Ashley Hall

Royal College of Art | RCA · School of Design

The ocean can be seen as a hard-to-reach place for human empathy and tangible connection for inspiring behaviour changes to reduce climate change impacts. A healthy ocean is crucial for essential human activities ranging from transport, food, oxygen, CO 2 absorption, recreation, and tourism. For a long time, designers have been engaged with designi...

This paper represents a continuation of research by the authors in the form of a preliminary meta-framework introducing Deep Products. Building from a survey specifically collected to address the rising concerns of the impact of design in ecological futures, this paper will present a multi-dimensional taxonomy of subtraction-by-design approaches. B...

The nature of design ontology continues to be explored as a crucial step in building closer relationships between the domains of the sciences, arts & humanities, and design. We focus thinking by design researchers including the co-authors to question the true nature of design ontology and its relationship to time, core design practices, reliability...

Over time we have begun to build foundations for design ontology moving it away from efforts to align with a scientific rigour model based on reproducibility and generalisability towards a new direction supporting design's emergent and abductive qualities. Two of the key issues that have escaped our grasp has been a better understanding of design o...

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought more challenges for designers to fully understand networked objects and develop pleasurable user experiences (UXs). Due to the radical change of products when they are connected, traditional experience design theories may not be applicable in this new context. Based on two well-established U...

This paper will focus on redefining design research education for the 21st Century. In this context, we will contextualize critical issues emerging from analyzing Christopher Frayling’s seminal paper Research in Art and Design by reviewing seminal theoretical work in the field of design by Archer (1968), Cross (1983), Jones (1970), and contemporary...

Designers are envisioning new typologies of products aiming for instance to extract CO2 from the environment or creating products from landfill waste, in this context a fundamental question arises; what could be a philosophical framework for a subtractive practise in design? In this paper the notion of Deep Products is introduced by building from n...

In our first State of Design Report we asked our researchers whether, as the UK Design Council asserts, design always has an answer? In this second report we ask again whether design has any answers, or are there just questions? In Cedric Price's lecture and slide show-"Technology is the answer but what was the question?"-technology is undoubtedly...

Integrating spatially localized molecular networks into virtual cell environments is an approach which is only provided by a very small number of tools. As this task requires the combination of a set of Biotechnology/Bioinformatics-related information sources, it can be seen as an appropriate example for Integrative Bioinformatics research. Here, w...

The design of the future is the design of trust in relation to uncertainty and risk. In this paper we introduce Prospective Design via a comparative study between existing design future approaches. In this study, we outlined their limitations and propose a mixed methodology aimed at combining and enhancing different approaches to present an integra...

This paper will focus on redefining design research education for the 21 Cth by reviewing seminal theoretical work in the field of design by Archer (1968), Cross (1983), Jones (1970), and contemporary critiques such as Herriott (2019), or Galdon & Hall (2019). In this context, we will contextualise critical issues emerging from Christopher Frayling...

Our world has shifted radically on its axis, creating new challenges and issues which are becoming much more pressing and immediate. It is clear that traditional design approaches and a problem-solution focus are limited and unable to tackle the risks currently facing human and ecosystem safety and wellbeing. The fundamental question facing design...

Replace the text by inserting your paper number submission Covid-19 has brought unprecedented and unthinkable transformations that have drawn uncertainty across the world, in particular regarding the strategies that could most effectively help the global population undertake substantial behavioural changes. To reflect and generate a response to the...

State of Design Report

This paper presents a guiding framework and a multi-level taxonomy of automation levels specially adapted to Virtual Assistants in the context of Human-Human-Interaction. This trust-based framework incorporates interaction phases, trust-affecting design principles and design techniques. It also introduces a taxonomy of levels of autonomy explaining...

With the future of health(care) shifting from treatment to prevention, design for behaviour change is an essential part of this movement. Although we have made significant breakthroughs in behavioural science and design for shaping behaviours, there are still some significant gaps and opportunities unexplored. Developing new transdisciplinary appro...

Long term thinking is full of challenges and is also necessary, especially on topics related to systems that take time to change, such as society, cultural values and policies. The further we look into the horizon, the more unknown-unknowns we encounter and the harder it is to rely on existing knowledge, trends and extrapolation for envisioning the...

The design of the future is the design of trust in relation to uncertainty and risk. Although you cannot completely eliminate uncertainty and risk, as they are intrinsic of futures, trust operates as a category to mitigate and reducing uncertainty and risk by enabling methods to address them. In this paper, we introduce Prospective Design via a com...

This paper introduces a preliminary framework to address upcycling from an object-based perspective. In this context, a bidirectional multi-level taxonomy is presented to address notions of manufacturing, sustainability, circularity, and respect for the environment. Based on research findings, the authors recommend the integration of Object-Oriente...

From healthcare products and services to hospital environments, designers have been involved in shaping tangible transformations and improvements for the future of health(care). Lesser developed are design practices in shaping care models, strategies, sustainability, policies and other less tangible and longer-term health(care) futures. Critical sp...

This paper presents a guiding framework and a multi-level taxonomy of automation levels specially adapted to Virtual Assistants in the context of Human-Human-Interaction. This trust-based framework incorporates interaction phases, trust-affecting design principles, and design techniques. it also introduces a taxonomy of levels of autonomy explainin...

This paper presents a comparative study amongst the three main frameworks acknowledged for designing trust in AI; specifications, principles and the levels of control necessary to underpin trust in order to address the rising concerns of Highly Automated Systems (HAS). We will also address trust AQ1 design in four case studies specifically designed...

This paper argues that a new digital right, the ‘right to reparation’, is needed to address the accountability gap presented by highly autonomous complex systems (HACS) incapable of fully monitoring their actions in real- time due to the increasing complexity of these advanced systems. The ‘Right to reparation’ follows the articulation of the ‘Righ...

This paper reviews the four fundamental frameworks available in normative ethics to underpin the most suitable strategy to facilitate the design of synthetic morality in the context of Highly Automated Systems (HAS). Based on research findings, it will present an updated multidimensional-scalar system of levels of automation specifically adapted to...

As design thinking evolves we are beginning to develop a clearer idea of its relationship to other domains of thinking and in particular its specific ontological nature. Here we consider design’s special relationship to the future and how concepts of anticipation, probabilism and prospectivity underpin a new understanding of design’s relationship t...

This paper strikes an arc through C.P. Snow's influential 'Two Cultures' lecture at Cambridge University in 1959 through to Bruce Archer's assertion that design is the third culture of thinking in 1978 and positions how design thinking can contribute at a domain level to contemporary issues of the Anthropocene. After describing the separation of th...

Design can be characterized as 'knowledge for future transformation' and is a discipline concerned with developing new products, systems and services that change the future. However, the methods we use for generating foresight are underdeveloped and some gaps and issues remain. This is especially true between more speculative approaches to designin...

In this paper, the authors propose prospective design as a future-led mixed-methodology to address unintended consequences. It combines systems analysis with extrapolations and constructivist perspectives to reconcile confronted models of design future(s). In the results presented, the authors suggest a need to include ethical frameworks in design...

A series of research projects by the authors has supported an understanding of a new type of design practice geared towards ensuring a safer relationship between people and technologies in a number of contexts including rapidly changing dynamic environments. Here we report on the research methods, tools and approaches that were created and adapted...

Although healthcare has long been a focus for design research dating from the 1960’s and Bruce Archer’s Industrial Design (Engineering) research unit, there remain very few academic programmes in the field of healthcare design and even fewer that go beyond classic user driven models. This paper reports on a unique collaboration between the Royal Co...

The 21st century global scale challenges facing design include sustainability, migration, food, water and data security and terrorism amongst others. These challenges have left 20th century design approaches lagging behind, while we also now recognise that the ‘western’ design model is limited. As geopolitical changes accelerate in Europe, new oppo...

Designing globalisation design is an interdisciplinary experimental design workshop collaboration between the Design Schools at the Royal College of Art in London and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The workshop developed from a joint desire by the co-authors to bring together insights and experiences from teaching cross-cultural desig...

Design and aesthetics are two intrinsic words that naturally interrelate when a tangible object with formal qualities is developed by taking into account visible parameters. In this research, we describe how an aesthetic analysis of tangible objects could be a valuable and rich pedagogic medium for design research in a design innovation and interdi...

This review explores how a culture of design for safety can enhance the safety of the world around us. Design for safety goes beyond legislation, regulations and standards. These all play an important role for established products and services but their limited scope often leads to missed opportunities to enhance safety by taking a broader perspect...

Volume 4 of the Encyclopedia of Asian Design series focuses on transnational and global design issues. Articles by leading international scholars address issues such as geopolitics, aesthetics, trade and sustainability that have impacted and continue to impact the development of craft and design in Asia.

The "Safety Grand Challenge" is a collaborative research project between the Royal College of Art (RCA) School of Design, and the Lloyd's Register Foundation (LRF). The maritime industry is dominated by "grandfathering" leading to a slow-pace of adopting innovations that can reduce risk and save lives at sea. We describe how impact was achieved thr...

Encouraging creative risk to reduce risk to life explores how a collaborative, cross disciplinary design research and teaching methodology can provide a platform for tackling projects in the complex industrial risk at sea scenario. Our research discusses the culture of design engaging with risk in the context of the wicked problems we identified, t...

Design is an agent of globalization affecting socio-cultural evolution through technology impact, and in return, globalization is generating new demands and forces that shape both design and design education. This paper combines two earlier pieces of research on ubiquitous tendencies in industrial design and designing creative destruction to explor...

Makerspaces – open access design and fabrication workshops – provide new contexts for design practice through 'distributed production'. The global community of makerspaces has evolved quickly and in turn, substantial hype is attributed to its potential for radical sustainable innovation. In this article, we explore this potential in the context of...

Elastic Octopus was inspired by a perceived increased reluctance in student attitudes towards taking risks and failure in design innovation. In particular, recent trends in funding and risk-aversion in earlier phases of education where failures are discouraged has limited the potential for ground breaking innovative thinking. This experimental desi...

This research aims to make a contribution in the context of design thinking at a global cultural scale and specifically how design methods are a feature of the homogenising and heterogenising forces of globalisation via creative destruction. Since Schumpeter's description of economic innovation destroying the old and creating the new, a number of o...

Redistributed manufacturing is an emerging concept which captures the anticipated reshoring and localisation of production from large scale mass manufacturing plants to smaller-scale localised, customisable production units, largely driven by new digital production technologies. Critically, community-based digital fabrication workshops, or makespac...

Today's space exploration, both robotic-and human-exploration driven, is dominated by objects and artifacts which are mostly conceived, designed and built through technology and engineering approaches. They are functional, reliable , safe, and expensive. Building on considerations and concepts established in an earlier paper, we can state that the...

Expanding humanity into space is an inevitable step in our quest to explore our world. Yet space exploration is costly, and the awaiting environment challenges us with extreme cold, heat, vacuum and radiation, unlike anything encountered on Earth. Thus, the few pioneers who experience it needed to be well protected throughout their spaceflight. The...

Planetary probe missions—as part of an overall space exploration strategy—have helped us to experience and learn about planets and moons in our solar system, with sizable atmospheres. These engineering and scientific achievements contributed to our evolving understanding of the universe around us. While the natural phenomena of the world are indepe...

Article for the British Council on design and the Future of Making

Autistic adults with limited speech and additional learning disabilities who are often excluded from design research are at the heart of this project. These are people whose perceptions, experiences and interactions with their surroundings are unique, but also are people who may not be able to communicate verbally their differences to the remaining...

Public talk on design innovation given at Kyushu University in July 2014

Keynote speech on design research and Translocated making give at the Second Annual China International Art & Design Forum in Jingdezhen.

Public talk given on my translocated making design research at the DAB lab during Sydney Design week in August 2013

With projections indicating an increase in mobility over the next few decades and annual flight departures expected to rise to over 16 billion by 2050, there is a demand for the aviation industry and associated stakeholders to consider new forms of aircraft and technology. Customer requirements are recognized as a key driver in business. The airlin...

Designing Social City Experiences documents a number of interdisciplinary design projects conducted in a collaboration between the Royal College of Art & Imperial College London's Innovation Design Engineering programme and the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology's Industrial Design department in Daejeon, South Korea. Alongside the...

Several design writers have proposed, or at least implied, that " …we are all designers… " through the way we manipulate the environment around us, select the items we wish to own, plan, build, buy, arrange, and restructure things all in a form of design [1, 2]. During the same time, design as a behavioural phenomenon has increased its capacity and...

Interdisciplinarity is a key ingredient in amplifying the breadth of design explorations and the ability to merge different perspectives is essential for the future of design innovation. Several studies on collaborative work emphasize and support this point of view, however creative collaboration can trigger conflicts mainly due to interpretative d...

This thesis examines the activity of designing and making across geographical distances. Through critical reflection on the author’s own design practice, and the initiation of new collaborative design projects, the thesis develops and tests the concept of translocated making. Translocated making is explored as a form of production where activity, i...

Creativity and its realisation are vitally important to industry as identified, for example, by the Capitalizing on Complexity report undertaken by IBM. The scope of this study is to explore masters level design engineering students' creativity in terms of personality correlation. A personality survey conducted on Innovative Design Engineering (IDE...

Foroba Yelen ('collective light' in the Malian Bambara language) is a collaboration between staff and students from the Innovation Design Engineering dual masters programme at the Royal College of Art/Imperial College London, Cinzana Connect Villages association and the eLand Foundation to design and build portable solar lights for two remote villa...

GoGlobal Rural-Urban highlights a series of interdisciplinary partnerships between the Innovation Design Engineering programme at the Royal College of Art / Imperial College London and a range of global institutions including our long-term partner, Tsinghua University in Beijing. The essays contained in the first part of the book are a collection o...

The concept of geographically liberated difference has emerged from the overlap of cultural studies and economics as a critique of the effects of globalisation on cultures through the manufacturing and distribution of artefacts with unique differences across diverse territories. Although this concept is known in the domains of cultural studies and...

Experimentation is often considered a constituent part of the design process and designing in general, yet its exact function and identity is open to a wide variety of interpretations. For example experimentation is often confused with differentiation or iteration. The relationship between scientific and industrial design experimentation; rationale...

Introduction A few years ago the closest that designers came to space would be designing props for Hollywood sets. Now, in parallel with successful launches by private enterprises including Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures, a new context for designers has emerged. On 15th April 2010, US president Barack Obama predicted his new space exploration...

Touchdown in Ghana The first thing you notice as you step out of the aeroplane in Accra – the capital of Ghana – is the air. Thick and heavy with humidity, the air carries the ancient smell of brown earth – reminiscent of baked bread and sewers – intermingled with the sounds of wildlife and city chaos. Like any tropical country, Ghana is a slow pla...

This paper describes an exploration into the absorption of local cultural elements and how these can be synthesised into aesthetic and ethical concepts from abstract elements into successful designs. A cultural transfer design workshop was held with design students from the Royal College of Art in UK and Tsinghua University in China, in collaborati...

Design collectives in education: evaluating the atelier format and the use of teaching narrative for collective cultural and creative learning, and the subsequent impact on professional practice Abstract: This paper reviews the case for 'cultural and creative design collectives' in design education. Higher education taught design courses use a dive...