Design Fundamentals for our Digital Future

We are living in the midst of a digital transformation of society. As digital technologies enhance and in some cases, replace human judgement and activities, what is the role of the designer? What new knowledge and skills does the designer of today and tomorrow need to anticipate and guide this transformation towards desirable outcomes? A new European research project led by IDE, Fundamentals of Design Competence for Our Digital Future (or D-CoDE for short), aims to tackle these very questions through a pioneering research training programme.

This Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) brings together a European consortium of seven higher education institutes (including the University of Umeå and the University of Edinburgh) with Philips Design Innovation and stakeholders from industry, government and civil society. This consortium will train 15 PhD students in design, anthropology, media studies, science and technology studies and computer science, and equip them with the knowledge and skills needed for envisioning, designing and prototyping product service systems that are powered by Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The focus of the research training will be on those steps in design where a digital transformation of society is the effect of sustained and repeated interaction with data-driven product services and the broader systems of algorithmic logic, value and governance in which they get embedded.