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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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(2012)Conference PaperThe adoption and integration of online learning and teaching in higher education is becoming increasingly important in our rapidly changing digital society. While many teachers and academics acknowledge the importance of adapting their own teaching practice to this new approach, knowing how and where to get started can be a daunting task for many. There is an overwhelming amount of professional development information regarding online teaching available to educators through workshops, the Internet, books, technical demonstrations and academic papers. However time-poor teachers often find it difficult to invest time and effort into attending workshops, or analysing available theory and research (McIntyre 2011) to derive online teaching approaches relevant to their own situations. Similarly, many teachers first embarking on a new online initiative can find it an isolating and frustrating experience, with limited peer support (Bennett, Priest and Macpherson 1999) and practical pedagogical guidance while ‘learning the ropes’ or preparing course curriculum. So what approach can be taken to firstly connect with these teachers at the ‘coalface,’ and then support them through their initial investigations and subsequent development of online teaching practice? In 2009, COFA Online at The University of New South Wales won funding from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Competitive Grant Scheme for a project called Learning to Teach Online (LTTO): Developing high-quality video and text resources to help educators teach online http://bit.ly/d18ac5. The project’s aim was to produce a set of resources to enable more educators, particularly those with no online experience, to successfully adopt and develop online teaching practices, and to reach a diverse audience of teachers across different disciplines and institutions throughout the world. This paper discusses the strategies adopted by the LTTO Project to ensure the resources focused on pedagogy and were perceived as pragmatic, easy to use and readily adaptable. It also outlines how the adoption of social media as a dissemination method facilitated easy access to the resources by a wide audience of teachers both with and without online teaching experience, and promoted greater awareness and uptake across disciplines and institutions around the world. It demonstrates, through summative and formative evaluations, how this approach effectively encouraged teachers to get started with their online teaching and stimulated their interest in further research on the topic.
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(2012)Conference PaperA rhizome is a horizontal system of roots that grows underground, comprising a series of nodes and connecting shoots, that continues to expand and form new connections as it grows. The Internet, with its increasing number of servers and connections could be considered as an ever- expanding system that enables new types of rhizome-like connections between people, knowledge and communities to occur. These connections can often seem random, but those involved usually have an underlying, if not immediately obvious common interest or purpose. Web 2.0 tools and digital networks are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in many aspects of contemporary society, and are in many ways similar to the nodes of a rhizome - a place where connections may form. Yet understanding how to maximise the potential of being able to connect with a diverse range of individuals, professional entities and institutions via these mediums can be difficult. What is the purpose of such connectivity, and how can the design and implementation of professional development resources utilise the concept of a rhizome as an effective means to maximise the constructivist potential offered by the digital age? The Learning to Teach Online project http://bit.ly/d18ac5 is a free Open Educational Resource (OER), designed to offer educators proven advice from a wide range of colleagues in different institutions and disciplines, about the pedagogies, challenges and rewards of online teaching. Following its release in 2010 by COFA Online at The University of New South Wales, the spread of the resources around the world via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, institutional links and word of mouth far exceeded initial expectations. While the use of social media to promote the project was always considered from the outset, the extent of the spread within K-12, vocational, higher education and private consultancies, and the subsequent penetration of the resources into existing educational programs was not expected. In this respect, the dissemination of the Learning to Teach Online project mirrored the behaviour of a rhizome, being widely spread to seemingly disparate educational communities globally, in a manner that was neither precisely controlled nor predictable. This paper is a snapshot of ongoing research within the author’s doctoral thesis, into the behaviour and significance of the ever-growing digital rhizome surrounding Learning to Teach Online. It begins to unravel how the design of the resource enabled social media to be used for rapid dissemination on a global scale. The paper also explores how, as a result of some members of existing academic communities connecting with the project’s digital rhizome, the resources were able to benefit other teachers not familiar with online teaching or web 2.0 technologies. In these cases, the penetration of the rhizome into many different types of existing academic communities has enabled the transmission and acceptance of new ideas that have begun to positively effect perception and adoption of online teaching practices amongst their members.
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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.
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(2012)Conference PaperElectronic and electrical products have become indispensable and ubiquitous in many facets of our daily lives. The quantity with which electronic and electrical products are produced, consumed and discarded is growing rapidly. In addition, the lifespans of these products are getting shorter with many products still functioning when disposed of. Consequently, the combined result of shortened product lifespans with growing demand and consumption of electronic and electrical products, in both developed and developing countries is the escalating growth in end-of-life electrical and electronic products. Electronic waste (e-waste) is highly toxic and is the fastest growing waste stream. Unlike many other categories of waste, e-waste has particularly unique qualities. It not only contains many highly toxic substances it also contains valuable materials and precious metals. This study highlights particular aspects of obsolescence and e-waste processing which have implications for the design of electronic and electrical products in our throwaway society. It investigates growing concerns about the flows of e-waste from industrialised countries to the developing world where hazardous recycling takes place by a burgeoning informal sector. Many of whom are marginalized social groups who resort to e-waste recycling for income and survival. Furthermore, this paper outlines the opportunities for efficient and economical resource recovery and how the design of electronic and electrical products can contribute to improve the integrity and value of recyclates and facilitate safe and efficient end-of-life resource recovery.
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(2010)Conference PaperThis paper investigates the engagement (or lack thereof) of manufacturing, engineering and product design industries towards sustainability. This was achieved by completing a content analysis of the award winners in the Australian International Design Awards (AIDA) against an independent set of Design for Sustainability (DfS) criteria estab-lished by the authors. Particular focus was given to the 2010 recipients of the Austra-lian International Design Award™ and the Australian International Design Mark™ and the claims made in their product descriptions and key features and benefits state-ments. The paper reflects on the criteria used by the AIDA to assess the awards, elaborates on the positive elements of sustainable design presented, and suggests di-rections that the industry may utilise in order to strengthen its capacity to achieve sus-tainable outcomes.
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(2010)Conference PaperBy promoting and applying ecologically sustainable design (ecodesign) strategies in the product planning stage, industrial designers can have significant influence on reducing the environmental impacts of products. Despite this potential, there remains little quantitative analysis of the awareness, application and influence of ecodesign praxis amongst industrial designers. This paper presents a comprehensive content analysis of the websites of 96 industrial design (ID) consultancies in Australia, probing for evidences of ecodesign application in each company‟s capability statement and project portfolios. Our study found that that less than half of consultancies visibly promote their ecodesign activities on websites.