This contribution presents two experimental projects developed in the field of human-machine interaction (HMI), aimed at exploring how design-driven practices can act as catalysts for defining new paradigms of relationships between people, technological systems, information, and technical operations. Through transversal methodologies, the experimentation generated significant outcomes, leading to the redefinition of roles, tools, and initial objectives. AI is reinterpreted as a formative and cognitive resource, rather than a process optimization technology. The interface emerges as a collaborative, dialogic space, according to the implementation of hybrid feedback models and adaptable communication architectures. The active participation of users enables distributed forms of agency, contributing to the development of visual tools, prototypes, and simulation environments. Special attention is also given to the design of situated data visualizations, aiming to represent energy flows within automation systems in a legible and contextual way. The development of a tool for rapid prototyping of AI-based interactions further extended the design capability to non-technical profiles. The article highlights how design, beyond mediating between humans and machines, can activate strategic reorientation processes, generating innovation through the divergence between initial expectations and emergent results.
Marco Marseglia, Tommaso Celli, Edoardo Brunelli
et al.
The BIOPIC project represented a significant opportunity to develop and formalise a Design-Driven methodology for bioinspired design, integrating knowledge and tools from five heterogeneous disciplines: design, chemistry, biology, engineering, and agronomy. The project aimed not only to develop sustainable and circular bioinspired solutions but also to experiment with a collaborative model that could make interdisciplinary complexity operational. The methodology, grounded in a Research Through Design approach, positioned design as an epistemic coordinator between Hard and Soft Sciences, enabling a reflective, iterative, and inclusive process. Through tools like the Round Table and ‘Google Form’, the project activated a pragmatic interdisciplinarity that supported the emergence of shared design strategies and a common metalanguage. The outcomes, including Proofs of Concept developed for the Camper, Furniture, and Nautical Sectors, confirmed the feasibility of bioinspired strategies oriented towards sustainability and circularity. While challenges remain - particularly in terms of industrial scalability and integration levels between disciplines - BIOPIC proposes a replicable model for interdisciplinary collaboration in design research. Ultimately, the project reinforces an epistemological perspective of design as a transformative agent that generates new knowledge by mediating between scientific, technological, and cultural domains. It highlights the centrality of design in activating innovation processes grounded in heterogeneous disciplinary collaboration.
Graphic design generation demands a delicate balance between high visual fidelity and fine-grained structural editability. However, existing approaches typically bifurcate into either non-editable raster image synthesis or abstract layout generation devoid of visual content. Recent combinations of these two approaches attempt to bridge this gap but often suffer from rigid composition schemas and unresolvable visual dissonances (e.g., text-background conflicts) due to their inexpressive representation and open-loop nature. To address these challenges, we propose DesignAsCode, a novel framework that reimagines graphic design as a programmatic synthesis task using HTML/CSS. Specifically, we introduce a Plan-Implement-Reflect pipeline, incorporating a Semantic Planner to construct dynamic, variable-depth element hierarchies and a Visual-Aware Reflection mechanism that iteratively optimizes the code to rectify rendering artifacts. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DesignAsCode significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both structural validity and aesthetic quality. Furthermore, our code-native representation unlocks advanced capabilities, including automatic layout retargeting, complex document generation (e.g., resumes), and CSS-based animation. Our project page is available at https://liuziyuan1109.github.io/design-as-code/.
Andrea Croce, Alessia Delli Rocioli, Michele Sablone
Unpae is a non-profit organization that operates in the field of contemporary visual culture. The organization was primarily born as a residency program, then it has become a platform for artists, curators, designers, and researchers of all kinds who come together to explore and develop new forms of fluid practices. The platform encourages freedom of being and doing, but also fosters emotional connections between people. Over the years, Unpae has developed a special sensibility for performative acts, multimedia production, and editorial practices. Residents engage with the town's unique landscape and are welcomed by its people and animals to respectfully inhabit the place for a short time. While the bonds with the mountain village are strong and the residency program is the foundation of Unpae, most projects are carried on by a network of local, Italian, and European cultural operators beyond geographical boundaries. The aim is to explore the territory, re-read the regional reality through an external gaze, and create new relationships between country-mountain territory-guests-local inhabitants. The organization seeks to create a network that can be useful in the development of ideas. Unpae is a project that educates the free exchange of ideas and knowledge between people from different backgrounds and belonging to different generations. The short-term expected results of these projects include increasing the possibilities for young artists to work in a non-urban context, bringing artists into contact with the local community, and bringing together local culture and new forms of expression. The long-term expected results include creating a network between the most culturally active centers and the periphery to allow everyone direct access to cultural events.
Sergio Degiacomi Garbero, Chiara Lorenza Remondino, Paolo Tamborrini
The article delves into the multifaceted nature of creativity, moving beyond traditional associations of creativity with artistic or cultural disciplines. Instead, it presents creativity as a complex cognitive process essential for addressing multidisciplinary challenges. Drawing from various studies, it emphasises how creativity flourishes in sociocultural contexts and is shaped by both individual learning and group dynamics, such as those described by Florida’s concept of the Creative Class.
The dissertation’s core focuses on exploring various creative contexts and environments that nurture creativity. The methodology considers a Systemic Innovation Design perspective to analyse thirty application cases of creative spaces, identifying key characteristics and impacts. The results show a clear direction of creative contexts involving multidisciplinary and practice-based actions, with a predominant focus on social and applied sciences.
Created as part of a project of the Mauritian Order Foundation supported by the Piedmont Region, Ghost 'n Found is a site-specific cooperative gaming experience (for families, but also enjoyable solo), set in the Staffarda Abbey (Cuneo) and its village. The creation of the game was made possible through collaboration with the local Dialogart association considering its strong ties to the local community and wide historical knowledge of the site in question. Monks and bats, cats and marquises, the characters of Ghost ‘n Found tell their story intertwined with that of Borgo di Staffarda, which traces its origins back to the year 1000. Using a smartphone, each group of visitor-players will be able to set free 8 (+1) ghosts trapped in as many QR codes, thereby restoring the ghosts’ memories of the location. The characters become instrumental in the narrative of a place made primarily of the stories – real or legendary – that have built up there over time. By combining the research for the hidden codes with puzzle solving on the phone, Ghost ‘n Found offers an alternative mode of sightseeing that is playful, multimedia, and narrative. The creation of an applied game is designed to help the site involved to gain more visibility with an external audience. The project aims to benefit at many levels, like bringing people to the site, digitalizing the site and increasing the armature for retailers. A notable achievement is the reasonably light effort - in terms of design - to turn an historical site into urban game. This could be an interesting keystone to apply to similar sites.
Jannatul Bushra, Md Habibor Rahman, Mohammed Shafae
et al.
Reverse engineering can be used to derive a 3D model of an existing physical part when such a model is not readily available. For parts that will be fabricated with subtractive and formative manufacturing processes, existing reverse engineering techniques can be readily applied, but parts produced with additive manufacturing can present new challenges due to the high level of process-induced distortions and unique part attributes. This paper introduces an integrated 3D scanning and process simulation data-driven framework to minimize distortions of reverse-engineered additively manufactured components. This framework employs iterative finite element simulations to predict geometric distortions to minimize errors between the predicted and measured geometrical deviations of the key dimensional characteristics of the part. The effectiveness of this approach is then demonstrated by reverse engineering two Inconel-718 components manufactured using laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing. This paper presents a remanufacturing process that combines reverse engineering and additive manufacturing, leveraging geometric feature-based part compensation through process simulation. Our approach can generate both compensated STL and parametric CAD models, eliminating laborious experimentation during reverse engineering. We evaluate the merits of STL-based and CAD-based approaches by quantifying the errors induced at the different steps of the proposed approach and analyzing the influence of varying part geometries. Using the proposed CAD-based method, the average absolute percent error between simulation-predicted distorted dimensions and actual measured dimensions of the manufactured parts was 0.087%, with better accuracy than the STL-based method.
Md Dilshadur Rahman, Md Rahat-uz- Zaman, Andrew McNutt
et al.
Annotations are central to effective data communication, yet most visualization tools treat them as secondary constructs -- manually defined, difficult to reuse, and loosely coupled to the underlying visualization grammar. We propose a declarative extension to Wilkinson's Grammar of Graphics that reifies annotations as first-class design elements, enabling structured specification of annotation targets, types, and positioning strategies. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we develop a prototype extension called Vega-Lite Annotation. Through comparison with eight existing tools, we show that our approach enhances expressiveness, reduces authoring effort, and enables portable, semantically integrated annotation workflows.
Allysson Allex Araújo, Marcos Kalinowski, Matheus Paixao
et al.
[Background] Emotional Intelligence (EI) can impact Software Engineering (SE) outcomes through improved team communication, conflict resolution, and stress management. SE workers face increasing pressure to develop both technical and interpersonal skills, as modern software development emphasizes collaborative work and complex team interactions. Despite EI's documented importance in professional practice, SE education continues to prioritize technical knowledge over emotional and social competencies. [Objective] This paper analyzes SE students' self-perceptions of their EI after a two-month cooperative learning project, using Mayer and Salovey's four-ability model to examine how students handle emotions in collaborative development. [Method] We conducted a case study with 29 SE students organized into four squads within a project-based learning course, collecting data through questionnaires and focus groups that included brainwriting and sharing circles, then analyzing the data using descriptive statistics and open coding. [Results] Students demonstrated stronger abilities in managing their own emotions compared to interpreting others' emotional states. Despite limited formal EI training, they developed informal strategies for emotional management, including structured planning and peer support networks, which they connected to improved productivity and conflict resolution. [Conclusion] This study shows how SE students perceive EI in a collaborative learning context and provides evidence-based insights into the important role of emotional competencies in SE education.
We present a new comprehensive theory for explaining, exploring, and using pattern as a visual variable in visualization. Although patterns have long been used for data encoding and continue to be valuable today, their conceptual foundations are precarious: the concepts and terminology used across the research literature and in practice are inconsistent, making it challenging to use patterns effectively and to conduct research to inform their use. To address this problem, we conduct a comprehensive cross-disciplinary literature review that clarifies ambiguities around the use of "pattern" and "texture". As a result, we offer a new consistent treatment of pattern as a composite visual variable composed of structured groups of graphic primitives that can serve as marks for encoding data individually and collectively. This new and widely applicable formulation opens a sizable design space for the visual variable pattern, which we formalize as a new system comprising three sets of variables: the spatial arrangement of primitives, the appearance relationships among primitives, and the retinal visual variables that characterize individual primitives. We show how our pattern system relates to existing visualization theory and highlight opportunities for visualization design. We further explore patterns based on complex spatial arrangements, demonstrating explanatory power and connecting our conceptualization to broader theory on maps and cartography. An author version and additional materials are available on OSF: osf.io/z7ae2.
Muhammad Syukri Mohd Yazed, Ezak Fadzrin Ahmad Shaubari, Moi Hoon Yap
The interpretation of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) in engineering drawings is a critical aspect of design and manufacturing processes. However, traditional methods of manual annotation are time-consuming and often lead to variability in understanding, which can impact product functionality and inspection outcomes. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an automated approach to recognize GD&T in engineering drawings by combining deep learning techniques. The primary objective of this paper is to develop a hybrid model that integrates the YOLOv5 object detection model and Vision OCR for symbol, text, and character extraction. The purpose is to streamline the interpretation process and improve the accuracy of GD&T recognition in engineering drawings. By training the YOLOv5 model on a diverse dataset and employing Vision OCR for text retrieval, the model aims to detect objects and extract relevant text efficiently. Performance evaluation metrics, including precision, recall, and mean Average Precision (mAP), are used to assess the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid model. Experimental results demonstrate promising outcomes, with the model achieving high precision and recall rates, as well as a strong mAP score. These results indicate that the hybrid model can accurately recognize objects and text within engineering drawings up to 80%, thereby addressing the problem of inefficiency and variability associated with manual GD&T interpretation. This paper offers a novel solution to automate GD&T recognition in engineering drawings, contributing to enhanced efficiency and accuracy in design interpretation. The proposed model has significant implications for engineering graphics and design practices, as it facilitates better communication and collaboration among engineers, designers, and manufacturers. By streamlining design documentation processes, the hybrid model can be integrated into manufacturing workflows to improve productivity and quality assurance in engineering practices.
This study explores unlearning as reflexivity, challenging traditional knowledge through clay work and weaving with Wichí masters in Salta, Argentina. Making became a method to enter liminal spaces, connecting master and student while unlearning linear ways of seeing the world, time, and design. This revealed tacit knowledge that emerges through creation, transforming design into an act of unknowing and opening to knowledge that resided within the piece of clay in my hands.
Valentina De Matteo, Elena Formia, Roberto Iñiguez Flores
et al.
The article presents the results of the debate that emerged during the 8th International Forum of Design as a Process, organized in Bologna by the design units of three partner institutions: the University of Bologna, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Tecnológico de Monterrey (20-22 June 2022). In particular, the Authors were chairs of the New Education Pathways for Future Designers in a Changing World theme track. It focused on two complementary perspectives. First, how designers can apply their peculiar “productive thinking” to educational spheres or other forms of organizations
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown prominent performance in various downstream tasks and prompt engineering plays a pivotal role in optimizing LLMs' performance. This paper, not only as an overview of current prompt engineering methods, but also aims to highlight the limitation of designing prompts based on an anthropomorphic assumption that expects LLMs to think like humans. From our review of 50 representative studies, we demonstrate that a goal-oriented prompt formulation, which guides LLMs to follow established human logical thinking, significantly improves the performance of LLMs. Furthermore, We introduce a novel taxonomy that categorizes goal-oriented prompting methods into five interconnected stages and we demonstrate the broad applicability of our framework. With four future directions proposed, we hope to further emphasize the power and potential of goal-oriented prompt engineering in all fields.
Automatic generation of graphic designs has recently received considerable attention. However, the state-of-the-art approaches are complex and rely on proprietary datasets, which creates reproducibility barriers. In this paper, we propose an open framework for automatic graphic design called OpenCOLE, where we build a modified version of the pioneering COLE and train our model exclusively on publicly available datasets. Based on GPT4V evaluations, our model shows promising performance comparable to the original COLE. We release the pipeline and training results to encourage open development.
In this paper, we present a flowchart of the Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows, aiming to create a numerical FORTRAN code. Considering several proposed models, the hydrodynamic evolution describing the external shock of the jet with the environment surrounding the GRB source or the Interstellar medium is discussed. A comparison of the results and data, considering the synchrotron emission as a basic mechanism for the radiation part, was also carried out.
Mechanical drawing. Engineering graphics, Physical and theoretical chemistry