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Design Lab

Research Areas | Our Staff | Our Students | Our Projects

The aim of the Design Lab is to foster design as a means of knowledge production in its own right. Our view is that design is fundamentally a knowledge-producing activity. Different from the natural sciences, which studies the world as it is, the humanities, which studies the human condition, and the arts, which explores the possibilities of expression, design is a study of the world the way it could be through the creation and interrogation of the "designed" world.

Research and creative practice in the Design Lab span a range of disciplines from interaction design and electronic arts to computer science and social science.

A NEW LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY

We undertake these projects through multiple intellectual channels, having the scientific gaze with its systems of empiricism sit comfortably astride the artistic approach with its attention toward conceptual possibilities. The projects themselves span politically charged and conceptually difficult terrains, dealing with questions on the biological innateness of design and its cultural and evolutionary pathways, the possibilities of experimental media at the juncture of art, society and technology, and speculative research into the inhabitation of the interface between humans and pervasive computing services.

Most important, the Design Lab provides a home where different people with different ways of knowing can connect, intersect and transform their work and their disciplines. It is a cultural mix of design theory and practice. The Design Lab provides the environment where the resources of research, of the production of knowledge, and of the interrogation of knowledge stem from design.

For further details on academic supervision opportunities, please visit the Research Supervisor Connect site.

Funded Research Projects

Linguistics-Based Preference Information Modeling for Design Decision-Making (2009 - 2012)
The objective of this research is to model the preference information embedded in natural language engineering design texts in order to identify linguistic forms of preference that will form the basis for a decision-making model that supports comparison of computed decisions to actual decisions.
Investigators: Maria Yang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Andy Dong; Funding Body: US National Science Foundation

Smart Construction Site: increasing awareness of construction assets (2007)
This project coins a new concept - smart construction site (SCS) and proposes to conceptualize, develop and implement a smart system for monitoring inventory state data. Ambient display technology will be adopted to increase the awareness and visibility of construction assets to construction managers.
Investigator: Xiangyu Wang; Funding Body: The Chartered Institute of Building

A study of the potential for the public to be involved in the design of large scale public works - (2006 - 2009)
The aim of this research is to develop a Design Capability Report to measure citizens, capability to design with a focus on public infrastructure projects. The research will compare projects in Australia and internationally to address whether citizens have the capability to perform in a praxis (design) for which the outcome is instrumental to the pursuit of the fundamental goals that constitute well-being.
Investigators: Andy Dong and Thomas Kvan; Funding Body: Australian Research Council

Curious Places: Agent-mediated Self-Award Worlds (2006 - 2008)
This project develops and demonstrates a model of curious places: physical and digital environments that adapt their behaviour based on their experiences. This means that we can implement new kinds of places, rooms, public spaces, that respond to human activity and new technology by creating their own goals and behaviours.
Investigators: Mary Lou Maher and Rob Saunders; Funding Body: Australian Research Council

Designing for Mobile Learning in a Technology Museum (2005 - 2008)
This project investigated which pedagogical models are most appropriate for informal (museum) learning and and how these models can be aligned with ICT-mediated learning tools. In collaboration with The Powerhouse Museum, we developed a pedagogical model of informal learning, created activities supported by a mobile learning and collaboratory technical infrastructure to nurture experiential learning and informal discovery, and investigated informal learner experiences within this ICT-mediated informal learning environment.
Investigators: Peter Reimann and Andy Dong; Funding Body: Australian Research Council

Computational Methods for the Social Accounting of Teamwork (2005 - 2008)
This research examined the pragmatics and theoretical issues of developing computer-based systems that enable real-time assessments of teamwork productivity. The research results have been published in the book The Language of Design: Theory and Computing with accompanying software for the analysis of knowledge integration in creative teams.
Investigator: Andy Dong; Funding Body: Australian Research Council

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