Advances in Design and Digital Communication

This article focuses on a critical evaluation of the design of ebooks. In the post-digital era, the form of content of ebooks is still presented as a simple rendition of the books’ printed version. Over the past ten years or so, although e-readers have popularized reading on screens, digital technologies have made little progress in the design of texts on screens. The few business initiatives that dominate the market of e-readers tend to minimize the typographic quality of texts on screen to its basic components and merely promote the usability of e-reading devices. Interesting experimentations with the form of texts on screen are introduced by independent stakeholders showing possible future directions that could serve new modes of digital reading by empowering the principal function of typographic design, i.e., to promote the nature of texts and enable readers to create meaning.

This paper has the purpose of gathering information about packaging materials and their characteristics related to sustainability in order to be applied in a future mobile application. Methodology and applied User Experience Design (UX) techniques are described as well, as those are fundamental to the application development process. An overview of people’s behaviour is also approached, as well as the creation of a simple system to classify different types of packages according to how sustainable they are. The purpose of this project is to simplify the theme and categorize it, to be used as the main content in a future platform. A series of UX techniques and its results are available in this document in order to support the application development. Results are discussed as this paper represent the initial steps of a whole development process. The conclusion shows significant potential for positive environmental impacts through the proposed application’s purpose.

Mood trackers are very prevalent nowadays; however, most of them are designed for the general public, without much concern for mental health issues or targeting people in therapy. The aim of this paper is to report an introductory analysis of what mood tracker applications in the present look like, pointing out strong points and some negative sides. Also, it aims to define what can be useful for future improvement by detecting patterns within these applications. Our research methodology comprises an analysis of a selection of applications found in the Google App Store and Apple Store, through a series of different criteria taken from the relevant literature. Our results suggest that the incorporation of guidelines, co-design methods with mental health specialists, and new interaction styles used, could potentially change the mood tracker market for the better. Further studies are necessary to demonstrate the impact of images in improving mood trackers and their use in the context of therapy.

In recent years, mobile devices have become popular as recreational and educational media in the daily family lives, and it is increasingly common for children to have their first contact with literature through electronic books. In a context wherein locative stories are pointed out as an emerging scenario for children’s digital literature, this research explores ways, opportunities and concerns to integrate location-based technologies into electronic stories for children. For this purpose, we have conducted a multicase study on pioneering apps that exemplify different ways of combining stories and locative technologies in mobile devices. Drawing on these cases, we identify a group of aspects to be considered to the design process when developing such artifacts. It includes main goals for the project, recommendations and concerns related to the meaningful impact on children, the urban space and the narrative, recommendations for setting up the project team, for the data collection process, as well as ways to integrate locative technologies into children’s electronic stories.

This article aims to study how Instructional Design (ID), when combined with the principles of User Experience (UX), can improve both the learning and experience of using a digital product.This matter is already being studied by an emerging field of educational technologies and user experience– Learning Experience Design (LXD). This new field incorporates elements from different subjects, such as interaction design, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and teaching.It is essential to study how the interface of digital products can support and enable the cognitive and affective processes associated with the learning experience and placing them in the real context of the user. Given the above, it will also be approached how help resources integrate into the product interface itself, as well as contextualized in the flow of user’s tasks.In short, this article aims to unravel the digital product interfaces of the future and, thus, understand how we can exploit the new possibilities of interaction and learning provided by them.

This case study analysis aims to share the bilingual tutorial development process of a research-based educational video game, being designed and developed as a tool to support mathematics learning for deaf and hard of hearing students. The fact that this game is inclusive raises several problems in addressing the message, such as the simultaneous presence of text and videos in Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) and a careful vocabulary selection.The results obtained from a User Experience (UX) study lead to a major redesign of the tutorial. It implied several changes, like the simplification of the LGP message, a significant text reduction and the integration of images in the text. The redesign strategy is based on the following assumptions: long LGP videos lead to dispersion of attention; LGP message understanding benefits from short videos and objective content; the text must respect a simple vocabulary and an objective message; the integration of images in the text helps to identify interaction targets; the instruction block must be divided into sections and interspersed with in-game actions.Although this approach is to be validated in the next UX study, it is a promising indicator the fact that those principles are in line with video games guidelines for deaf people.

This article aims to lay the foundations for the development of an office system that incorporates essential equipment to work in an office and that through a mobile application and a robotic system allows users to configure the space according to the needs, as well as the use of artificial intelligence in adapting the space to the physical, lighting and ergonomic characteristics of the workers. The article describes the problems inherent in the current workspace and the way this work is carried out, as well as some of the future trends for the configuration of space and equipment that need to be reformulated and adapted to the needs of the digital evolution present in the way we relate and perform the work now and in the future. It also describes the state of the art of solutions proposed by the main brands of office equipment, as well as automation solutions present in the literature. Based on this information, a working concept is presented for the development of an office personal assistant, equipped by a robotic brain that, through a mobile application, positions a series of equipment in space, such as a workstation, a pod, a wall system and lighting. The method used to develop the concept in its different phases is also described, as well as the activities inherent to each phase. The proposed method combines development techniques specific to product and interaction design, automation and software development, as well as techniques for extracting needs used by the social sciences.

This study intends to test and confirm the interest and viability of incorporating augmented reality (AR) technologies in cultural mediation driven by information design, focusing on narrative representation. It is specifically intended to explore semantic relations between reality and virtuality in augmented narratives, i.e. expanded narratives through the multimodality enhanced by the use of interactive processes based in augmented reality systems.Departing from Charles Minard’s Figurative Map (1869), three experiments were conducted, in order to reinterpret the program embodied in that artefact, testing several hypotheses in which, through augmented reality, the combination of different modes and media configures different semantic relations between real and virtual.The action-reflection approach undertaken with Figurative Map experiments enabled us to observe and openly systematize different augmented reality functions regarding the physical instance, which can potentially expand traditional forms of information design. Although they are not entirely extrapolatable, the proposal of virtual functions regarding reality were repurposed and adapted from the illustration field, specifically from the semantic relation between text and image. It is acknowledged that this is an open model to be reconsidered and reformulated through several action-reflection iterations and fostered through the narrative study.

The digital truck hiring systems facilitate the transfer of goods effectively and efficiently, and greatly impact the performance of the logistics industry of any country including Bangladesh. Thus, a digital truck hiring system needs to be usable and accessible to users irrespective of their level of familiarity with digital systems. Earlier researches did not focus to design, develop, and evaluate such applications for making them usable, intuitive, and accessible to end-users. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to assess the usability of truck hiring applications and to provide possible design recommendations for enhancing their usability. To attain these objectives, the usability of three truck hiring applications (DigiTruck, Truck Lagbe, and Trux24) currently operating in Bangladesh was evaluated through heuristic evaluation and semiotic evaluation techniques. As outcomes of heuristic evaluation, a noticeable number of usability problems were found in each application primarily related to maintaining consistency, flexibility, conventions, and error management, while the severity levels of these problems were ranged from cosmetic (level 1) to major (level 3). The semiotic evaluation depicted the intuitiveness of the interface elements of the selected applications. Finally, a set of design recommendations and implications for practitioners are presented to design and develop such applications with enhanced usability and user experience.

Considered an art form, commercial and user-generated movies and videos are being released and shared in huge quantities over the Internet and TV on demand. The complexity and richness of their contents make these media a very interesting source of information, requiring new and powerful ways of visualizing and accessing them in order to make the most of their potential.A set of guidelines as design principles are described, applied, and discussed upon our previous work on interactive visualizations of movies. We aim in creating the underlying framework to inform and guide the design that should enhance the understanding, navigation, and access to movies and videos in time and space, from video collections to contents.

The study presented in this research consists in the evaluation and re-novation of the online platform Reuma.pt, at the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) level. The main objective is to design a solution that ensures efficient interaction of users, healthcare professionals, with this online platform. The fulfillment of this goal will help healthcare professionals in the treatment process of their rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Reuma.pt serves to electronically record the clinical process of the rheumatic patient. This site is part of a national coverage plan, and is prepared to be used in real time by the healthcare professional during the patient’s observation, and for follow-up. This article focuses on the first phase of the study, which consisted of UX benchmarking work for the analysis of online digital solutions directed at the follow-up or treatment of AR disease. This analysis aims to evaluate the main existing solutions in order to study relevant solutions that contribute to this study.

Typefaces are the primary means of reading. Without a quality display of the typeface on the display screen, reading becomes difficult. The paper aims to identify the display issues with the Indian typefaces on display screens. Further, the paper encounters the challenges and difficulties in the type design process with Indian scripts. India is a multilingual country with various scripts. Indian letterform structures are complex and sinuous. In this paper, the technical challenges related to the design process of Indian typefaces such as hinting, glyph positioning and substitution have been discussed. Hinting is a challenging task for Indian scripts since the letter structures are complex. Developing glyphs substitution instructions is a tedious task due to the large number of characters set. In the context of letter design, Indian letters lack a letterform grammar and visual language of type forms. Anatomical nomenclature and grid system are the primary deficiency in the design process that hinders the quality font production. Apart from that, identification of the legibility parameters is required for the Indian scripts to make the letters reading friendly and visually enhancing. Research on Indian typeface legibility has not been studied extensively. Therefore, a review on the current issues and challenges of Indian typeface becomes essential. The present paper is an attempt to discuss the design challenges and display issues with the Indian typefaces.

The Gamers4Nature (G4N) project aims to develop and implement a set of strategies that encourage younger audiences (i.e. upper-secondary and undergraduate students) to participate in the creation of mobile games, while promoting knowledge about environmental preservation. This paper introduces one of these strategies, the G4N portal-repository. The portal has a three-fold objective: (1) to serve as the project’s online presence, introducing its goals and objectives; (2) to host the project’s materials and main outcomes; and (3) to act as a repository for the games developed along game design and Game Jam sessions. The development of the project’s online portal was guided by the need to establish a connection with a physical toolkit that was developed in the scope of the project to help users build their games and to reflect the feeling of gaming and the non-linearity of gaming activities. Taking into consideration the importance of developing a user-friendly interface, the portal was developed following a User-Centered Design approach. Although further testing is still needed, the results of the UX Expert Review - the first testing stage - confirmed the portal’s potential of providing a meaningful and relevant experience to its users.

Asynchronous play offers a way for players to interact with each other while playing in distinct game instances and time frames. While this type of player interaction has existed in video games for years, it has been going through a resurgence, being used in new and interesting ways. A relevant example is the game Death Stranding (2019), whose director claims it belongs to an entirely new genre—strand games—due to its heavy focus on asynchronous multiplayer interactions. In light of this resurgence, and what could potentially be the beginning of a new genre, we find it relevant to look closer into this mode of player interaction. We base this study on Ian Bogost’s characteristics of asynchronous play [1], building upon it by describing the different dynamics achieved through asynchronous interaction. To achieve this, we carried out a review of case studies, followed by a comparative analysis of the dynamics of player interaction it enables.

This paper presents a self-ethnographic experience for defining a new system to manage customer relationship in a department of internal sales. The paper focuses on the definition of strategies for deciding the future of new a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) that will replace an older version used for many years by a tourism company. We followed an approach based on the Probe Methodology (PM), considering a context in which the user of the platform could participate, alongside the company, in the development of the CRM software. Our results showed that the PM could help to identify the main characteristics, modes of use and problems related to the specific environment of the software. Furthermore, it was possible to identify the ways in which users adapted to overcome issues that emerged while interacting with the system, and brought valuable insights into the development of the CRM. Based on techniques typically associated with the social sciences, the project collects information about intangible concepts to transfer them to a software development project. The PM proved efficient in identifying relationships that are not visible at first sight and to perceive requirements and needs not directly expressed.

This study aims to understand the involvement and immersion present in some of Rockstar Games’ videogames. They were chosen due to their popularity, in addition to the high detail in the topography of Los Angeles and California as a whole, that portray a digital, playable version in which the player must face rivals, enemies and contenders in these modern simulacra systems. During the research, we found the transition from “movie space” to “game space” in the previously mentioned. Despite the proximity to reality, games still have their own worlds that differ from each other. The tested games feature a “world-building” concept that supports expanded and intense environments thanks to technical structures and “reality mechanisms” employed in the creation of digital California. The concept of immersion is present in the games through events that involve spatial, performance and narrative interaction. Despite the freedom provided within the game, it is possible to create stories and tell worlds through a transmedia area that connects the player to the environment.

Books have been around for centuries and have played a decisive role throughout history. However, in an increasingly digital society, there is a constant debate about its place. Nowadays, the population contacts with stories through interactive digital narratives, while literary texts seem to be increasingly ignored. There is a lack of research on interactive digital narratives as enhancers of reading habits. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to understand the sensation of reading a printed text and an interactive digital narrative of the same story, to analyze the latter’s potential in relation to the first. For this purpose, thirty-two participants read one of two different short stories, as a printed linear narrative and as an interactive digital narrative, in this order or reverse. In the end, we held an interview. The results suggest that the interactive digital narrative is more captivating, as well as a facilitator of the reading of the story. However, individuals with good reading habits prefer the printed linear narrative, expressing the absence of decision-making as one of its several advantages. On the other hand, most people find that the user’s involvement in the story helps to keep their attention. There is a consensus on its potential. Finally, this study confirms that the use of literary texts for the creation of interactive digital narratives can be useful, especially in stimulating reading habits for individuals who do not usually read.

In this paper, we present the results from the SLOType workshop — an educational methodology supported by a serendipitous creative application to introduce higher education students to typeface design theory and practice — where participants are briefed to design an “adhesion” keyword in a series of iterative rounds.The workshop concept evolved from agile methodologies, with the contributions of professional type designers. Julien Priez introduced the use of a one-inch wide balsa nib as a creative constraint to apply Noordzij’s “Stroke” theory. We’ve also developed a small web-based application, resulting from the mashup of creative tools like TypeCooker; GlifoTipo; and Oblique Strategies. While this application implements some features from the previous, we’ve incorporated the challenge to design for specific audiences or media contexts for further motivation. And we’ve also incorporated a final metaphorical challenge to stimulate divergent problem-solving, or emergence properties in participants’ designs.The results from the CAT analysis of the different groups’ performances seem to imply that we can obtain faster and more creative solutions from participants responding to the application brief. We believe that the application holds a democratic element that can support students from different levels of type knowledge during their process of type design, one that we intend to improve, by introducing infographics and theoretical definitions, turning SLOType into an evolutive educational and operational tool.

Impact has become a goal for most academics, purpose is increasingly relevant for businesses, and value, among younger generations, is significantly moving away from its monetary attribution towards a more humanitarian conceptualisation. In this article, in order to identify a visual tool that could facilitate the evaluation of impact and value of projects/activities under consideration, a benchmark of 35 canvases and diagrams resorting on two selected frameworks for analysis was performed. Since these frameworks proved to be insufficient (due to overlaps, conflicting organising structures, and even absence of relevant parameters), an optimised taxonomy for both the analysis and the design of visual canvas-based tools is proposed. As a consequence, this led to the intended analysis of the selected resources and to the design of an impact- and humanity-led tool that answers the proposed research question.

This paper is part of a PhD project in design, ethics and privacy; it discusses the need for a data protection and privacy-centred ethical framework for digital design. Assuming that contemporary design involves the processing of increasing amounts of people’s information and that a lack of, and loopholes within, adequate regulations leads to privacy violations and abuses, this paper shows why privacy must be embedded into Human-Centred Design thinking and processes. This need is particularly urgent because it concerns the protection of human dignity and identity in the face of “surveillance capitalism”. The outcome should be a universally acceptable ethical framework to embrace privacy concerns into digital design. The ultimate goal is to create better products that genuinely enhance human beings’ privacy, irrespective of the legal, business or political climate and priorities.

The perceived quality is subjective and based on a number of factors, including the user’s own experience. In turn, higher education has become a service industry with divergences in short-term (commercial) or medium/ long-term (pedagogical) actions. Thus, an analysis of perceived quality was made using the Attrakdiff method with 282 students from the humanities, exact and health areas (97 of them in production engineering), 81 former students of production engineering and 47 professors, all from the same institution higher education, located in Recife, Brazil. We sought to analyze whether there was a divergence of perceptions. The analysis was performed using the Description of word pairs and the Diagram of Average Values. At the end of the research, in a comparative analysis, it was possible to perceive that teachers and alumni are the ones that have the best perceived quality of the service and the students are the most rigorous. However, in general, everyone has a perceived positive quality.

Although artification is an old process, if viewed from a sociological perspective, or even prehistoric, if we accept a fundamentally behaviourist premise, its theory (or a set of theories) is just emerging. Data art and other intersecting forms of art have been around for a while. Data artification, on the other hand, has hardly been discussed in the context of how non-art, i.e. data, is turned into art by artifying microprocesses (Shapiro 2019) or adaptive nano-processes (Dissanayake 2017). The existing body of research done so far in this area emphasize the social functions of artifying things, their makers, and users. The premise of this article is that social amelioration is secondary or even irrelevant in some cases where ratification, instead, plays cognitive and phenomenological roles in the face of intellectual crisis when datafied things and activities that are entangled with our lives in ubiquitous, automated, and overused ways lose their meaning. Data artification is not concerned with making data aesthetically appealing, hence it should not be confused with the notion of aestheticization. On the contrary, by drawing on the artwork of Fabio Lattanzi Antinori and Nathalie Miebach, I will argue that data artification is intellectually dissident in more radical ways than academia. It is critically meta-artistic and meta-scientific since it deconstructs empty data fetishes and produces new meanings or knowledge-making forms in interstitial and intersemiotic ways.

{BIO}DIVERSE FUTURES is a doctoral research project that aims to explore the potential of non-normative and ecological futuring strategies as a way to create speculative design tools and techniques that are diverse, ecology-centred (rather than human-centred), and impactful. The hope is that such strategies can form part of a more sustainable design practice, and contribute to positive social change, and biodiversity and community activism.This research project is situated in the context of the catastrophic destruction of global biodiversity, driven by a normative human-centred view of the future. It is clear that action must be taken to argue for—and to achieve!—alternative futures to this. A promising design approach to this form of biodiversity activism could be found in speculative design practices that aim to materialise futures outside of the norm. However, speculative design has been criticised for lacking impact, and not being practiced in a sufficiently diverse way to produce truly transformative outcomes.This paper proposes a path towards a more diverse, ecology-centred speculative design practice by learning from existing community strategies for uncertain futures. This approach is rooted in the critical theories of ecosophy, queer ecology, queer futures, and in works of speculative fiction.The research has four phases: to collect and characterise these strategies, to develop and validate new speculative design tools and techniques, to apply these in a community speculative design project to take action against biodiversity loss, and evaluate their effectiveness within design practice and other fields.

Humans seem to have a transgressive and countercultural nature that no education or law can contain. In a time period when the technologies to preserve our memories and enhance our humane bodies are developing at a fast pace and the corresponding dystopic and utopic future scenarios are constantly presented in speculative ways the author reflects on her artistic practice informed by biotechnology and dwells on concepts of transgression, heterotopia, transdisciplinarity and knowledge.The influence of works of art on the ways of visualizing fundamental principles and beliefs, in the destruction and construction of skepticism and cynicism, is notorious. Art and culture are powerful on modifying and establishing the way in which policies, institutions and behaviour are presented, approved, criticized or condemned. The author’s personal practice focuses on specific areas of critical investigation, and on a continuous exercise seeking a reflective research hypothesis and an emerging methodology.In a fictional way this paper departs from a visit to a Hieronymus Bosch painting, according to the author, an expression of counterculture/subculture in a cultural landmark and follows to enquiry on whether memory and the author arts-based research practice on memory are transgressive. This research practice/reflexion aims to contribute to the empowerment of art as a form of knowledge.

The present research proposes to overcome the existing barriers of conventional recruitment processes in the creative industry. The current hiring interaction between creative companies and creative individuals faces a communication problem due to an imposed conversation mediated by recruitment agencies. This is usually conducted through standardised applications, where the focus strongly lies on technical skills, neglecting individuals’ human agency and creativity. The high staff turnover rate provides evidence that this professional matching is not effective. This ongoing research aims to discover an idiosyncratic approach to non-creative job applications, exploring the applicants’ most important and yet intangible asset: their individual essence. For this conceptual research, an exploratory qualitative approach was used, including ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews, creative cultural probes and semiotic analysis.

The contribution of this research lays on the participation on the ongoing discussion for redefining design agency in the Anthropocene. To be able to response to its complexity the authors propose thinking of Anthropocene as an open-ended process. The authors suggest that ‘Design in the Anthropocene’ empowers spontaneous processes by articulating and by making them perceivable. The authors consider that design should focus on process and framing intentions for the unintentional. Design is empowering the ongoing spontaneous processes; visualizing processes to be accessed and experienced by people as well as providing new connections between existing processes for collaborations. It is perceived that designers respond more effectively to the overwhelming complexity by taking in account concurrent multiplicity and future realities. Design interventions armed with this posture and simultaneously making it accessible to be experienced by residents and visitors, have the ability to uncover and communicate latent potentials intrinsic to the site and its wider context. To support this point of view we explore different landscape architectural projects, underlying our perception of their design process. These projects exemplify attitudes towards the unintentional and give us insight concerning how design can play a role in mediating the collaborative work for living together in the Anthropocene. Deriving from the projects, a set of values and design proposals that fit ‘intentions for the unintentional’ are made. Minimum interventions are meaningful when either impact the way people think and experience the landscape as a source for wellbeing, or when they influence natural processes to exceed previously regimented expectations. The most effective would be when both happen simultaneously. Interaction with processes that happen beyond our control might make us more aware, humble and careful.

Plastic production worldwide exceeds 300 million tons per year. About 3% of that production represents 8 million tons of plastic annually reaching rivers, seas and oceans. Plastic water bottles are a major example of everyday waste that directly impacts the economic and ecological sustainability. Based on literature review, this work presents a problem definition, objectives and methodological process to be implemented by a multidisciplinary team of designers, engineers and managers for the future design of a sustainable smartbottle. The main goal is the reduction of plastic pollution from the IPVC academic community. The proposed methodology includes participatory design concepts to increase the engagement of end-users and to refine the smartbottle design, based on four core criteria: functionality (volume, ergonomics), interoperability (communication technologies), sustainability (materials), and cost. The hybrid methodology is intended to foster design solutions focusing on target users and their needs. Engineers will also collaborate on the problem solving process towards the production of different prototypes. An interactive process from an early stage may potentially drive the practice of design alongside other scientific areas, canvassing theoretical knowledge and practical ability. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the project is at an embryonic stage and as such the results may not be assured, and future results may in fact impact the proposed methodological process.

Through a particular way of thinking and a specific approach to knowledge, design contributes to an understanding of the most diverse issues that exist outside its scope [1]. It aims to develop creative and innovative solutions as both a discipline and a practice. Within this framework, the purpose of this study is to identify and understand the role and contribution of thinking through design specifically as it relates to data collection and analysis methodology, namely contextual inquiry and interview methods. To find answers to these questions, a questionnaire/interview was conducted at the São João Hospital Breast Centre in Porto, Portugal. The design of this questionnaire/interview was studied and the collected information was analysed. The interviewed women suffer or have suffered from breast cancer and take part in a doctoral research focus group combining both areas of health (psycho-oncology) and design. The analysis revealed the application of a unique vision of design as a discipline in different stages, indicating a quest that goes beyond the pragmatic use of methodology and challenges itself to seek and explore through poetic observation [2, p. 16]. This study shows the advantages of the primordial integration of designers and their practices in multidisciplinary research teams based on the ‘designerly’ ways of thinking contribution that, due to the rhetorical and exploratory nature of design [3], challenges the entirely rational and linear practices and processes in search of innovative and creative solutions suited to a specific audience and goals.

This paper is a continuation of the theme discussed in the paper “The meaning and the value as triggers for designing significant experiences” presented at the 3rd edition of this Conference in 2019. Having dealt with the fact that meaning and value are fundamental requirements to activate a symbolic relationship with objects, we have also concluded that these qualities come from both the level of commitment assumed by the person during the interactive communication process and the durability of the solutions proposed by the designer. Competing with the trivialization brought by the familiarity of the object – a useful strategy in a consumer society – lacks, however, an ability of the designer to propose durable solutions which can continuously feed the interest of the user.In this article we critically address the importance of playfulness as a trigger for designing significant experiences in graphic and product design initiatives, as well as the insignificance of this aspect when seeking an immediate or visceral impact. We present examples and perspectives put forward by such different personalities such as Kenya Hara, Naoto Fukasawa, Donald Norman, Pine and Gilmour, Huizinga and Roger Collois.We aim at contributing to a comprehensive and enveloped reflection of the ludicity, collaborative and affective dimension of Design as catalyst of the emotive value of the communication process.

Images pervade our daily lives (García-Sánchez, Sánchez, and Isla 2015; Kędra, 2018). Nevertheless, students often lack the skills necessary to move beyond passive receivers of visual messages, and visual literacy programs are not a priority within the educational system (Lundy and Stephens 2015). As visual images become more and more the predominant form of communication. we address the issues mentioned above by presenting a visual literacy framework for educators that can be used in the evaluation and development of literacy intervention programs. However, for this propose, we have centred on animation movies, because animation films are engaging (Mallinger and Rossy 2003; Thurn 2016). An extensive review was performed on visual literacy literature of the last ten years. As a result, we offer some guidelines for teaching multimodal literacy in the context of class. Although students live in a visual world, they tend to show a low level of visual literacy and critical thinking. In this sense, animation movies have a specific language, which creates particular visual messages, and leads to the use of cinematography techniques, images and sounds to tell a story. Thus, we conclude and argue that visual literacy awareness significantly improves when we master a specific vocabulary. Our findings led us to outline a more precise method for teaching and improving our training in visual literacy and critical thinking skills. It is crucial to create and implement a curriculum to improve visual literacy. Visuals allow us to assess new levels of learning experiences, which enriches our real understanding.

Talking about death and end-of-life care (EoLC) can be a sensitive topic for people affected by dementia and their families. However, recent research [1] has identified the need for people living with dementia (PLwD) to start planning timely discussions about their future care to help their family and professional carers to confidently make decisions on their behalf when they are no longer able to do so themselves [2]. This paper describes a five-stage iterative co-design approach aimed at understanding the type and nature of these sensitive discussions and developing a resource to support PLwD, their families and carers. The resource took the form of a Care Plan Guide app, as a tool to help initiate early discussions about anticipatory care planning [3] in dementia for PLwD to ensure good personalized care and that important wishes were honoured. The paper highlights the importance of the involvement and active collaboration of families living with the illness. It discusses lessons learned, reflections and recommendations for approaching co-designing healthcare digital resources for sensitive EoLC issues that may have wider applications than for PLwD alone.

This paper takes as a starting point the question of how an undergraduate curriculum in design should be organized. Through a systematic review of current literature about design education and proceeding from a pragmatist understanding of knowledge we show that a design curriculum could be supported by three main pillars that provide: (a) foundational skills; (b) knowledge through practice and active reflection; and (c) transdisciplinarity and business skills. This proposal is an initial sketch, it provides a well contextualized macro-structure that will serve as a steppingstone for the redesign of an undergraduate course in design. Educators, practitioners, and those interested in the evolution of design education should be interested in the discussion here presented, for the problem of how to train competent professionals in this area is more relevant than ever.

Design interventions in heritage preservation provide a greater variety of solutions for traditional and modern-day preservation challenges. ‘Roots over Routes’ is practice-based design research to address those preservation challenges in historical town preservation. It focuses on addressing issues related to knowledge transferring, identifying core characteristics of a town, and maintaining the sustainability of preservation efforts. The paper investigates existing challenges and diverse solutions in different contexts around the world. Subsequently, the project suggests a cognitive map-based iterative process to allow senior citizens and children to interact and record knowledge related to their townscape. After that, these ‘cognitive maps’ are gathered and developed into a virtual space to connect external visitors with these journeys. With these approaches, it is focused on transferring knowledge from senior citizens, then create it into engaging content where different agents can collaborate to identify core elements of the city. Further, due to its interactive quality and the use of the digital medium, it is anticipated to continue the model sustainably. A pilot test was carried out in a selected village with test subjects, (n = 36) which covers multiple civic categories and their interaction with the model to test the efficiency of the above challenges. Positive outcomes were recorded during the pilot test, and potential areas have been discovered to develop in the future.

This article briefly presents the work developed during the master’s degree in graphic design, in which it was investigated how design can contribute to counteract the social stigma that exists in relation to people who have to use health masks to protect their immune system, and who for this reason feel discriminated. As part of the dissertation, and as a design strategy approach, a visual study on facial expressions was developed, culminating in a book with about 250 photographs, which aims to reflect upon the way we interpret the facial expressions that hide behind health masks.This study uses photographs of different facial expressions of 35 people, with and without health mask, to show how facial expressions are influenced by the use of this item. In this way, it seeks to draw attention to the bias in the perception and interpretation of the facial expression of people wearing health masks. The study shows that non-verbal communication is negatively affected by the use of health masks, making it difficult to interpret the emotional state of the person wearing them.

Design is recognized as a discipline capable of transmitting information through different types of artifacts (material or immaterial), in order to influence the emotions, behaviors and attitudes of the recipients and users. Aiming at efficient communication, the Human-Centered Design (HCD) approach incorporates methods of anthropology and participatory design, concerning itself with the way that the recipients see, interpret and live with the created artifacts. In view of this, this article seeks to describe and analyze two projects developed with design interventions, which sought to communicate and transmit knowledge about relevant social issues. The first is from the Passport to Employability program, which consists of a training course for inmates to assist them in their social reintegration through various activities as well as a toolkit. The second case is the Late Adoption project, which has as its main objective sensitizing society about adoptive affiliation, especially of groups considered difficult to place, such as children over five years old and adolescents, those who have a disability or groups of siblings. When analyzing the two projects from the perspective of HCD, similarities were perceived, such as the need to work in an interdisciplinary way and the importance of making complex information accessible to all stakeholders. In this sense, design can play an extremely significant role as an information mediator between different areas of knowledge and the users or audience of the developed artifact.

Changes in the Higher Education (HE) paradigm in Portugal, have made the sector competitive where different Higher Education Institutions (HEI) adapt marketing strategies to foster their education offer and differentiation factors in order to attract and maintain a higher number of students. With the increasing reduction in birth rates in Portugal, the investment on internationalization becomes a need in order to maintain the number of students. At the same time, the rapid proliferation of communication technologies affected the recruitment of new students and the communication strategies of HEI. The Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (IPB), being aware of this reality and recognizing the importance of digital communication tools, established in its strategic plan 2018–2022 objectives related to its internal and external communication in the digital context. For that purpose, various tools of research were conceptualized and implemented on an earlier phase of a digital communication plan. The originality and contribution of this work is to open this research methodology to the public sphere looking for critical analysis and construction.

The study of involvement is grounded in its widely accepted role as a mediator of the effects and effectiveness of advertising messages, having already shown evidence of its impact on target audiences’ receptivity to communication.This article is the outcome of research that aimed to understand the motivations underlying food involvement, assuming they can be three: health, physical appearance and pleasure.A quantitative research strategy was adopted and a questionnaire survey was applied to a convenience sample, from which 1166 valid responses were obtained.The main results indicate that individuals are generally involved with food, though women and the youngest age group (18–39 years old) have the highest level of food involvement. Food involvement is also most connected to the motivation pleasure, followed by health and, finally, physical appearance.

Today we live in a social network mediated by the Internet, a new socio-technological paradigm with an impact on lifestyles, increasingly virtual, stimulating new forms of sociability. Digital social networks offer new opportunities for sociability, but can also be tools that promote new forms of active job search, contributing to the strengthening of employability. They are also important for the social integration of people in a situation of unemployment, helping to avoid both the feeling of isolation and social exclusion. This text presents a reflection about the relationship between digital social networks, active job search and social inclusion. To this end, we also present the practical case of the Project “REviver na Rede” that enables to conclude that online social networks, as is the case of Facebook, are valid tools for the integration and socialization, fostering new forms of active job search, contributing to improve employability in contexts of unemployment, as well as the economic and social development of local communities.

The creation of the comics Cupim Conta Contos by the research group Cupim: Graphic Narratives and Visual Arts of the School of Fine Arts - UFBA is based on the diffusion of the Brazilian Law nº 11.645, on the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous culture in schools, in view of the scarcity of playful content observed and the need to portray the stories of the peoples that are of great importance for the Brazilian identity. The methodology used is based on Design Thinking, whose process line is Inspiration, Ideation and Prototyping. At Inspiration, we sought to study authors who research comics, short stories and recreational activities with the target audience; Ideation sought a specific methodology for Comics, analyzing references and similars; and in Prototyping, mockups and the final version of the magazine were made. The magazine has 8 Afro-Brazilian and indigenous tales in the Comics format. In this way, the result demonstrates how this language has a strong influence among young people and is a way friendly and playful to disseminate relevant content to society, as well as the oral histories of people who collaborated in the construction of Brazilian identity.

Today, games play active roles in diverse stages of the treatment of various mental illnesses. Despite this favourable context, their use as tools in the treatment of anorexia nervosa is still quite unexplored. We are developing playful and gamified tools that can be used as instruments in the prevention, treatment and monitoring of this complex disease. The objective of this paper is to present the initial process of design and development of a card-based game called How do I feel when… Its purpose consists of stimulating empathy among family members of patients with anorexia nervosa. Play sessions are to be mediated by health professionals and are supposed to occur in the context of support and therapeutic groups for family members of people suffering from eating disorders or in clinical consultations. Preliminary tests and expert reviews showed that the game is effective in establishing free association of subjects in players’ reasonings, and in inciting the externalisation and sharing of players’ feelings. It also demonstrated that, because players usually read the cards in accordance to their life experience, the game is able to circumscribe and personalise the subjects to be discussed.

This study aims to analyse the visual and graphical elements used in health communication during the coronavirus pandemic, with the purpose of identifying its characteristics at a global level and understanding the impact and efficacy of the materials in COVID-19 prevention and risk mitigation. A total of 264 materials have been examined and submitted to a coding system with variables regarding the message and graphic representations in the information presented about coronavirus by the health departments and ministries of ten countries. The results show that health communication should walk alongside visual communication, particularly when communicating risks during public health emergencies once that materials combining both text and pictures have been highlighted as the greatest in improving understanding and comprehension.

This paper adds to the discussion of how technological change occurred in London’s commercial printing businesses between 1980–1992 (‘Commercial’ being a term implying that firms were neither private presses, nor newspaper producers.). It shows how a decentralised trade restructured and underwent a major industrial shift in order to survive a technologically and politically turbulent decade. It argues firstly that print production de-industrialised and emerged as a ‘service’, as the result of social networks within the industry breaking down and reorganising and secondly that the impact of digital technologies on practices in the workplace was a slow and complex process. In doing so, it complements familiar narratives of newspaper production, which focus upon a more ‘sudden’ transformation within a centralised trade. Changes in training, tracked with oral history work, provides a focus for understanding. Object-based and archival document research is also used, including an examination of annual reports (a chief undertaking by London printers), as well as trade literature. Together, such sources give a view from a variety of responses to industrial transformation. They also demonstrate how a multi-disciplinary approach that combines social networks and material culture can generate alternative insights into both industrial transformation and also into researching the digital as a political occurrence (This paper is a part of a larger research project entitled ‘Open Shop: a Reassessment of London’s Printing Trades, 1980–1992’.).

Design as a field of study and research emerged in the 1960’s, a relatively recent area of academic study, however its multidisciplinary characteristics demonstrate that it has become a field of major importance in various types of research problems on other areas of study.We are living a pandemic scenario unveiled by Covid-19 that made governments and societies change their ways of living, working, and interacting. On a Planet in which humanity’s overconsumption and overproduction endangered the biological regeneration of the natural habitats, these changes demonstrate the possibility to transform behavioural habits and mindsets towards a more environmentally driven attitude.In this study, we researched the negative impact of plastic litter in the Oceans, a fast-growing menace that needs urgent action. Based in a comprehensive literature review, we were able to better understand the span of the problem and decided to center our approach on fast moving consumer goods, having narrowed the aim of our research to one of the most common plastic packaging items found in marine litter that results from a negative behavioural habit: plastic grocery bags.Subsequently we have selected a set of food retail companies in Portugal as case studies, to access if they use new and innovative design solutions, in which careful material flow decisions, environmental concerns, acceptable consumption habits and aesthetics have been taken in consideration.Findings reveal sustainability concerns when analyzing the commitment and action plans adopted by these companies on the improvement of their environmental impacts, with the reduction in the use of raw materials or the eco-design of their self-brand products, in which Design is a strategic element. Future work intends to follow up those actions to identify if they led the user/consumer to adopt a more sustainable and sentient behaviour.

Concrete Poetry and the Typographic International Style are movements born in the after-match of WW2. Concrete Poetry results of a critical evolution of the several modernism movements. It combines avant-garde and arrière-garde at the same time and place. In this sense it gives the old the same novelty it once had. This novelty is achieved using new forms of reading, composition, letters, colours or media appropriated both from advertising or from the archive. The International Typographic Style results from the Bauhaussian functionalism towards visual communication. It used mathematical rationalism to express human values in a systematic corporate visual communication. Poetry and Design at first sight have not so much in common, but they adopted each other’s practices in a continuous development process. This article proposes to understand how and why this happens and in each way the language used in distinct communicational purposes are appropriable by concrete poetry or Graphic Design.

Through the analysis of the epistemological assumptions of marketing-led branding models, this research investigates how these models aim to link brands with their audiences in terms of sense giving. Qualitative research has been done to explore three case studies, employing archive research, semiotics, and critical analysis. By relying on Plato’s theory of knowledge, to theoretically support this approach, and mainly considering his metaphorical style, the research analyses how a design-led brand strategy expands the scope of a marketing-led one, by amplifying the extent of the epistemological realism that supports the latter. Findings reveal that through design-led strategies, the analysed brands seize into their audiences’ everyday social practices realm and source their branding models with the creativity and imagination that is produced at that basic level of life: e.g. customising brand labels, with personal names, is an open way to connect brands with and to audiences through both recognition and the demand of being true to oneself. Hence, design-led branding can well be an approach to source brand authenticity.

This article aims to present the project for the creation of video content incorporated in a digital communication plan for the portuguese brand Shoyce, a producer of non-dairy beverages and other products with 100% vegetable origin. The content developed includes four different segments: TikTok Challenges, “Eu Escolho”, “Shoyce em Casa” and Protein Campaign, published on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. All content was adapted to give larger digital visibility to the brand, making the best use of the social isolation imposed to must worldwide citizens. Once the videos were published, after a period that allowed the organic and paid dissemination of the content, an analysis of the insights of the social networks was made. This data collection and subsequent analysis was helpful not only to understand the engagement of each content but also to have a global perspective of the feedback received and how the videos were perceived by the users.

The coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a halt and its impact on the fashion industry was significant. Moreover, consumer behavior and media consumption habits changed due to social distancing measures and as a consequence, the importance of digital channels was highlighted. Brands were forced to rethink their strategies and address consumers’ needs.This paper presents an overview of the subject by examining how fashion brands adapted the communication strategies in the digital space to reach their audiences in a meaningful way. Furthermore, it delves into the consumer shifts and into the role of digital channels, to understand how they might shape the future.The findings of the study suggest that during the crisis, fashion brands focused on people’s well-being and published content aimed to inspire, motivate, and entertain. Furthermore, it reports technology as a path for innovation for its contribution to improving online shopping experiences. A reflection on the theme also revealed that emotions are central to fashion strategies, and they can be used further to elevate communication.

Over the years, consumer needs have changed, and today’s communication and marketing strategies are distinct. Nowadays, trends are different, and, in content production, brands are trying to attract consumers to their products through the means at their disposal. Advertising emerges as one medium that allows information to be transmitted through images, sounds and videos. Thus, in the production of video advertising content, using storytelling, the narrative structure plays a decisive role in the interpretation of the message and, in this context, the perceived joy contributes to the engagement of each consumer with storytelling in advertising. Consequently, consumers can perceive brands as unique and distinct from others, what is crucial in marking tactics.In this context, this cross-sectional study presents a research model that relates narrative structure, joy and narrative transportation with brand distinctiveness. This model was tested using the PLS-SEM methodology using a sample of 326 participants and showed that narrative structure and joy influence narrative transportation as well as brand distinctiveness. From this study, theoretical and practical contributions to strategic marketing are suggested.

This paper aims to address the issue of creating a brand and the strategy for the implementation in the digital environment. This investigation aims to understand the evolution of design and its adaptation to the digital era, making it possible to substantiate the importance and the contribution of digital design in the graphic design field. As a case study, we present the development of the graphic brand and respective communication on digital social media, for the International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility. The presented work is part of the study that is being developed to obtain the master’s degree in digital design, within the scope of the curricular internship at designlab4u.

This paper focus on the importance of an identity system to support projects within the scope of social innovation.Considering big corporations or brands, with identity systems that secure acknowledgment of their target audience, their visibility increases in proportion with their identities exposition. This is beneficial not only for recognition purposes, but also posing as a quality assurance, thus improving the customer’s confidence.With the broadening of the influence of brand systems, the dimension of those who make use of them also changed: not only large and corporate organizations, but also organizations not intended for profit began to adhere to this way of identification in order to achieve increased impact.The blueprint commonly applied in corporate and large institutions has extended further to fields of social and sustainable institutions, switching the focus from financial profit to social welfare. This was approached consciously to expand the visibility and impact of projects, not only within general audiences, but also with financing entities.Because this need for prominence also became pressing for the social entrepreneurship area, this paper introduces a possible process for depicting the strength that a brand can give to the identity of non-profit and social organizations. Hence, a group of identities created for several Social Innovation international projects will be presented. It is advocated that formal consistency and clarity goes behind the exercise of logo development, thus assuming a strategy built on the brand’s value within the social innovation field.

The contribution describes the project of the territorial brand Modec, which aims to enhance the cultural heritage of fashion and design in Campania and to identify new design and production logics that innovate the regional fashion system. The brand, designed according to the principles of contemporary design, is based on the concept of “open brand” characterized by the ability to take on different forms, both visual and verbal, in relation to the many narratives of the manufacturing and production sector in Campania. The project, as well as being part of the logic of 100% Made in Italy brands, aimed at protecting the native origin of products connected to the territory of origin, promotes through programs shared between the Region, Universities and companies, new design and production logic for the innovation of the concept of Made in Italy in a global perspective.

This article aims to address the issue of the importance of the creation of a new brand identity for a new master course. It’s intend understand the complexity of the creation of a new identity and what topics are needed to evaluate before the creation of his graphic representation. As a case study we bring the creation of a new brand identity for the master’s in food design, a new master’s of the Estoril School. The presented work was developed in the first year of the Digital Identity Design masters of Portalegre Polytechnic.

This article is part of a broader research about the state of the art regarding film posters. However, it’s not just about film posters but what they represent and how the messages, images and typography that they convey have always migrated to other artifacts associated with the films.The contents are divided in four parts: Introduction; In the 20th Century, which touches on physical media such as lobby cards, print advertising, interventions in public spaces and transportations, home video, among others; 21st Century: The future is here, more focused on social media and streaming platforms, as well as moving and interactive posters that shed a light on what can be expected in the near future from film posters; and, finally, Conclusion.By presenting a wide range of applications and media outlets this paper aims to clarify that not only the definition of film poster will eventually change in the upcoming future, but that this artifact doesn’t exist only within itself, instead creating the basis for the entire visual identity of a film and the material and immaterial declinations of such identity. The article presents several examples of these marketing campaigns and how they are articulated with the poster. It also reinforces the role of the designer as creator and mediator of these applications in order to guarantee that a reasonable level of cohesion is kept during the period of time surrounding the film’s release in cinemas, home video and streaming platforms.

Branding and rebranding play a key role in brand management. The main goal of this study is to perform a literature review regarding brand and rebranding from the marketing and the design perspectives. It is very common for marketing and design professionals to work separately. However, the literature review developed in this work confirms that professionals in both areas should work in a more complementary way, developing the brand from a co-creation perspective.

This paper shares empirical insights gathered on the byproducts of a graphic design education. The term byproducts refer to the soft skills in communication, collaboration, and reflection developed by students studying graphic design. The data was gathered using ethnographic methods during field research for a doctoral project on transnational design education. The research explores the value of a British design education in Sri Lanka, a country with a different social, economic, and cultural context using the example of a transnational franchise partnership between a university in England and a private design institute in Sri Lanka. Upon reflection, design graduates at the Sri Lankan design institute deemed their soft skills as vital in equipping them with the resilience to navigate their local industry where academic qualifications in the field of design are not particularly valued. Accounts of professional experiences of graduates in England compared to examples of contextually specific challenges faced by graphic design students and graduates in Sri Lanka illustrate how their soft skills helped develop a sense of professional agency. The aim is to provoke considerations for contextually appropriate curricular development for transnational graphic design programs by borrowing from the essence a liberal education.

This study results of the application of the visual thinking methods through a non-interventionist methodology divided in two steps: exploratory interviews and exploratory descriptive diagrams. The research in this field has as main objectives to demonstrate that using visual thinking methods can help in a holistic comprehension of the methods and work processes of the projects, to simplify the complex information of each project and find key concepts common to all of the case studies. This research emerges because of the struggle in assess a detailed holistic perspective about the projects and his components, as the structure and organization of information during the project, since that the designer works in several projects at the same time. In this way, the study intends to evidence the importance that the organization of the information and his visual representation assumes in the development of the new knowledge, in the establishment of relations through the holistic view that visual thinking methods provides.Furthermore, this study demonstrate that visual thinking is fundamental to a better comprehension of the structure and organization of the design process, as well as powerful tool to achieve findings in design and project methodology fields.