African Industrial Design Practice

The underlying principle of this book is the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which acts as a guide for developing empathic products and services. The book makes the case that empathy is the key to any successful product and service design project because it enables designers to make wise design choices that align with users' demands. Fifteen chapters provide the latest industrial design developments, techniques, and processes explicitly targeting emerging economies. At the outset, it covers the design context and the philosophy of the Ubuntu approach, which places people and communities at the centre of the development agenda. The book covers new product development, design research, design cognition, digital and traditional prototyping, bringing products to the market, establishing a company's brand name, intellectual property rights, traditional knowledge, and the business case for design in Afrika. It concludes with a discussion about the future of design and the skills aspiring designers will need. African Industrial Design Practice: Perspectives on Ubuntu Philosophy will be an essential textbook for undergraduates, postgraduates, instructors, and beginner designers in emerging economies to provide regionally contextualised design processes, illustrated examples, and outcomes. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

A new breed of modern designers is on the way. These non-traditional industrial designers work across disciplines, understand human beings, as well as business and technology thus bridging the gap between customer needs and technological advancement of tomorrow. This book uncovers prospective designer techniques and methods of a new age of industrial design, whose practitioners strive to construct simple and yet complex products of the future. The novel frontiers of a new era of industrial design are exposed, in what concerns the design process, in illustrating the use of new technologies in design and in terms of the advancement of culturally inspired design. The diverse perspectives taken by the authors of this book ensure stimulating reading and will assist readers in leaping forward in their own practice of industrial design, and in preparing new research that is relevant and aligned with the current challenges of this fascinating field.

A fast paced changing world requires dynamic methods and robust theories to enable designers to deal with the new product development landscape successfully and make a difference in an increasingly interconnected world. Designers continue stretching the boundaries of their discipline, and trail new paths in interdisciplinary domains, constantly moving the frontiers of their practice farther. This book, the successor to "Industrial Design - New Frontiers" (2011), develops the concepts present in the previous book further, as well as reaching new areas of theory and practice in industrial design. "Advances in Industrial Design Engineering" assists readers in leaping forward in their own practice and in preparing new design research that is relevant and aligned with the current challenges of this fascinating field.

As a teenager, I spent my time wondering why in sci-fi movies, every landscape, every object I could see was Western or Asian based. I've finally understood that somewhere our legacy had been locked in the past, that we couldn't be "futuristic" in the eyes of our fellow Europeans. We have to look behind our shoulders, get back to our traditions, seize the best of them and shape a future with it. This without forgetting we are part of the world, totally, unquestionably. The future is for me not only a matter of dialogue with the past, but and beyond everything a dialogue with the rest of the planet. Kossi Aguessy How is it possible to adequately capture histories of design in Africa, a continent with fifty-four countries? How can one avoid producing just another essentialising master narrative of "African Design"? How can one make sense of the many entangled yet often asymmetric and sometimes ambivalent histories of form-finding processes between Africa and Europe? In keeping with the premises of a global art and design history approach, the book offers a change of perspective: focusing on the mobility of people, objects and ideas - on flows between Africa and Europe as well as on a South-South axis - allows for multiple yet necessarily fragmented design histories to be identified and recognised. The contributors trace multi-faceted design case studies from a historical perspective, with attention to the present as well as towards possible futures.

Situating design histories globally means not only to interpret design as a practice that can be found everywhere but also to take a critical stance towards simple dichotomies such as traditional/modern, artisanal/industrial, and formal/informal. In front of the backdrop of the global turn in art and design studies this volume focuses on design and design practices in Africa. It shows that creations of forms are results of an exchange not only between Africa and Europe but also between everyday and established, institutionalized artistic fundamentals or flows. Thus, the contributors trace multi-faceted design histories: from a historical perspective, with attention to the present, and towards possible futures.

This book provides useful insight into how academics from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, such as science, engineering, technology, social science, policy, design, architecture, built environment, business, and management, have been conducting research into how to realise net zero emissions to address climate change. This book explores the ways in which countries around the world have pledged to achieve net zero emissions through decarbonisation processes. It presents the highest calibre research and impact activities carried out in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, and Africa. Such activities include conceptualisation, opportunity identification, specific case studies, demonstration of proof of concepts, provision of evidence, education of the general public, and knowledge transfer to companies. Further to this, the chapters also bring to light personal career journeys to net zero by current and future international research leaders. From this book, readers will gain a full understanding of net zero research via multiple disciplinary pathways, be inspired by personal accounts, and will learn key methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative approaches. The diversity of authors and topics make the book widely applicable to a range of fields, and it will be of great interest to researchers, students, practitioners, and decision makers working towards the goals of net zero and decarbonisation.

Educating Citizen Designers in South Africa is the first book of its kind to appear in post-apartheid South Africa and it is therefore both overdue and extremely welcome. The book aims at sharing critical citizenship design teaching and learning pedagogies by including contributions from a range of design educators, and one student, who work in different design disciplines, such as architecture, graphic and product design. Critical citizenship education is explicated in relation to a range of theories and new and existing models. Numerous contemporary case studies and examples of design projects from a range of South African Higher Education Institutions are included. As such, a variety of perspectives emerge, including the consensual, where the aim of critical citizenship education is viewed as promoting social justice, shared values and critical thinking, to the conflicting ? where critiques are levelled against conceptions of critical citizenship education. Contentious, contesting and contradictory views are inevitable and necessary given the South African context as it is only in open debate that the one point of agreement among the authors, the need for social change, can be worked towards. -Prof Deirdre Pretorius, Univeristy of Johannesburg

This study presents the findings of original field research into the design, practice, and varied outcomes of industrial policy in three sectors in Ethiopia: cement, leather and leather products, and floriculture. Given that there is a single industrial strategy, why do its outcomes vary across sectors? To what extent is this a function of the specific market and political economy features of each sector? The book examines industrial structures and associated global value chains to demonstrate the challenges faced by African firms in international markets.