Our design research is practice-based and is carried out in close collaboration with business partners, organisations, communities and public concerns. By working with realistic innovation projects together with such partners, we are able to understand contemporary business and organisational problems and move to develop solutions and evaluate their success.
This is generally carried out in multiple iterations, and allows for an evolving dialogue between contextual needs and design solutions. This often requires a flexible, explorative and consultative action-based approach, in which complex problems are investigated and holistic solutions developed. Such an approach demands a process in which theoretical frameworks, empirical fieldwork and case studies evolve simultaneously. This is a typical design-synthesis approach, but is applied within a research framework.
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This project assembles the body of transdisciplinary PhD outputs in Design at AHO in the form of compilation based and monograph type theses, supported by institutional, national and international research funding. Specific PhD projects in addition each have their own project page and links to related larger projects and research networks. Read »
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My PhD positions Systems Orientated Design (SOD), collaborative governance and Foresight as framing thematics of an anticipatory systems approach to my research focus area. My study is situated in a South African context and I am investigating how an anticipatory systems approach to design research might lead to shaping better and more sustainable futures of local actors in the Stellenbosch river catchment area. Read »
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SEDNA (“Safe maritime operations under extreme conditions: the Arctic case”) is a research project that is developing an innovative and integrated risk-based approach to safe Arctic navigation, ship design and operation. Read »
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ONSITE seeks to strengthen the Norwegian maritime industry by developing knowledge that can secure an efficient feedback loop between field studies carried out in maritime operations and design processes onshore. Read »
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H-SEIF or Human Systems Engineering Innovation Framework is a research project that aims at developing new methods for Human Centred Systems Engineering. Read »
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This 7th Nordic Design Research Conference comes at a time when earlier social, political and economic conditions, expectations and frameworks are under pressure, and indeed change, globally. Relations between design and power are today perhaps more present that before and them are seemingly strongly polarised. What then are design practitioners, educators, researchers, policy makers and activists, among others, to make of these changes and how are they to engage in effecting informed, ethical, participative and meaningful change? Read »
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Anticipation 2017 is a unique, radically interdisciplinary forum for exploring how ideas of the future inform action in the present. It brings together researchers, policy makers, scholars and practitioners to push forward thinking on issues ranging from modelling, temporality and the present to the design, ethics and power of the future. AHO is represented on the Organising Committee by Professor Andrew Morrison and has funded the conference website. This conference brings fresh input from design inquiry to this futures event. Read »
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The designBRICS project is a platform for a lean network of different design institutes in BRICS countries and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). The BRICS are represented by the design departments at Hunan University (HNU) in China and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in South Africa. Read »
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Commissioned by the AHO Board as a Review of Research, the Quality for Impact project aims to build knowledge about research at AHO and its relation to wider professional, educational, commercial and societal impact. The qualitative nature of the study will help develop situated knowledge about a diversity of approaches and insights in ‘design’ based inquiry. Read »
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“Prototyping services for policy-learning”, the PhD project of Manuela Aguirre, attempts to bridge Systems Oriented Design (SOD) and Service Design (SD) fields within the context of the public sector. Read »
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This research project is about exploring and bring forward new knowledge about the evolving practice of healthcare service design in the context of design labs. It was carried out using action research as an approach, through establishing four embedded design labs inside three different large hospitals in Norway over a period of six years, to study how healthcare service design is practiced and may be advanced in design lab settings. Read »
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The Centre for Connected Care (C3) aims to accelerate adoption and diffusion of patient-centric innovations that change patient pathways and delivery systems, empower the patients and increase growth in the healthcare industry. The ambition is to bring together different stakeholders to research and co-develop new knowledge, infrastructure and healthcare services. Read »
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Service Design is rapidly expanding to include the provision of services for health and well-being. DOT is an AHO strategically funded initiative into the design-driven investigation of providing improved and new services for ‘welfare technology’ and person-centred health development. DOT refers to ‘Design for offentlige tjenester’ in Norwegian. Read »
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The project facilitates knowledge transfer between ongoing research projects and research and development projects in industry. It arranged and facilitated meeting between academia, industry and design service providers. Read »
It is important for marine industry to harvest data from ongoing marine activities to ensure development of competitive ships and equipment. The study involved planning, carrying out and analyzing of multiple field trips to vessels operating in the north sea. Read »
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This PhD is a study of the designs of commenting sections in online magazines and newspapers. Read »
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Service Desirability is a PhD project connected to the research and design project AT-ONE. Read »
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Teaching ergonomics to design students is closely related to the philosophy and concepts of Universal design, inclusive design and design for all. Another term in this field is Design for diversity. Read »
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Service design must push its current boundaries of reference to incorporate wider impulses from the social sciences and humanities to allow for higher engagement at a socio-cultural level with service customers. Services are primarily defined by their intangibility and temporal nature where value is co-created during service delivery between customer and service provider. Rituals offer time-based structures that allow for the intangible to be made substantive and as well as frame works for the orchestrating of experiential high points and high seasons. Myths offer symbolic and binding narratives for service customers, which can create new fellowships that build lasting communities of a brand faithful. The research takes an explorative and practical approach based upon theories from social science. From these insights a new set of practical design tools are being developed which will be tested and assessed in New Service Development settings. Read »
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UBV is a design practice driven research project. By actively participating in the development of an innovative new control bridge for large ships, we seek to investigate design practice in context of Norwegian maritime sector. The goal is to develop both an understanding of and developing strategies for the inclusion of experience oriented industrial and interaction design practice inside large scale maritime projects. Central in UBV is to incorporate design practitioners holistic approach to product experiences which includes aesthetical and personal aspects in addition to function and usability considerations. Read »
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What if we could redefine the whole bridge environment and change everything from the room layout to furniture design, and from the fundamental interaction techniques to details on the screen? This is the scope for the researchers, designers and engineers developing the Ulstein Bridge Concept (UBC) project. Together we aim to create research and designs that can direct the development of the future ship bridges of offshore service vessels. Read »
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This project focuses on researching and developing innovative social media services to promote social engagement and participation among youth. These services are developed mainly to support a group of organizations that promote social engagement among youth. These organizations are NRK, Edda Media (media), Plan Norway (humanitarian), and Kongsvinger Kommune (local government).The project is lead by the market research agency OPINION. AHO will conduct the research for this project together with independent research organisation SINTEF. Read »
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The importance of the brand has been recognized in both literature and practice. Brands makes promisses which should be delivered to the customer through touch points. Based on the concept of semantic transformation, this projects proposes to address the research gap in the development of brand based service experiences. Read »
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