Kristof Vaes

O’CULO is a serious game developed to enhance cultural awareness and sensitivity among design students and professionals. This paper details the development, gameplay, and impact of O’CULO, emphasizing its role in fostering cultural dialogue and introspection within design practices. The game addresses the necessity of interculturalization in design, driven by globalization and superdiversity, and underscores that cultures are not homogeneous entities. The iterative development process of O’CULO involved extensive literature research, psychological frameworks, and expert contributions, resulting in a game that promotes cultural sensitivity through engaging activities. O’CULO is structured into three levels: Cultural Encounters, Culversations, and Culture Cross, each targeting different aspects of cultural sensitivity. The game includes activities such as quizzes, discussions, and scenario analyses, which encourage players to confront and reflect on their cultural biases. The final level, Product Prophecy, presents design mismatches due to cultural differences, offering lessons on the importance of cultural awareness in design. The game concludes with a quartet game that highlights successful culture-aware designs and provides practical tips for real-world application. Tested in Inclusive Design courses and workshops, O’CULO has demonstrated its effectiveness in promoting cultural awareness and dialogue. Feedback from students and professionals indicates increased recognition and respect for cultural diversity. The game’s structure, real-world examples, and practical tips enhance its educational value, making it a valuable tool for fostering cultural sensitivity in design. Future research could explore the long-term impact of O’CULO on design practices and its adaptation for various educational and professional contexts. Digital versions of the game could further expand its accessibility and interactive features, ensuring its continued relevance and effectiveness.

This paper, positioned within two universities’ contexts on design education, explores the critical role of awareness in co-design with individuals who have lived experiences. The study introduces a SkillsLab designed to prepare students for managing awkward moments during co-design sessions. A SkillsLab is an intensive learning activity combining hands-on practice, theoretical insights, and practical exercises to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge on a topic and the real-life application of this knowledge in a project-based setting. The learning activity aims to enhance students’ confidence and skills in navigating awkward moments in co-design. The findings suggest that such educational interventions can significantly improve students’ preparedness for real-world co-design challenges, fostering a more inclusive and empathetic approach to design.

This paper examines the current generation of displays, as found primarily in smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, from an interaction design perspective. Today’s displays are multifunctional, versatile devices with a standardized, rectangular shape and a standardized interaction. We distinguish two pitfalls. First, they facilitate an interaction that is isolated and detached from the physical environment in which they are used. Second, their multi-touch interface provides users with few tangible clues and handles. From our background in embodied interaction, we establish an alternate, hypothetical vision of displays: the content-specific display. The content-specific display is defined as a display designed for one specific function and one type of on-screen content. We explore this concept in three student projects from the First Year Master’s program at Product Development, University of Antwerp, and present two key themes that emerge from it: causality and transformation. Both themes reside in the field of coupling, a concept well-known within the field of embodied interaction, and aim at a more seamless integration of on-screen content within the physical world. Finally, we discuss how the content-specific display influences the design process of digital products, and how it fosters collaboration between product designers and designers of graphical user interfaces.

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