection of constitutional rights) without legal assistance or any specific knowledge. The tutela was implemented in 2021 as a digital tool to improve citizens' experience and contribute to the judicial branch's digital transformation. This article describes the second iteration of Entutela, where we focus on constructing content by citizens and developing the interface at the front-end and back-end levels. Both developments involve a transdisciplinary approach to access to justice, combining design, law, and engineering to define, analyze, propose, and implement solutions that respond to the real needs of the context, taking into account regulatory constraints, stakeholder visions, and impacts within the system. The article also emphasizes the need to adapt legal artifacts so as to make them available to everyone, regardless of their complexity, exploring the potential of legal interfaces within a digitized legal system. Overall, the article highlights the importance of developing user-friendly legal interfaces to promote access to justice and close the gap between legal knowledge and the public.

Indispensable for the proper functioning of democratic societies, journalism assumes a pivotal role in democracy and the community. Although information is the primary element in this area, the visual communication design is equally relevant. Placed on the same level as language and communication, cyberjournalism and visual communication contribute to creating the social world. Moreover, the effects of visual communication appear before one realises or reflects on them, influencing greater or lesser public participation. This manuscript seeks to understand how visual communication and the design adopted by online news platforms can affect public participation in cyberjournalism. To conduct this study, a literature review and methodological analysis were carried out, which focus focused on three online news platforms and the public. The analysis corpus is divided into five moments that address themes of cyberjournalism, participation design, design principles, design elements, credibility, and confidence. The results we obtained are relevant for distinct areas: Human-Computer Interaction, allowing the adoption of more conscious techniques in terms of interface and communication design; for the public, since what is at stake is the knowledge they derive from news content; and for news producers, encouraging quality consumption and informed participation in increasing digital literacy through the adoption of meaningful techniques towards more conscious forms of interaction.

This study is part of the Wisdom Transfer (WT) research project, which aims to contribute to the scientific inscription of the individual legacies, at risk of disappearance, of retired or retiring professors, who marked the beginning of design education in northern Portugal. In this sense, the intention was to evaluate the current panorama of the digital repositories of higher education academic institutions, in order to assess the creation’s need of a specific digital repository for the Portuguese art and design universe. In Portugal, there is currently a total of 60 digital repositories of academic institutions, with none of these being exclusively dedicated to art and design education. Thus, in order to assess the need for the creation of a specific digital repository for the artistic universe, this study evaluated the design and usability of four digital repositories of reference universities (two national and two international), namely: the RepositóriUM, from Univeridade do Minho and the Repositório Aberto, from Universidade do Porto; the Cross Collection Discovery repository, from Yale University, USA; and the RMIT Research Repository, from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. The results showed that the analysed repositories aggregate a very high volume of information from many different scientific areas. This plurality and the immensity of available content make the search process difficult, and it is also difficult to meet the specific needs for sharing content from certain fields of expertise, particularly art and design.

This chapter focuses on how design culture is perceived in an industrial context, through the diagnosis tool Design Culture Ladder (DCL) in which the deliverable outcomes are provide both qualitative and quantitative data base. In a first phase, research based on the literature review (1) compared studies on the indices/paradigms of culture, culture evolution, design culture, and organizational/corporate culture, contextualized to the industry, (2) the analysis of indicators extracted from the paradigms, and (3) the triangulation of the dimensions found; in a second phase, empirical study applied in (4) interviews and (5) surveys—to 18 companies in traditional and innovative sectors, respectively from the footwear industry and the software industry in Portugal—along with a multidisciplinary framework of the companies’ employees; in a third phase, analysis of found data, such as (6) sub-categories, (7) frequency and metric analysis, (8) categories, and (9) main concepts; and in a last phase, (10) the analysis and comparision of quantitative data between the analysed industries. The results/findings of this chapter show that this diagnosis tool can be applied and be transversal to different industries in Portugal, provide comparative results and validate the questionnaire script of the DCL model.

The design thinking methodology is a problem-solving approach that involves empathising with end-users, (re)defining problems, brainstorming solutions creatively, and experimenting with prototypes and testing. It has been widely adopted in education to help students develop critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills in design. On the other hand, text-to-image artificial intelligence is a method used to generate images from natural language descriptors (usually referred to as prompts). Design thinking methodology can teach students to think creatively and critically about real-world problems when applied in the classroom. In the context of design teaching at the University of Saint Joseph, Macao, students use the design thinking methodology to develop innovative proposals for furniture design solutions. Combining design thinking methodologies with text-to-image artificial intelligence can further enhance the learning experience by allowing students to generate visual representations of their ideas during the ideation phase. The authors developed a systematic approach to generate images for ideation on furniture design based on prompting text-to-image (PTI). The analysis related students’ results who applied the design thinking methodology without using AI tools and the results generated using a standard text-to-image programme. By combining both methods, teachers can help students develop critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills, while also allowing them to generate visual representations in a different paradigm and, by so, being able to communicate their ideas with the most appropriate support for them.

This chapter explores the impact of digital technology on public spaces and the challenges policymakers face in keeping up with technological advancements. The development of connected places, such as Smart Cities, has been facilitated by digital technology breakthroughs since the 1950s, where real-time data is collected and analysed for decision-making. The chapter discusses a study that combined speculative design with a walking method and digital space to investigate the potential benefits, risks, and challenges of deploying connected technology in public spaces. The research methodology involved physical and virtual walkshops presenting fictional and real IoT sensor deployments. The findings highlight the opportunities and challenges of digitally connected systems, as discussed by the participants. The chapter concludes with insights, limitations, and recommendations for further research, emphasising the importance of diverse stakeholder involvement in technology implementation in public spaces and the role of speculative design in policymaking. Overall, this chapter contributes to the discussion on the role of speculative design in policymaking and the need for diverse stakeholder involvement in technology implementation in public spaces.

Democracy refers to the condition where citizens can exercise self-determination, thereby allowing for the realization of their aspirations beyond the mere formal right to vote. Design for democracy primarily involves improving the mechanisms of participation in politics, such as through the interpretation of the needs of social groups or the creation of artifacts. We present a case study of EU4ALL, an initiative developed by a Portuguese social NGO, co-founded by the European Parliament (EP). EU4ALL's principal aim was to develop communication strategies that make the ten democratic values highlighted by the EP more attainable to communities in situations of information vulnerability, particularly inmates and those living in social housing. To achieve this, the Double Diamond design model was used, which involved a bibliographic search on democratic values, synthesizing of research, validation sessions with Portuguese Euro Deputies (MEPs), development of communication materials, testing with users, and finally, the delivery of materials and awareness sessions with vulnerable groups. Based on the conducted process, it is evident that design holds immense value in its potential to bolster democracy by creating inclusive and accessible communication materials and promoting transparency and accountability through the visual representation of data and information.

Vulnerability has become a key concept in modern society, relating to all dimensions of human existence, and the main determinants of health. Vulnerability is subject-dependent and so a subjective condition deeply rooted in selfhood. Addressing vulnerability means talking about resistance, resilience, and strength, essential characteristics of adaptation, the main requisite for survival. Affecting both physical and emotional bodies, chronic disease is a main cause of vulnerability. Any comprehensive effort to understand and treat illness should take a holistic view of health, thinking in wholeness and interconnectedness terms, and focusing on the interactions between mind, body, and behavior. Design impacts people's lives and influences human behavior. New approaches to promote and facilitate behavior change can be created through design for behavior change. This work seeks to understand the relevance of vulnerability as an analytical frame of reference and a multidisciplinary concept and find its contributive potential to designing for behavioral change in chronic health. As a symbolic interaction mechanism, stories can play an important role in strengthening and building resilience, regaining trust, and favoring forgiveness. Through design for behavior change, stories with a higher level of resonance can be created, thus more success-prone for person engagement and behavior change.

Participatory design practices allow users to understand and experience products more deeply. How, what, and why emerge as meaningful questions to answer collaboratively, strengthening the link between creators, companies, and consumers. As one of its results, companies have been adapting to the consumer market by allowing users to participate in the design of their own products. In this chapter, as an ongoing research project, two case studies are analyzed, helping to understand how companies promote the consumer's enrolment in the design, and their engagement with the creative part of future products and services through technology. Using a qualitative methodology, we seek to understand how modular design allows consumers to create more innovative, creative, fun-allocated pieces and how it could work as a design strategy for more sustainable marketable solutions and user behaviors. The main conclusion shows us a new creative sphere where the consumer has a critical role in developing future things emotionally bonded.

Advertising has evolved over the decades. Knowing consumers are increasingly avoiding advertisements, creating campaigns that attract attention and stay in memory is essential. Advertisers’ main goal is to get closer to consumers, generating visibility, attractiveness, and engagement with the brand. Furthermore, this topic has aroused the academy's interest, and studies show the importance of advertising and its connection with brand engagement. Thus, this study (n = 244) was carried out through a research model, tested through the PLS-SEM methodology, which showed that informativeness, narrative structure and narrative transportation have effects on brand engagement and advertising stimulation play a mediating role in this relationship. Therefore, it is suggested that brands create video ads with information and relevant structures to attract consumers that consider themselves part of these ads.

This chapter presents a study developed at the Department of Communication Sciences of the University of Minho (Portugal) about the importance of design in the online digital communication of a Higher Education Institution, in a pandemic context. The pandemic scenario, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which in turn is responsible for Covid-19, experienced in Portugal since the beginning of 2020, resulted in rigorous social and human relationship restrictions, forcing individuals, institutions and companies to find alternatives to answer to these limitations. One of the fields that suffered most from these restrictions was the communication one, not only at an interpersonal level, but also at an institutional level. The study presented here follows, therefore, a methodology that crosses literature review with semi-structured interviews and focuses on how communication design can contribute to the improvement of institutional communication in socially dramatic moments like those experienced during the pandemic, which isolated academic communities of teachers, staff and students, reducing their interactions to virtual online environments. Communication design, through its main structuring elements, such as typography and colour, has the potential to “humanise” the messages with information about health and safety, academic procedures, among other formal information usually transmitted by universities to their communities, giving them emotional and appealing attributes. In this way, the communication design contributes to draw the receiver's attention to important information, reinforcing the effectiveness of communication.

Asymmetry is a prevalent feature in modern games. It allows each player to have a unique gameplay experience, which improves a game’s replayability and makes in-game interactions more analogous to those we encounter in real life. Yet, there has been little discussion about the phenomena of asymmetry, how they occur during play, as well as their repercussions on player experience. This chapter begins with a definition for asymmetry, followed by its deconstruction into two major categories: endogenous and exogenous. We analyse six types of endogenous asymmetry described in the literature—(1) Ability, (2) Challenge, (3) Goal, (4) Responsibility, (5) Information, and (6) Interface—and present six other types: (7) Operation, (8) Location, (9) Time Frame, (10) Interdependence, (11) Outcomes, and (12) Feedback, discussing how they may interact with one another.

This study analyzes the written word and typography in a modern and postmodern context, regarding its view and usage in audiovisual and digital systems. Analyzing different periods, works and artists, we aim to understand the potential of typography in the contemporary artistic discourse, mainly exploring the visual, dynamic and interactive components of typography. The theoretical study explored here serves as the basis for a project that foresees the production of a video installation, constructed from the documental and textual collection of Fernando Gonçalves Lavrador. The objective is to disseminate this collection through one exhibition, where a selection of his texts will be appropriated and transformed into artifacts that will converge textual, imagetic and animated elements. Until this public presentation, which is expected to happen in 2024, a process of experimentation with different styles, techniques and materials is being prepared. The results obtained so far—four short films and an interactive program—will also be presented in this paper. The preparatory act that precedes the appropriation of Lavrador's heritage aims to improve the artistic processes around the themes explored in this paper and study new possibilities of using typography as an artistic component in a computational and videographic system.

The professional opportunities and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on design are yet to reveal themselves fully. Nevertheless, Architecture's thirty-year project against postmodern iconography exemplifies how pre-existing concerns precondition AI's impact on design. Admittedly, there were pronounced conceptual and procedural differences in the methods developed during this period. However, a common belief in a pragmatic, instrumental approach to production has instigated a fundamental change in how one translates ideas into objects. This change, coinciding with the increasing use of the digital interface, now sees drawing as something one subscribes to rather than a set of techniques one uses to transcribe ideas. Contextualizing AI within a more extensive history of Architecture's experience with the digital environment, this paper will describe how pragmatism in Digital Architecture and Activism has encouraged designers to believe digital drawings enable an axiomatic translation of abstract ideas into real objects. At the same time, the most rudimentary of AI processes already contest this belief by presenting the disciplinary oddity of a digital technique based on images. AI not only reinvigorates architecture's often-problematic relationship to the semiotics of depictive imagery. It also problematizes issues of precedent and model by hiding how its algorithms select and combine sources. In raising questions around authorship and legitimacy, AI questions this thirty-year effort to recast disciplinary agency through instrumental drawing methods. Crucially, AI makes claiming authorship an issue again, while also asking whether axiomatic drawings can ever achieve prescribed socio-political goals.

This study is framed within information design and focuses on data representation using augmented reality (AR) and its appropriation by designers. The need to investigate no-code AR authoring tools was motivated by the conclusions drawn during the development of “Floating Companies” AR prototype, which highlight the limited access of designers without programming skills to this technology. We intend to identify the limitations of no-code tools regarding development platforms, such as Unity, and represent data with no-code tools. The methodology used entails three phases—the collection and characterization of no-code AR tools; the review of its limitations regarding the development milestones in FLOC; and the proposal of data representation based on no-code tools. The AR tools landscape offers several free platforms which do not require programming skills. It was found that the analyzed tools do not support algorithmic data representation, which forces any representation to be designed manually in a customized way, presenting limitations regarding the amount of data, but also opportunities. The type of project that no-code platforms support falls within the concept of communicative visualization—a type of visualization that does not intend to deeply analyze the data, but rather to communicate and engage public.

Clubs—like those devoted to disco, techno and house music—have worked as spaces for design, artistic and technological experimentation, creating a beneficial relationship between the discipline of design and the activity of clubbing. However, this relationship has caught little attention from design researchers, overlooking the possibilities that the club has to offer as a space for design experimentation and research. As an effort to foster these advantages, this chapter proposes the creation of the AfterLab as a laboratory for design—understood as the application of art and technology to our lives—applied to the dance floor experience. This proposal is divided in two parts: the first analyzes the economic, social, and aesthetic dimensions of clubbing; and the second exposes the research questions, goals, formats and initial actions proposed for the AfterLab, as well as some ethical guidelines. Once the AfterLab becomes a reality, it can benefit designers, artists, and professionals related to the area. Furthermore, the AfterLab can advance and deepen the relationship between design and clubbing, while preserving and improving local club cultures. The present text is shared with the scientific community in the hope of generating feedback and igniting synergies of collaboration.