Conference Agenda

Continued interest in augmented reality (AR) applications in the business sector has precipitated a corresponding surge of design with AR in the design industry. In turn, the rise of AR technology in the design profession requires a proactive response from design education. Recent scholarly endeavors exploring AR-focused practices in design education have showcased the early initiatives of teaching AR across diverse design-related disciplines. Upon that foundation, this paper introduces a pioneering pedagogical approach that integrates AR into a foundational 2D graphic design foundation course. In an experiment following the approach, we used the AR toolkit Zap Works Designer not only as a creative medium to augment a print design project but also as a purposeful pedagogical instrument aimed at expanding students’ digital proficiency, fostering an understanding of design thinking, and cultivating problem-solving skills through immersive engagement in a multidisciplinary design process. This paper outlines the AR-enhanced project and assesses its pedagogical efficacy based on a comprehensive student survey conducted at the end of the project. It also delves into the challenges encountered along the way and provides positive suggestions for the specific learning context. By sharing insights from the teaching experience, we aim to empower design educators and provide educational institutions with a valuable reference for advancing their curricular approaches. This paper is a testament to the ever-evolving landscape of design education and its response to the imperatives of the digital age.

Many design schools struggle with questions of how recent AI advancements should be integrated into their curriculum. This is especially challenging for curricula with a substantial digital design component, such as media design or interaction design. Undoubtedly, curricula must include the aspect of designing 'with' AI, teaching students how to responsibly and ethically use AI in their design process. More importantly, programs should also integrate the concept of designing 'for' AI. While designing for emerging technologies, such as mobile, immersive, and social technologies, has been a constant challenge over the past decades, designing for AI is distinct from these challenges, since interaction design must adapt now, not to a new device, but to a new agent. This paper examines four different perspectives on how designing for AI alters interaction design education and the scale of its impact.

Firstly, as mentioned above, future digital designers will be working with tools that are partially AI-based, including generative AI tools and decision aids. Secondly, their work context will undergo changes, as they assume different roles at different types of companies. Thirdly, they will need to address vastly different design challenges as they will work on an entirely new type of applications. Finally, the design of intelligent systems demands a new solution repertoire for designers. This paper will sketch the challenges for all these perspectives but will primarily focus on the last two: equipping students for designing ‘for’ AI.

For these last two challenges the educational debate centers around a ‘lightweight’ approach versus a ‘heavyweight’ approach to designing for AI. The lightweight approach prioritizes a solution repertoire associated with the front end of AI applications, with a focus on user interfaces, the user-AI interactions that need to be designed, and their immediate impact on user experience. We will argue that this is a deceptively novel area where students need to get adept at designing for shaky mental models and assume responsibility in creating ethical applications. Designing the front-end of AI presents fresh challenges in education, which, contrary to common beliefs among educators, are largely disconnected from a deep understanding of the underlying technology.

The heavyweight choice for digital design curricula entails a focus on the conceptual design of AI applications. This encompasses challenges such as involving users in the design of applications with AI, altering the AI design processes, facilitating communication between data scientists and designers and fostering responsible design practices. These challenges do require a basic understanding of the technology, although the level of specific declarative and experiential knowledge required by students to excel in this domain remains uncertain.

In this paper, we compare these approaches and discuss their complementarity. Specifically, we explore whether it is advantageous for students to begin with the lightweight approach - grasping practical applications and user-facing aspects of AI and then gradually transitioning to a heavyweight approach - exploring technical intricacies, and learning how to innovate and improve AI technologies. Finally, we draw conclusions regarding the broader transformation of the design field resulting from the influence of AI.

Over the past decade virtual reality (VR) headsets have become increasingly affordable and available. This in turn, has made virtual reality tools more accessible. Within the context of product design, one of the possibilities opened with VR is that of creating 3D models within a 'virtual/immersive' environment. This has several advantages for product design educators, including increased/high student engagement due the novelty of the approach and physical/immersive experience. How to incorporate this type of 3D modelling in the curriculum however, remains substantially less clear.

While there is continued interest on VR from segments of the academic community, its adoption within the context of product design education is in its infancy. Moreover, because of the many different variables involved, and the differences inherent to any design project, the experience from a larger and wider variety of case studies is necessary. This paper reports from a case in which VR has been incorporated into a design project in a first-year course which is part of a product design degree course.

This paper describes the development of a physical-digital demonstrator that makes use of augmented reality (AR) technology, to convey complex systems and engineering information for design education. AR blends the real, physical world with digital, computed-generated elements. This is achieved through three-dimensional technology features, adding contextual layers of information to the users’ sensory experiences of their physical environment (Wang et al., 2021). The uniqueness of AR in preventing the encroachment of the real world has enabled it to find broad application as a valuable interactive tool in several fields, including within educational environments. In STEM subjects particularly, AR can be employed to enhance spatial ability, conceptual understanding and visualisation skills by functioning as a blended learning and teaching tool (Hidayat & Wardat, 2023). Consequently, we aim to investigate how its potential applications in engineering and product design educational settings can enrich the adoption of digital tools in design workflows through exploring the intersections between physical and digital technologies based on a case study.

One of this work’s main outputs is the development of an “Order of Engagement” framework that characterises the nature of interaction with physical-digital interfaces. This encompasses 1) observation of system architecture and location conveyed through static representation, which can also be modelled within physically prototyped models; 2) interaction with information and representations of system functionality through AR artefacts via the mixing of physical prototype models and digital interfaces; and 3) integration of dynamic conditions and performance conveyed through live simulation. The paper will describe the design, development and evaluation of an AR demonstrator system and the associated implementation of the framework via a research case study carried out in collaboration with an industrial partner who specialise in coastal erosion prevention systems. A desktop demonstrator device that can be physically manipulated and works in conjunction with an AR interface application was constructed, and reviewed with respect to usability and user engagement. The first proof-of-concept prototype produced valuable insights with respect to environment mapping and visualisation. Therefore, the second stage of the project aims to address the integration of detailed system information by evolving the system’s digital visualisation capabilities. This will be done through the incorporation of the dimension of time, allowing the long-term effects of coastal erosion and biodiversity to be captured and communicated (our 3rd Order of Engagement, for the purpose of enabling the company to perform more advanced analysis.

As well as acting as an educational and client-facing tool for the industrial partner, the configuration and principles of the demonstrator point towards how physical-digital installations can be used in design education settings more generally. We will outline the development of case study material for human-centred design and product modelling and visualisation education. The real-world application of physical-digital interaction means the lessons learnt from the AR demonstrator design and Order of Engagement framework evaluation will have clear practical and commercial applications for future digital interaction design.