9th DesignEd Asia Conf (Dec 2013, Hong Kong)

Dates: 3-4 December 2013
Location: Hong Kong
Website: http://www.designedasia.com
Deadline for submission of abstracts: UPDATED 11 August 2013

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, Hong Kong Design Institute (member of VTC Group) and Hong Kong Design Centre jointly present the ninth DesignEd Asia Conference. The Conference aims to provide a practical platform for international design educators and professionals to share views, knowledge and experiences on Design Education. It continues to draw hundreds of international design educators, design researchers, practicing designers, design students, and design-related executives.

With Belgium announced as this year’s Business of Design Week (BODW) partner country, DesignEd Asia will feature some of the prominent Belgian design educators as keynote speakers, together with others from various design fields. The presentations and research papers will bring you inspiration in design education and allow you to better prepare for new challenges ahead as design educators.

Design relies on constraints.

The limits of the thinkable, the makeable, the affordable, the acceptable, the saleable, the defensible, and the communicable define the boundaries of the multidimensional space of possibilities navigated by the design process. An experienced designer will choose the relevant constraints within which he or she will operate, in order to focus on the essential, and to minimize effort wasted on the irrelevant.

Constraints provide the challenges that make the design process invigorating and delineate a realm of free play for the exercise of creativity. Budget, manufacturing processes, cultural norms, societal values and many other factors are sources of contextual constraints on design. Every designer also sets constraints on his or her own designing based on their ethical stance, ideological allegiances and stylistic proclivities.

Constraints abet the design process in providing a delimitation of the realm of possibilities to be explored. They can provide guidelines for what is desirable or relevant to the goals of the design process. Design methods can be derived, and design tools developed, based on a codification of the constraints (both imposed and chosen) within which the design process unfolds.

Constraints can also hinder the design process in limiting designers’ imaginations or ambitions, concealing potential paths and excluding potential solutions before they are even tried out. Radical thought in design methods has always aimed at making unnecessary constraints visible and offering tactics to transcend such arbitrary limitations.

Any design education should give students a conscious awareness of constraints – both beneficial and harmful, chosen and imposed – and provide them with the critical skills to assess the relevance and importance of the constraints and to explore the possibilities presented by the array of constraints that characterize a given design project.

We are seeking papers that critically explore the role of constraints in design education, including but not limited to themes discussed above. While we expect that papers will be grounded in actual pedagogical practice, papers should also address theoretical issues of the practices, tools and methods presented, as well as the value and consequences brought to design education.

Review Process for Abstracts and Full Papers

Submissions are invited on significant, original, and previously unpublished cases and research in the above areas. The abstract will be reviewed on a double blind basis. The accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper with maximum 4,000 words in length that will be reviewed again for a final paper submission. The accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, and the authors will be invited to make a 20-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute Q&A session at the conference.

Submission of an Abstract

• Presenters’ names and affiliations (contact details, organization, etc.)
• An abstract limited to 500 words and a bibliography

Sign up and submit via the online conference system: http://www.designedasia.com/openconf/openconf.php

For updated information, please visit: http://www.designedasia.com

Important Dates

Deadline for Abstract Submission
4 August 2013 (Sun)

Notification of Acceptance of an Abstract
9 September 2013 (Mon)

Deadline for Full Paper Submission
7 October 2013 (Mon)

Notification of Acceptance
21 October 2013 (Mon)

Deadline for Final Paper Submission
4 November 2013 (Mon)

Deadline for Presenters Registration
8 November 2013 (Fri)

Conference
3-4 December 2013 (Tue & Wed)