The Conference Program is ready! It has been conceived to find an effective compromise between different, equally important demands: to give many design researchers the opportunity to present their work and the time to discuss it with others; to listen to several plenary session speeches; to participate in debates on specific topics and, finally, to have time and spaces for open discussions that prepare the ground for the final statements of the whole conference.
There are 4 main components in the program : 3 conference streams and 1 visualisations exhibition. These are:
- SELECTED PAPERS MODULES. This is, of course, the
Conference core: 138 papers are presented in 6 parallel themes of 4
modules each. The themes and the module sub-themes emerged from the
clusterization of selected papers. They are:
- VISIONS (Ways of living, Ways of producing);
- PROPOSALS (Daily life solutions, Enabling Systems);
- TOOLS (Design Theories, Design Methods).
- PRESENTATIONS BY INVITED SPEAKERS. 8 international
speakers have been asked to give an overview of their countries or
regions in terms of design research and its contributions in changing
the change. As a whole, they outline the state of design research for
sustainability worldwide. These presentations will take place each day,
in late morning plenary sessions. They are:
Bill Moggridige, USA; Geetha Narayanan, INDIA; Luisa Collina, ITALY; Mugendi M Rithaa, SOUTH AFRICA; Aguinaldo dos Santos, BRAZIL; Lou Yongqi, CHINA; Fumi Masuda, JAPAN; Cris Ryan, AUSTRALIA.
- EMERGING ISSUES PROCESS. It is a series of activities (a round table, an international project session, an open discussion) that aim to produce the final output of the conference in a participatory way and make the first steps in possible post-conference initiatives. As a whole, they can be seen as a bottom-up process of theme generation. These initiatives will take place in late afternoon plenary sessions, on the first and second days, and in 6 parallel sessions and in the final plenary final one on the third day.
- VISUALISATIONS EXHIBITION. It is a loop of video projections visualising the output of some selected papers. The aim is to promote the idea that design research can also be a process leading to highly communicative results.
- The meeting of a worldwide community of design researchers is, in fact, both a cultural and a political event. An event like this should leave a trace (in the community?s culture) and give directions (about future steps to be taken). For this reason, the Conference will produce a final document in the form of a short text pinpinting emerging issues and indicating promising directions of research. We can call it: Design research agenda for sustainability:
- In a previous design conference (the Cumulus Design Conference, held in Kyoto the 28th of March 2008) a declaration, linking design and sustainability, was signed by a large number of design schools. This declaration is not only highly symbolic (having being signed in Kyoto) but also potentially relevant. The Design research agenda for sustainability, which will be the main output of the Changing the Change Conference can be considered one of the possible implementations of the Kyoto Declaration: a document that must give research directions in order to develop the necessary design knowledge to become real. That is, for us, to Change the Change.