Empowering Users through Design

Designer and founder of the FXDESIGNSTUDIO digital design agency, and also Associate Professor at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambresis (FRANCE), Dr. David Bihanic is of the rising generation of design professionals for whom originality refers specifically to their (learning and professional) transversal path. Dr. D. Bihanic is presently Head of the Master’s degree in Digital Design and Vice-Director of the laboratory CALHISTE (Culture, Arts/Design, Literature, History of Societies and Foreign Territories).Dr. D. Bihanic examines the new paradigms of information visualization and manipulation of large and complex rich databases – it deals with recent design attempts in order to present multi-dimensional data graphically by mapping data and properties to different visual shapes, colors, and positions (e.g. experimental works which investigate novel ways of exploring information).Dr. D. Bihanic have been working as information designer at Thomson France R&D center. Through this experience, he received the expert status for his studies of systems dealing with the handling and processing of media covered information. Today, his research is mainly on data design, data visualization aesthetics, and creative informatics. His work spans the whole spectrum, from theory to implementation techniques and applications. Author of several papers relating to the new stakes of design, Dr D. Bihanic takes an active part in the evolution and transformations occurring in this field.

Form Follows Practice.- Who Designs? Technological Mediation in Design Participation.- User's Continuity in Design Continuous Innovation.- Towards User Involvement in Envisioning Practices. Opening the Use of the Future.- Critical Design: a Delicate Balance between the Thrill of the Uncanny and the Interrogation of the Unknown.- Digital Objects Topologies: Transitions between Utility, Form and Intent.- Design Ethnography? Towards a Designerly Approach to Field Research.- (Mis)Behavioral Objects: Empowerment of Users vs Empowerment of Objects.- Open Sourcing Wearables: the Impact of Open Technologies and User Engagement in the Design of Body-Borne Interactive Products.- Trialogical Learning: a New Framework for Learning Through the Creative Relationship between Emerging Technologies and Multiple Participants.- Open Meta-Design: Tools for Designing Collaborative Processes.- Co-Design to Empower Cultural Heritage Professionals as Technology Designers: the meSch project.- User Empowerment and the I-Doc Model User.- " Nothing Makes Sense ": New Aesthetics of Experiences in Self-Organizing Services.- A Manifesto for Epistemological Empowerment in Chronic Disease Self Care.