The Future Homes Commission is conducting a major national inquiry into the quality and delivery of newly built housing, and has today announced a call for evidence, asking the public, housebuilding industry, architects, academia and policy makers to submit their views on the future of housing in Britain.

"We want to hear from all of those with a stake in the housing sector in order to gain a deep understanding of the barriers to development, the challenges in the design process and the impact of economic pressures on the housing products that are delivered," commented Sir John Banham, Chair of the Future Homes Commission.

"We're embarking on a demanding and challenging exercise to understand what makes a quality home today, and how it can be designed and delivered to ensure a sustainable housing stock for the future.

http://www.dexigner.com/news/24538

The aim of the conference is to encourage multi and interdisciplinary aggregation of people and research centres which deal with color and light from a professional and scientific point of view. Conference themes include:

1. COLOR AND MEASUREMENT / PRODUCTION. Colorimetry, photometry and color atlas: method, theory and instrumentation.
2. COLOR AND DIGITAL. Reproduction, management, digital color correction, image processing, graphics, photography, printmaking, video production, artificial vision, virtual reality.
3. COLOR AND LIGHTING. Metamerism, color rendering, adaptation, color constancy, appearance, illusions, memory color and perception, color in extra-atmospheric environments, lighting design.
4. COLOR AND PHYSIOLOGY. Mechanisms of vision in their experimental and theoretical aspects, deficiencies, abnormalities, clinical and biological aspects.
5. COLOR AND PSYCHOLOGY. Phenomenology of color, perceptive, emotional, aesthetic and diagnostic aspects.
6. COLOR AND PRODUCTS. Foods and beverages, textiles, plastics, ceramics, paints.
7. COLOR AND RESTORATION. Archaeometry, painting materials, diagnostics and techniques of conservation, restoration and enhancement of cultural heritage, coloring and architectural syntax, territorial identities.
8. COLOR AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT. Urban planning, plans of color, architecture.
9. COLOR AND DESIGN. Furniture, design, fashion, textiles, graphics, communication, packaging, lettering, cosmetics.
10. COLOR AND CULTURE. Art, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, aesthetics, representation and design, lexicology, semantics.
11. COLOR AND EDUCATION. Pedagogy, color's didactics, aesthetic education, artistic education.
8th Conferenza del Colore
September 13-14, 2012
Bologna, Italy

www.gruppodelcolore.it

A new report by Jonathan Rowson of the RSA probes the nature of the social brain and highlights the differences between nudging and thinking. "Transforming Behaviour Change: beyond nudge and neuromania" explores what neuroscience and philosophy can tell us about human social behaviour.

In the report Rowson identifies the significant problem that nudging interventions are not transformative. Rowson directs our attention to Aditya Chakrabortty;s comment in The Guardian that the application of nudging to public policy appears to have produced mostly "cute technocratic solutions to mainly minor problems." Rowson further goes on to suggest that nudging tends to achieve what psychologist Paul Watzlawick calls "first-order change" rather than "second-order change".

The report points to multiple items of evidence which suggest that we need to delve deeper into human nature if we wish to achieve design interventions which are socially beneficial. It closes with a short outline of a plan of action for a centre for the coordination and dissemination of research about social human nature.

http://www.thersa.org/projects/social-brain/transforming-behaviour-change

 

Image © Philips Design

"Conversational Capital: how to create stuff people love to talk about" by Bertrand Cesvet, Tony Babinski, Eric Alper and Sid Lee describes their approach to designing successful brands. Since people are social storytellers, a product experience that is worthy of telling as one's own authentic story creates brand capital in the form of meaningful and influential conversations. The authors suggest eight engines of conversational capital:

1) Myths are the narratives that become part of the fabric of consumption because they provide clues to the fundamental meaning of the consumption.

2) Rituals are an essential part of how human beings create and formalise meaning, and their presence marks out an experience as rich in meaning.

3) Exclusive Product Offering is about allowing consumers to create an experience that asserts and actualises their individuality; to feel and be unique.

4) Relevant Sensorial Oddity is about challenging the senses with something extraordinary, marking an experience as unique.

5) Icons are signs and symbols that demarcate a consumption experience from any other.

6) Tribalism is about the power of a brand experience to inspire the association of like-minded people.

7) Endorsement is about how the meaning and intensity of a brand experience leads to credible people organically endorsing it.

8) Continuity is a correspondence over time between what is promised, what people expect, and what is actually delivered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_Capital

A fantastic book which hopefully every Human Centred Designer has read over their summer holiday is the multi-award winning "Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages". Guy Deutscher's highly enjoyable exposition calls into question some of our most basic assumptions regarding how language affects the way we see the world. Besides being a 2010 editor's choice of the New York Times and a 2010 book-of-the-year of Economist, Spectator and Financial Times, this enjoyable read now also counts Stephen Fry among its fans and boasts a short listing for science-book-of-the-year of The Royal Society.

http://sites.google.com/site/guydeutscher/through-the-language-glass

Design & Emotion London 2012 “Out of Control”
11th-14 September 2012 Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design

The organising committee of the 8th International Design & Emotion Conference, London, 11th-14th September 2012, is very pleased to invite you to participate in this conference.

This conference is a forum held every other year where practitioners, academics and industry leaders meet and exchange knowledge and insights concerning the cross-disciplinary field of design and emotion

http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/event/design-and-emotion-2012/

The Aalto University project 365 Wellbeing is part of the World Design Capital 2012 programme. It will build better wellbeing services and better health care in addition to finding ways of encouraging people to adopt healthier lifestyles and planning pleasant and healthy environments.

The 12 projects of 365 Wellbeing are services or processes in the cities involved, and they include planning the Villa Breda service home for the elderly in Kauniainen to include cultural services, development of the treatment environments and practices in psychiatric care units located in Helsinki, a project to promote electronic transactions in health care, and a project aimed at creating smoke-free public environments. Each project has a team of approximately 15 students, which includes 2 postgraduate doctoral students. Blogs provide a way for people to keep up with and comment on the projects and major milestones will be disseminated through a variety of channels.

Among other things, the project will focus on applying aspects of service design and critical design. The project aims at presenting design as a socially proactive and responsible activity.

http://wdchelsinki2012.fi/en/news/2011-08-24/365-days-wellbeing-%E2%80%93-365...

Book by Marc Hassenzahl

It takes an experiential approach, putting experience before functionality and leaving behind oversimplified calls for ease, efficiency, and automation or shallow beautification. Instead, it explores what really matters to humans and what it needs to make technology more meaningful.

Visit: http://hassenzahl.wordpress.com/experience-design-technology-for-all-the-right-reasons/