UTS

Designing
Out Crime
Update to
the Board 2020

UTS Design Innovation

Research Centre

We are pleased to present an update on the Designing Out Crime (DOC)

partnership across 2019-20. This review describes the DOC partnership
performance over the 2019-20 calendar years.
For enquiries, please contact:
Rohan Lulham
rohan.lulham@uts.edu.au

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 deep listening

journeying

goals community

ARRIVING SETTLING IN learning together TRANSITION LEAVING

yarning

growing

sharing

decision-making

SHARING, REMEMBERING AND REFLECTING

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Contents
1. About DOC ...........................................................................5

2. Our Projects..........................................................................6

3. Our Teaching & Learning....................................................16

4. Our Research .....................................................................18

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 2019-2020
Highlights
Deepening and broadening our impact
2019-20 have seen further strengthening of DOC expertise and impact
in areas such as crime prevention, corrective environments and safety
in public places. We have also been strategically building our experience
and relationships in the areas of domestic violence and mental health.

Celebrating a decade of excellence

2019 marked 10 years in the impactful partnership between the NSW
Department of Community and Justice and the University of Technology
Sydney. To celebrate the occasion, the Designing out Crime team
produced a short video demonstrates the value of the partnership
including testimonials from key partners.

Recognition of our impact

DOC projects put forward as case studies earned the UTS Design
Architecture and Building faculty highest ranking for research impact in the
2018 Australian Research Councils Engagement and Impact Assessment.

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About DOC
The Designing Out Crime partnership exists to create knowledge and
impact that contributes to the safety and well-being of NSW communities.
It is a collaboration between the NSW Department of Community and
Justice and the University of Technology Sydney that brings collective
expertise, knowledge and capacity to these issues.

Partnership Objectives
DOC has three guiding objectives:
• create positive, demonstrated impact on key issues in line with the
NSW Premier’s priorities
• develop and contribute to international knowledge about the use and
value of design practices in creating system change and impact in the
public sector
• uild capability for NSW Department of Community and Justice through
b
collaborative projects that involve their staff and leverage the diverse
expertise throughout the university

To achieve these objectives, Designing Out Crime undertakes projects,

research and teaching activities with a range of partners and collaborators.
DOC has undertaken over 200 design research projects and 100 teaching
studios over the last ten years. In addition to the core DCJ projects, DOC
undertakes externally funded design and research projects with other
areas of DCJ (i.e. courts, corrections), other areas of the NSW government
(i.e. Health, Education) and private sector organisations. These external
projects are fundamental to maintaining the viability of DOC and are an
important resource for the NSW government and its partners in developing
design expertise and creating impact.

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 Our Projects

Current Core Projects

Crowded Places Forums (2020)
Intended purpose or outcome: This collaboration project involves two
components: designing and facilitating the first six Crowded Places Forums,
and curating key resources to support participants of the crowded places
forums.
Research methodology: A series of facilitated workshops with Justice
and stakeholders to establish a community of practice through sharing and
developing knowledge. Stakeholders range across events, retail, transport,
communities, etc.

Duress (2020)
Intended purpose or outcome: The purpose of this project is to test
and evaluate domestic violence duress devices from a user and provider
perspective to better understand their effectiveness and consider changes
that may assist the NSW Staying Home and Leaving Violence program.
Research methodology: Desktop research/literature review; workshop with
service providers and other stakeholders; workshop with broader providers;
test duress alarms against performance criteria; survey of the working
group; analysis; synthesis

Communications, Campaigns and Messaging

about Domestic and Family Violence (2020)
Intended purpose or outcome: This project supports DCJ through research,
consultation and analysis in their desire to shift towards a client-centred
approach to communications for prevention of and response to DFV.
Research methodology: Desktop research and literature review of
academic literature and media content concerning the approaches to DV
related communications, campaigns and messaging across Australia and
internationally.

DV Online Resource (2020)

www.dismantlingdomesticviolence.com
Intended purpose or outcome: This project unpacks and explores the
complexity of domestic violence through design methodologies to find new
ways to understand the problem and potential opportunities for intervention.
Our explorations are captured in the ‘Dismantling Domestic Violence‘
website, an online resource that documents the progress on these avenues
of exploration.
Research methodology: Various
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Crime Prevention Strategy (2021)
Intended purpose or outcome: This project engages the local academic
community about key directions, structures and challenges for crime
prevention in NSW.
Research methodology: Literature Review; Workshops with academic
stakeholders; analysis; synthesis

Critical Infrastructure (2021)

Intended purpose or outcome: This project is assisting the Community
Safety and Coherence Office team in their work developing, integrating and
implementing new frameworks for managing critical infrastructure in NSW.
Research methodology: TBD. Project scope and focus of the project will
be reassessed based on the needs and priorities of the DCJ team early in
2021.

2019

Crimes against Older People (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project starts from the observation
that older people: are targets of particular crimes (elder abuse, consumer
fraud); may be affected by crime differently to younger people; and may
differ in their ability to respond to and recover from crime. The project aims
to understand the implications of the above for crime prevention.
Research methodology: Desktop research/literature review; expert
interviews; workshop with service providers; design research activities
(e.g. journey mapping and visualisation); synthesis and analysis of findings
using design research methods (i.e. Frame Creation).

Rural Crime Prevention (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to understand how
small, remote communities in NSW experience and approach community
safety. The project will provide a rich description of crime prevention in
these communities, in order to inform strategic policy decisions.
Methodology: Desktop research and literature review; field research
(canvassing local stakeholders on their sense of community, perception of
crime and crime prevention practices); analysis; synthesis.

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 DOC Impact Projects
As a research unit within a University, DOC undertake specific design
research projects that seek to demonstrate our research impact in line with
the intentions of the Designing Out Crime partnership. We are currently
undertaking a number of projects aligned to our research including:

Modular Housing for Indigenous Communities

(2018–current)
Intended purpose or outcome: The project has two key aims: to develop
building skills and trade certificates by indigenous inmates; and to meet
the challenge of providing suitable housing to indigenous communities in
outback NSW. The project involved the development of a house design
made up of pre-built modules (bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, etc.) that
can be assembled in a variety of configurations according to family size
and individual requirements. The modules are constructed by indigenous
inmates, who also learn the skills needed to maintain the houses once they
return to their communities.
Methodology: Design and action research, prototyping, testing and
refining, architectural modelling.

Nelly’s Healing Centre (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to support the
establishment of a healing centre in inner Sydney. The centre will
incorporate an intensive residential program and drop-in service for
deep listening
Aboriginal women and their children who are encountering the justice,
health and child protection systems and may be battling abuse, mental
journeying

goals community

ARRIVING SETTLING IN learning together TRANSITION LEAVING

health or other health and wellbeing issues. The project aims to provide
the basis for a service model that is culturally embedded, human-centred,
yarning

growing

sharing

decision-making
Aboriginal-led, genuinely healing for Aboriginal people, and can be applied
in subsequent locations and future programs.
Methodology: Creation of maps and visualisations to help the Nelly’s team
envisage and plan for a person’s journey through Nelly’s Healing Centre;
developing an evaluation framework that reflects priorities, values and
SHARING, REMEMBERING AND REFLECTING

needs of the Nelly’s team.

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Co-creating services to prevent crime against
older people (2020-21)
Intended purpose or outcome: This design research project seeks to
engage older people in the process of developing ways to reduce crime
– particularly technology related crime – against older people. In parallel
to a broader bank project that takes an agile, minimal viable product
approach, this project will take a more user centred participatory approach
to the development process that is more open to new definitions of the
problem and solutions. This collaboration will connect stakeholders across
health and banking to work together.
Research methodology: Structured conversations, workshops and
iterative prototyping with a range of stakeholders.

Establishing and supporting practitioner expertise

in the social housing sector (2020-21)
Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to understand the nature
of working as client facing social housing staff in the present day – by
eliciting the expectations, responsibilities, workloads placed on staff and
exploring the implications for capability, training, and support needed by
individuals and teams alike.
Research methodology: Interviews and workshops with client service
teams across 3 sites in Sydney; case study analysis.

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 Broader DCJ
Sector projects

Corrective Services NSW – A research and

evaluation strategy for the transformation of
prisoner rehabilitation through digital technology
(2020-2021)
Intended purpose or outcome: Develop a strategy and associated
program logic frameworks that assists CSNSW in enagaging and
facilitating a program research and evaluation that informs the use of the
technology to achieve prisoner rehabilitation.
Research methodology: the methodology is informed, collaborative
and iterative including thematic literature scans across a range of
disciplines and collaborative workshops with stakeholders to develop a
rsearch strategy document that supports the transformation of prisoner
rehabilitation through digital technology.

Enware—The Prison Cell Project (2019-2020)

Intended purpose or outcome: to create knowledge that is useful to
designers, manufactures and purchasers of prison cell water infrastructure
and cell more broadly to design cell water infrastructure that supports
individual and organisational well-being.
Research methodology: This research takes a user centred approach to
examining and assessing the design of current prison cell accommodation.
Users in this research are the prisoners and staff who are detained and
work in prisons. This research explores how recently built prison cell
accommodation is used, experienced and evaluated by staff and inmates
across a series of focussed aspects.

Corrective Services Industries Furniture

(2018–ongoing)
Intended purpose or outcome: Corrective Services Industries (CSI) NSW
runs a number of manufacturing facilities in correctional centres across
the state, with the aim of helping inmates to acquire skills and trade
certificates. This project aims to ensure that CSI has a sustainable future
by enhancing its competitiveness in the marketplace through the design
and development of a range of innovative new furniture products that meet
the expectations of potential consumers throughout the NSW government
sector.
Methodology: Desk research into the changing office environment and
the relevant standards and government procurement requirements for
office furniture; field visits to CSI furniture manufacturing workshops in four
correctional centres; a workshop attended by CSI staff and UTS designers.

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Emu Plains Correctional Centre Redesign (2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: The project involves the redesign of a
number of facilities at the Emu Plains Correctional Centre for women—the
Visitors Centre and adjacent external visits space, new Employment and
Training Hub (the Hub) and Jacaranda Cottage outdoor space—as part of
Correctional Services NSW employment and training partnerships with the
Commonwealth Government. The redesigned spaces are intended to help
women connect with their communities and culture, and thus help them to
prepare for life after incarceration.
Methodology: Expert interviews, workshops and focus groups.

Legal Aid NSW (2018–ongoing)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aimed to develop design
concepts for physical spaces within Legal Aid NSW (LANSW) offices that
are tailored to the specific needs of the new Early Appropriate Guilty Plea
(EAGP) program. The goal is to identify materials and an overall aesthetic
that allow for more meaningful, dignified and equitable experiences
of justice for LANSW clients, in order to support the important legal
conversations taking place in EAGP spaces. Follow-up projects involved
the concept design for the renovation of all ground-floor client spaces at
LANSW’s Haymarket office, and the development of design blueprints and
guidelines for the future fit-out of LANSW offices across the state.
Methodology: Human-centred and participatory design methods.

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 Related external projects

Banking Story (2018–onwards)

Intended purpose or outcome: Working with a major Australian bank,
the project aims to improve the service provided to indigenous customers,
with initiatives ranging from enhancing financial literacy among customers,
to indigenous cultural awareness training for bank employees.
Methodology: Qualitative interviews with bankers; literature review;
desk research of precedents around the world; systems mapping; design
sketches for customer-facing documents (e.g. a guide, information
document, or checklist).

Broadspectrum Maintenance and Repair

in Social Housing (2018–2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to enhance the efforts
of government contractor Broadspectrum (BRS) in providing maintenance
and repairs for social housing managed by the NSW Land and Housing
Corporation (LAHC). The goal is to reduce the costs associated with
maintenance and to identify the broader social, behavioural, environmental
and other factors that are contributing to the problem of damage to social
housing properties.
Methodology: Program of five half-day workshops with core stakeholders
from BRS, LAHC and NSW Family and Community Services to reframe the
problem in order to eliminate blame and prejudice, and to design practical,
proactive, positively framed solutions.

Broadspectrum Call Centre Experience (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to assist government
contractor Broadspectrum (BRS) in transforming the service design at
BRS’s National Contact Centre, in order to better support the call centre
agents as well as the social housing tenants who call the centre for
assistance with repairs and maintenance. The goals are: to improve the
daily experience of (and reduce attrition among) agents, who experience
high stress as a result of distressing calls and limited ability to help tenants;
and to improve service to tenants.
Methodology: Participatory design-led approach involving workshops
and interviews with agents, BRS management, tenants and their
representatives.

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Carers, We See You (2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to better understand
the everyday experiences and challenges faced by UTS student carers,
and develop ways that the university could better support student carers
to achieve a better balance in their lives as both students and carers.
Methodology: In collaboration with the Centre for Carers Research,
the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion and Carers NSW, the
project involved consultation via two focus group discussions with
student carers and two focus group discussions with UTS Academic
Liaison Officers. Subsequent design synthesis led to suggestions as
to how UTS could better support student carers, in terms of products
(e.g. carer’s card, welcome pack), people (development of a supportive
carers network), process (e.g. student carer registration at enrolment),
and policy (involving carers in the co-development of university policies
in this area).

Co-design Methodology for Court Services

Victoria (2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: The Victorian government is committed
to using co-design practices—that is, engaging service users and
stakeholders in the design process—in order to democratise the
creation of better, more responsive and valued government services.
This project aims to provide Court Services Victoria (CSV) with an initial
framework for piloting a co-design process that will generate the design
of court buildings and services that reflect how the community wants
to use and experience these facilities.
Methodology: Development of a methodology for piloting co-design for
large court infrastructure projects, including co-design principles and a
framework for integrating co-design within established government and
architectural industry processes.

Disability Research Collaboration (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to empower
researchers in the disability space to collaborate across the university
structure to explore novel ways of partnering. The research will look
at how serendipitous connections might be fast tracked, how might
expectations and values be made explicit at the start of exploring
a possible collaboration and how might different skills, interest and
experience be brought together to encourage unlikely partnerships.
The outcome is a collective strategy around how disability research
might be conducted with seed funding for individual research projects
to explore and creating safe spaces for exploring novel ways of working.
Methodology: Desktop research/literature review; expert interviews;
focus groups with academics in disability space; focus groups with
academics interested in improving collaboration; design-led workshop
based on creating connections in the system, developing research areas
of interest and converging on future focus for shifting the environment of
research collaboration; formal research deliverable in the form of reports
and journal articles.

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 Related external projects

Nepean Mental Health Centre (2018)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aimed to develop a more
therapeutic and person-centred model of care for the Nepean Blue
Mountains Local Health District Mental Health Centre. The project focused
on the Centre’s High Dependency and Acute Units, undertaking a critical
examination of its current philosophy and practices as a basis for framing
a new model of care, named the “Landscape of Care”.
Methodology: Interviews and focus groups with staff, consumers and
carers; mood boards, participatory research; establishment of a Core
Design Team; co-design workshops.

Redesigning the Generation of Citizen Insights

(2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: Ferrovial, a company focused on the
construction, management and operation of transport infrastructure, aims
to incorporate extensive citizen engagement in its projects, for example
through deep-dive interviews. This research project is guided by the
question of how to generate citizen insights more effectively and efficiently.
Methodology: Literature review; workshop provocational design to
consider how to bring together machine learning and human insight.

YOU AS
Respect.Now.Always Campaign
(2018–2019)
D
A

KE
GL

MANGO
D?
U

O
O

RA Y
O

NGE
S TWO T

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to prevent sexual assault

KE

and sexual harassment within the university community of UTS, beginning

I T TA

by developing a better understanding of students’ current perspectives

on sexual violence in order to identify opportunities to inform strategic
CH
interventions to work towards zero-tolerance.
EA
R THE P

Methodology: Literature review; semi-structured interviews with current

R E A C H FO

DO N’ T
UTS students; participatory design research events, including playful
public activations, with the UTS Sexual Assault and Harassment Working
Group and a Student Consultative Group to explore research findings and
drive further lines of inquiry.

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Respect.Now.Always Codesign (2020)
Intended purpose or outcome: The Codesign project aims to facilitate
grass roots cultural change in the UTS community – the codesign
sessions supported individuals to turn their ideas into actionable plans.
The sessions also elicited support needed from UTS leaders to help these
plans succeed.
Research methodology: Series of workshops with participants using
design methods in a participatory framework.

Responsible Gambling (2019)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project aims to educate young
people on the harmful effects of gambling through a series of animations.
Research methodology: Co-design process engaging students in the
target demographic to develop animations that will be relevant and
effective.

Violence in Emergency Departments (2018)

Intended purpose or outcome: The project is a collaboration with
security firm Southern Cross (SX) Protection aimed at understanding
and developing responses to violence and aggression in Emergency
Departments (EDs) in NSW. The project focuses on a major infrastructure
project to redevelop Nepean Hospital, devising proposals to reduce
violence in its new ED.
Methodology: Literature review (considering environmental factors,
physical design, security and perceptions of safety, staff capacity/
capability, policy and legislation, emerging technology); site visits;
stakeholder mapping; workshops using design methodologies to reframe
the problem more productively.

Women’s and Girls Emergency Centre (WAGEC)

(2019)
Intended purpose or outcome: WAGEC was interested in a “Theory of
Change” to help identify how they might better support women affected
by domestic violence to return to work. WAGEC approached UTS Centre
for Social Justice and Inclusion to help provide this service, and DIRC was
invited to collaborate on the project.
Methodology: A series of workshops were held to help WAGEC
understand the problem and define the change they were seeking to
create, from which the Theory of Change could be built. The workshops
employed a range of design thinking techniques: Archaeology, appreciative
inquiry, future and visioning, Theory of Change, and introduction to Lean
design principles, in order to help develop Theory of Change concepts into
potential solutions that could be tested in WAGEC workplaces.

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 Our Education

Student studios

Subject: Socially Responsive Design

3rd year Visual Communication students were tasked with visualising
the domestic violence service landscape to uncover and illuminate
insights concerning connections between service provider organisations;
dominance of certain services, and a paucity or lack of others;
opportunities or space for service provider partnerships; user pathways
through these services etc.

Subject: iLab 1
Students undertaking a Masters of Data Science & Innovation were asked
to investigate limitations with current sources of data concerning domestic
violence, and explore merging with alternate solutions to address these
limitations by the use of proxies such as Google trends data. This subject
explores the use of existing sources of data with emerging big data sets.

Subject: Spatial agency – The Refuge Project

This third year spatial architecture studio examines relations between the
language of intimate domestic units and the institutional language of the
refuge as a provision of vital services. It works with the complexity of links
between the utopian “ideal” and the reality of the situation requiring a
“placeless place”. The aim of this studio is to work across the frameworks
of social welfare, criminology, health, building technologies and housing
models. The outcomes will include the capacity to work on an ethical,
societal and political brief, the ability to challenge current models of crisis
accommodation and a series of detailed architectural proposals.

Subject: Spatial agency – Beyond the walls – this

first step
This third year spatial architecture studio explored alternative models
and modes of accommodation for people leaving prison. It focused on
the Marrickville arts warehouse typology and a shared, community based
model of living. It required students to explore who are the people leaving
prison, what are there needs, vulnerabilities and aspirations, and how can
viable places of accommodation be designed to assist them.

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New Offerings
This year DIRC have expanded our education offerings to include short
courses and postgraduate offerings aimed at a professional audience.
These offerings are listed below.

Self paced online short courses:

• Designing Out Problems
An introduction on how to solve complex problems across a wide
range of industries using the Frame Creation methodology as a tool
for innovation.

• Design Mindsets (in development)

An introduction to the cognitive and behavioural components of a
design thinking mindset and its importance in embedding innovation
capabilities in organisations

Postgraduate courses:
• Graduate Certificate in Social and Service Design
This practical learning program is aimed at equipping students with a
design-based methodology to transform public engagement, practices,
services, regulations, policies, organisations and communities. The
course utilises an experiential, peer-learning model within the teaching
program and the learning environment offers a great opportunity for
collaboration and idea-sharing with fellow students across disciplines
and sectors.

It is possible to allocate funding through the partnership for Justice staff

to attend these short courses and others run by the faculty.

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 Our Research
Book Chapters
Lulham, R, Munro, T, Bradley, K, Kashyap, K & Tomkin, D 2018, ‘Local
Context: Social Practices’ in Wener, R & Chesla, E (eds), Towards Humane
Prisons- A Principled and Participatory approach to Prison planning and
design, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, pp. 99-105.

Journal publications
Donnelly, S., Dean, S., Razavy, S. & Levett-Jones, T. (2019) ‘Measuring the
impact of an interdisciplinary learning project on nursing, architecture and
landscape design students’ empathy.’, PloS one, vol. 14, no. 10
Matthews, L., Donnelly, S. (2019). ‘Analogue x digital: Parallel techniques
for design learning’, Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, vol. 4, no. 2, pp.
225-244
Svejkar, D., Elton, K, Malcolm, B, Pruscino, C. (2019) Using design to
generate change: Harnessing the student voice to prevent sexual assault
and sexual harassment. Journal of the Australian and New Zealand
Student Association Vol. 27, Issue 1.
Zafeirakopoulos, M. (2018) Exploring the Transdisciplinary Learning
Experiences of Innovation Professionals, TIM, timreview.ca/article/1178

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Conference papers
& presentations
Datt, G, Klippan, L. (2020) Telling Stories: Moving beyond empathy tools to
reciprocity. Workshop for ServDes 2020, Melbourne, Australia
Lulham, R., Kashyap, K., and Hinds, J. (2018). Moving beyond design
stereotypes – a study of the possibilities and contradictions for
manufacturers of secure cell components. Paper presented at the
International Corrections and Prisons Association conference.
Snell, S., Kashyap, K., Lulham, R. and Klippan, L. (2018). Integration no
Reintegration – The Role of Prison Planning and Design. Paper presented
at the International Corrections and Prisons Association conference.
Snell, S. Bradley, K. (Oct 2019). Plenary: Towards Humane Prisons
(International Committee of the Red Cross). Plenary paper presented at
EUROPRIS, Real Estate Workshop, Ljubljana.
Tomkin, D. (2019) Feeling Safe in the City. Conference in Gwangiu, South
Korea
Van Erp, S., Lulham, R., Kashyap, K. and Tomkin, D. (2018). How will
society deal with people who break the law in the future? An exploration
using a scenario planning approach. Paper presented at the International
Corrections and Prisons Association conference.

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 Visiting Scholars
Samantha Donnelly
Samantha is an architectural educator with 18 years of experience and
currently lectures at UTS in the School of Architecture. She is also a PhD
Candidate in the Department of Architecture at Monash University, and the
XYX Lab which explores space, gender and communication. Her research
is focused on the existing spatial conditions of women’s refuges and
explores the possible effects or benefits of bespoke architectural design, in
working with women who have experienced violence. As part of her study
she has developed a research-based design guide for refuge providers,
refuge users and designers. A preliminary draft of this design guide is
being finalised for release in February 2020. With DIRC, Samantha has had
the opportunity to work on the Emu Plains Correctional Centre upgrade,
risk assessment documentation with Southern Cross Protection for the
Prince of Wales Hospital and the proposed upgrade for Nepean hospital.

PhD students
Kevin Bradley
Title: Citizen prison: Investigation into a citizen centred approach to
prison design

Synopsis: This research conducts a qualitative and conceptual

investigation into prison design and design practice in the context of
the citizen. The study is specific to New South Wales male correctional
facilities as this provided a defined jurisdiction to work within. The aim of
the study is to discover new understandings of prison design and design
practice through existential phenomenological and hermeneutic methods.
It is expected that the findings of the final research will be transferable to
other Australian jurisdictions, building typologies, institutions and beyond.

Dominic Grenot
Title: Re-imagining the work with social housing communities
Synopsis: This research is an exploration of what it would take to create
an evolving practice -how we see and do the necessary work, with
individuals, families, groups and communities that is equal to the change,
complexity and challenges the social housing communities of inner city
Sydney are facing. These communities will continue to experience greater
challenges as they transition into more mixed, dense and gentrifying
places. What could a practice look like for systems that engage, support
and work with and in these communities? What are the needed ingredients
for individuals, teams and systems as they partner, collaborate, and
work to create and design well-being, connection, empowerment and
citizenship. This research employs some systems, practice and fields
theories and their relationships to each other, utilising some ethnographic
reflections and other case studies with a design thinking lens that explores,
analyses and suggests possible new ideas and ways.

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Kiran Kashyap
Title: Designing transitions to localised systems of production and
consumption – helping to catalyse bioregional communities and
regenerative cultures
Synopsis: The numerous seemingly intractable social and ecological
crises currently facing humanity are deeply interconnected and require
fundamental sociocultural shifts in order to be meaningfully addressed.
Economic re-localisation is one potential approach to internalise the
social and environmental costs of production and consumption - and
could go some way to encourage ecocentric, bioregional communities.
This PhD research intends to (1) adapt a bioregional model for production
and consumption that engages with planetary boundaries as well as (2)
develop and pilot collaborative design tools to facilitate localised, circular
and regenerative material cultures.

Tasman Munro
Title: Re-authoring design: Shifting narratives in social design practice
Synopsis: A Practice-Based PhD that’s developing a Social Design process
called ‘Re-authoring Design’. Re-authoring is an approach in Narrative
Therapy that’s interested in shifting narratives, that is collaborating
with people to challenge the unproductive narratives that have formed
around their lives and opening space to construct and perform preferred
narratives to live by. Through literature reviews, expert interviews and two
collaborative projects this PhD is extending the principles of Re-authoring
into the co-design of objects and spaces. The objective is to create a
design process that goes beyond problem solving to be approached as an
experience that can be meaningful and transformative itself.

Mariana Zafeirakopoulos
Title: Innovating intelligence practice for complex social problems
Synopsis: Intelligence analysis’s role is to inform decision-makers on
evolving harm, probability and risk to community and how this might
be mitigated. However, intelligence practice is hampered in its ability to
effectively inform emerging and complex social problems (for example
terrorism prevention). Current practice has had limited evolution since the
post-Cold War era focusing on more linear problem-solving methods. This
research explores transdisciplinary and design approaches to innovating
intelligence practice, with a focus on the ‘co-production of knowledge’. It
explores how systems can work more inclusively, reflectively and be more
integrated across disciplines (e.g. policy, law, investigations, intelligence
analysis, community engagement etc.) to create new frameworks
or ways of understanding (and informing) complex social problems.
The methodology draws from qualitative research methods including
participatory design with experts in industry to imagine a new future of
intelligence practice. This new practice termed ‘Systemic intelligence’
proposes a structurally enabled approach to facilitate this co-production of
knowledge – one which designs, informs and helps shape the future of the
complex social problem.

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