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(2011)Conference PaperThis paper investigates the engagement towards sustainability of graduating industrial design students in Australia. This was achieved by completing a content analysis of the entries in the Australian Design Award - James Dyson Award, focusing on the claims made in the product descriptions, their rationale for representing design excellence and why they believe their work is award winning. The findings were encouraging, as the overwhelming majority of finalists and winners had incorporated an environmentally responsive strategy or addressed an issue of significance to society. The analysis results provide evidence that sustainability issues are increasingly being tackled in Australian industrial design education. That graduating students choose to do final-year projects which reflect their sensitivity to these global issues suggest concern and readiness on their part in exploring real solutions to these problems, and perhaps a desire and optimism for a more promising world for future generations.
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(2011)Conference PaperThis paper looks for evidences of socially sustainable product innovations amongst the entries recognized in international industrial design awards. The winning designs for the last four years in three of the most popular mainstream accolades were investigated and profiled. The analysis shows that attention to socially sustainability in design is gradually picking up. Several special awards that pay special attention to social sustainability issues were found, suggesting that support for this type of innovation in the design profession is growing.
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(2011)Conference PaperTechnological and fashion obsolescence continue to be concerns in the design of contemporary products. Research shows that consumers dispose of household items even though those are still fully or partly functional, for various reasons. One cause of premature disposal is the lack of emotional attachment between user and product. Lounge furniture was selected as the product area for this study. The research starts with a literature review on consumer-product attachment, and on design strategies which promote the optimization of product lifetimes, followed by an online survey and in-depth interviews among householders to determine behaviours in furniture usage, maintenance and disposition. The findings of this research add to understanding of product attachment and detachment stages as well as possible factors that would help designers foster long-term product attachment. The study is intended to add support to a new approach to sustainable design that seeks to extend product lifetimes by designing in the potential for continuation of positive experiences that could lead to the consumer’s enduring attachment to particular products.
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(2011)Conference PaperTechnological and fashion obsolescence continue to be concerns in the design of contemporary products. Research shows that consumers dispose of household items even though those are still fully or partly functional, for various reasons including the lack of a stable emotional bond between users and products. This paper aims to explore how industrial designers, as a willing translator and initiator of the relationship between products and users, might facilitate the generation and continuation of positive experiences that could potentially lead to the consumer’s enduring attachment to particular products, thereby optimizing the product’s lifetime and detouring it from becoming landfill too soon.
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(2011)Conference PaperAbstract: In recent decades, a growing number of those in the industrial design profession have shown concern for socio-ethical issues and pondering the impacts of their work on the planet and its peoples. While mainstream industrial design education and practice still clearly focuses on product-centric innovation, the increasing involvement of designers in activities that advance the betterment of humanity is undeniable. Some university design programs immerse students in developing countries and disadvantaged neighborhoods to learn to co-design appropriate solutions with communities. The professional design industry has also been supportive in engaging and contributing to this new area of social innovation. In line with this emergence of design for society, this paper reports on some of the studio projects at the Industrial Design Program at the University of New South Wales, which highlight design’s agency as a catalyst for social change. The studio briefs are discussed as case studies and the learning experiences gained and the reflections of students are analyzed and used as arguments for the continued and growing inclusion of social responsibility within the industrial design curriculum.
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(2011)Conference PaperThis paper presents the results of an empirical study, investigating the uptake of ecodesign by industrial design consultancies (ID consultancies) in Australia, China, Germany and the USA. Designing products for a low environmental load, usually termed as ecodesign, offers high potential to reduce the environmental impact of our society, aiming for a sustainable development. However, there still appears to be no widespread uptake of ecodesign into product development praxis by industrial designers, with most ecodesign activity focusing on the engineering phase. Especially seldom are the necessary radical interventions to significantly improve the environmental performance of products. The literature review revealed that ID consultancies might be in a position to improve this situation. This paper presents the findings of a website content analysis, investigating the extent of ecodesign uptake by ID consultancies in Australia, China, Germany and the US. Those four countries were chosen to see if different, country specific frameworks impact on the attitude of ID consultancies towards ecodesign. The paper verifies that ID consultancies have a high potential to improve ecodesign uptake by using their influence especially on early phases of the product development process and by addressing also non engineering related issues for ecodesign. This potential does not appear to be fully embraced yet. The paper concludes by identifying the highest representation of ecodesign on websites of Australian ID consultancies and the lowest on websites of Chinese ID consultancies. The way ID consultancies practice ecodesign is very country specific. Understanding the differences and developing recommendations how ID consultancies can better unfold their ecodesign potential requires deeper investigations in the case specific factors.
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(2011)Creative Work (non-textual)Utterances considers the role of the body in generating architectural space by actively incorporating the shadows cast by a wandering audience into the work. The currency of physical entities is called into question as shadows of the body appear to move amongst the panels even as the body itself remains distant. The creative tension between the tangible and the intangible becomes evident in the space between the perforated works and their shadows; an ambiguous architectural space emerges akin to the utterance of a word before it is wholly formed.
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(2011)Creative Work (non-textual)Dissolution and Departure is a spatial meditation on the weight of architecture. A minimal space for the body to navigate is formed with lightweight materials; air and light penetrate the space and begin to dissolve it. A fragmented language of movement and gesture is embodied in the dissolving spatial surfaces, ritualistically writing and rewriting the presence of the body in space. The body inhabits an immersive, liquid space; an architecture is created that might float away in air.
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(2010)Conference PaperSafety culture has been widely accepted as a crucial aspect in construction organisations. Despite its popularity, there is confusion on the actual meaning of safety culture. Another concept called safety climate has been used interchangeably with safety culture and has fuelled more perplexity. This paper aims to clarify the meaning of both concepts and discuss the differences between the two through a literature review. It is argued that safety climate is part of safety culture, that is, it is the psychological dimension of safety culture. Furthermore, this paper has developed a framework to show the overall concept and contents of construction safety culture, which includes the cause, contents, and consequence of safety culture. Measurements are also proposed for construction organisations to measure their safety culture and improve their safety performance continuously.
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(2011)Conference PaperAlthough it is generally accepted that construction organisations should foster a strong safety culture in order to improve productivity and minimise incidents, little research has been focused on developing instruments to measure the maturity level of safety culture. This paper describes a research study on the development of measurement criteria to assist construction organisations in assessing and understanding their safety culture maturity levels. The components, dimensions, and maturity levels of safety culture were reviewed and measurement criteria for each maturity level in the context of the construction industry were defined. These criteria were aimed at helping construction organisations to determine their safety culture maturity levels, thus giving a starting point to strategise in developing their safety culture. Future research will focus on testing and validating the measurement criteria to determine their practicability.