https://www.mdu.se/

In information design textbooks, text design is mostly understood as typography and layout. The meaning-making process of language, involving social interaction that affects language, is rarely acknowledged. Instead, texts are supposed to be "clearly" written. In this research article, we argue that the understanding of text design could benefit from also addressing text production and use situated amid social activity. This article presents a study on a text design process partly based on spoken language and owned by assembly operators in a workplace. Capturing the spoken dialogue and transforming it into instructive texts resembling transcripts are essential steps in securing the best practices for the smallest tasks in manual assembly, the minima of working, which is crucial for manufacturing. Our aim within the information design field is 2-fold: To underline the meaning-making process in language as a social phenomenon and to show that the situated design perspective, i.e., an outlook that highlights the uniqueness of the setting, can be important for the production and use of certain texts, such as instructions, and for affecting language. We asked ourselves: What are the consequences for the information design field when meaning-making in a language is understood as being socially situated in an activity? We have studied a design process and used observations, interviews, and text analysis to gather data. The result showed that the workers' ownership of text documents is crucial for the texts' use, yet the texts used do not meet the standard of information design textbooks. Moreover, the design of the text involves a continuous and non-linear collective negotiation that balances standardization in language and work procedures with the incorporation of operators' linguistic improvements. We unfold a case of text design where there is a closeness of designer and user roles, a non-linearity of the process, and an understanding of an information design product as becoming rather than having been finalized for use.

More understanding about ways to consider flexibility during design processes is needed. This also demands reconsideration of research approaches for studying design processes of flexible assembly systems to develop knowledge. To assist efforts to meet these needs, a participatory research approach that facilitates elucidation of design processes of assembly systems and their relations to flexibility is presented. The approach has been applied in a heavy-duty vehicle manufacturing firm, resulting in both theoretical and practical contributions of participatory research.

Assembly systems need to manage changes in products and volume. During the design process, preconditions for the operation of assembly systems are generated. The purpose of this paper is to identify the components of the design process of flexible and reconfigurable assembly systems. Literature reviews were conducted and empirical data from six research studies were analyzed to report the results. The authors suggest that the findings can give a clearer overview of the components in these design processes and support studies about relations between components as well as practitioners with a holistic view during the design work.

Information design is a practice and an academic field that views information through its representations, for example, through images, spaces, and texts. It is also human centered, not technological driven, in that its focus is on the users and their conditions and environments. As an academic field, information design is at an intersection of disciplines; cognitive science, media and communication, linguistics, visual studies, and art and aesthetics meet in information design. In our research, we have come to focus on the connection between aesthetics and visual-spatial information design; we are addressing the understanding of aesthetic matters in information design and its implications, using examples from the manufacturing sector.

There is a growing interest in the relation between workspace design and innovation. On the one hand, is the idea of designing an “innovation lab” that supports innovation. There are substantial financial investments involved when creating an innovation lab and there is evidence that such spaces can have short useful lifespan and some of them fail because they are not used as intended [Lewis and Moultrie 2005; Fayard and Weeks 2011]. On the other hand, workspaces can be altered by the users for short or long terms to support innovation activities. The users hence become spatial designers themselves. A gap exists in research on the underlying mechanisms, architecture, and dynamics by which organisations can create an environment supporting continuous improvements and radical innovation on both individual and organisational levels [Turner, Swart and Maylor 2013, Turner and Lee-Kelly 2013]. From design research we can contribute with a perspective on the underlying mechanisms and the dynamics in play in the area of workspace design and innovation. We can form the design research for the innovation labs, i.e. utopian specifically designed spaces for innovation, or the relationship between innovation, users and daily workspaces. We have chosen to acknowledge and study the complexity in relations between users, daily workspaces and innovation. Our hypothesis was that photo-elicitation could be a method to study that weave of complexity and research underlying dynamics.

In this article we discuss the method of the photo-elicitated interview (PEI), as a tool in human-centred design research with respect to context and workspace. A phenomenological perspective focus on the human experience, examine and clarify situations, events and experiences as they occurs spontaneously in daily life (Seamon, 2000). This article intend to provide background theories from phenomenology and examples from an empirical study to discuss if and how PEI is instrumental in getting information from interviewees about their relation to their workspaces and innovation. Although the phenomenological theoretical perspective is relevant and therefore used here to describe human relation to workspaces and discuss the method, our use of specific notions from phenomenology aims firstly to support the analyse of the method to inform design research, and is not intended develop the phenomenological concepts themselves.

Contemporary design such as Jonas Bohlin’s chair Concrete and Ettore Sottsass shelf Carlton calls for alternative thinking in design theory, in regard to design theories’ categorization of functional and non-functional (i.e. aesthetical) objects. For example found in Donald Norman’s theory of the design of everyday things. In these examples from design practice, usefulness seems to be put aside for sensual perception. But these desig nobjects also seem to broaden the concept of ’design’. Not, however, placing them in the categories of being aesthetic- or art objects. In this paper, I suggest that these artefacts are playing with ’affordance’, i.e. with the activity called forth through perception of the object.They also actualize design understood as drawing/sketching, as cognitive tools, hence playing with design both understood as process and final object.

Aesthetic aspects, along with a vitalisation of traditional discussions on aesthetic matters, can be a key to a better understanding of the design of working places in manufacturing industry of today. In this paper we address a rethinking of aesthetic matters and therefore also the aes-thetic in design practice, while examining examples of superabundant visual communication in industrial environments. The environments are studied from an information design perspec-tive. Theories discussed in the field of aesthetics are, for example, Jauss’ view on the con-cept ’poiesis’. Jauss’ line of thought are put to use, in this paper, as an alternative perspective focusing on the production of artefacts, compared to the more commonly perspective that highlights the concept ’aesthetic’ (Gr. ’aisthesis’) in a focusing on the perception of artefacts. In this paper the industrial environments are analysed as different fundamental forms of in-formation and Marcia J Bates’ notion of the nature of information is put to use in a visual- and spatial context. We argue that instead of underlining the relationship of aesthetic and architec-ture, it is more fruitful for the information design practice in manufacturing industrial envi-ronments, to highlight poiesis as a significant aspect of design. The analysis circle around three examples from industrial environments.

By appropriating learning from the social and cultural sciences, entrepreneurship and innovation as research fields can be enriched and deepened. Nietzsche can make a contribution to the understanding of entrepreneurship as a matter of transcending the established order, through the creative work of actors. E.g. in order to be able to handle “radical” forms innovation and entrepreneurship, Nietzchean conceptual resources and perspectives can be helpful. He is a philosopher of the unconventional par excellence. An important aspect of transcendence is the overcoming and self-transcendence of the self. The concept of ubermensch by Nietzsche is here intriguing and ambivalent in the reception of his work - seemingly an analogy to the ambivalence of the entrepreneur-hero in the entrepreneurship literature. Closer reading indicate a more complex understanding of men through creative work overcoming themselves, and breaking loose of established customs and norms.