PhD Research Week 5 Y2

This week I had my first supervisory meeting after completing Registration.  I presented my reflections on the previous year and the main points I would like to move forward on.  We discussed the next steps of the research.  It was established the need to find the rationale for the selection of Alternative Food initiatives case studies - why choose one and not another? What are the typologies? Commonalities and differences between them?  How do the they talk about themselves to different audiences: media, public, consumers.  What are their drivers in the communication design decisions?From now on I begin practice based research.  I'm on the hunt for gathering great case studies of Alternative Food initiatives worldwide very exciting!

Also some reflection on Ezio Manzini's 'modes of design' framework. 

“The primary purpose of design for the market is creating products for sale. Conversely, the foremost intent of social design is the satisfaction of human needs.  However, we don’t propose the “market model” and the “social model” as binary opposites, but instead view them as two poles of a continuum. The difference is defined by the priorities of the commission rather than by a method of production or distribution.” Margolin, V. & Margolin, S. (2002) A ‘social model’ of design: issues of practice and research. Design issues. 18 (4), 24–30.

“The most basic level of creativity is doing, or accomplishing something through productive activity. For some people, washing and folding clean clothes makes them feel creative and they would miss this level of hands-on doing if they became incapacitated.  The next level of creativity, ‘adapting’, is more advanced. The motivation behind adapting is to make something one’s own by changing it in some way.  Someone might do this to personalize an object so that it better fits their personality.   The third level of creativity is ‘making’.  The motivation behind making is to use one’s hands and mind to make or build something that did not exist before.” Sanders, L. & Simons, G. (2009) A social vision for value co-creation in design. Open Source Business Resource. 12.