With four inspring conferences that took place in Claremont, Pasadena, Atlanta and Philadelphia, DESRIST has developed into a premier conference for design-oriented research in information systems. Becoming a truely global conference series, DESRIST will be held in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2010. DESRIST 2010 will bring together researchers and practitioners engaged in Design Science Research from all over the world to provide global perspectives on both design science and design research in the broadest sense.

EvoEnvironment 2, an event of the EvoApplications Conference is devoted to the use of nature inspired methods for environmental issues. The goal of this event is to bring researchers from a variety of different areas, computer scientists, engineers, biologists, chemists – all in concern about the environment – together for an exchange of ideas. We invite submissions on many diverse topics such as waste management, sewage treatment, control of greenhouse gas emissions, biodegradation of materials, efficient energy use or use of renewable energies to name but a few. Nature inspired methods include all aspects of evolutionary computation such as genetic algorithms, evolution strategies, genetic programming, ant algorithms, or particle swarm systems. Researchers working with bio-inspired systems or bionic systems, i.e. systems developed by looking at how nature has solved a problem are also encouraged to submit their work.

The theme, Design & Complexity is an springboard for sharing ideas and concepts about contemporary design research. Contributors are invited to submit long or short papers that deal with different facets of the contemporary approaches to design research, education or practise. All proposals will be independently peer-reviewed by at least two members of the DRS 2010 scientific committee.

The Organising Committee welcomes proposals for several levels of participation in ConnectED 2010. The second in a series of ConnectED conferences will be a significant international event dedicated to advances in Design Education in 2010. We look forward to proposals that highlight the challenges and the innovations in design education, and particularly the work being done in collaborative, multi-disciplinary contexts.

Welcome to CAD'10, the 2010 International CAD Conference and Exhibition, to be held in the spectacular city of Dubai. The conference has key-note presentations, parallel paper sessions, product demonstrations, and several forms of exhibits. Special features include: industry exhibits, academic exhibits, show papers, best paper award, best student paper award, journal archival, featured industry speakers, key-note speakers.

The HUMAN WORK INTERACTION DESIGN 2009 working conference analyzes the concept of usability in social, cultural and organizational contexts. Analyzing usability in context is important for connecting empirical work analysis and interaction design. In industry, a wealth of usability evaluation methods is used to evaluate computer software user interfaces and other interactive products: Inspection methods, Workplace observation, Think-Aloud Usability Test, etc. These techniques often give – seemingly – similar results when applied in diverse social, cultural and organizational settings, but experience shows that we need a deep understanding of the cultural, social and organizational context to interpret the results, and to transform it into interaction design.

OBJECTIVE: Create opportunities for participants to discuss their existing research and develop new research questions. Develop awareness and understanding of engineering design by sharing and exchanging knowledge with fellow researchers and practitioners. Provide participants with opportunities to build social and research network to support their future professional interests.

The Japan Society of Kansei Engineering (JSKE) and Arts et Métiers ParisTech have the great pleasure to invite you to the International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research 2010, in the heart of the beautiful city of Paris, on March 2-4th. This conference will gather researchers, practitioners and industrials to explore and to expose the current state of eastern and western Kansei and Emotion research and practice in a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural context. It will contribute to the progress of Kansei knowledge and to the development of the Kansei community in the world.

The sixth CDEN International Design Engineering Conference will focus on design innovation and engineering education that are such essential ingredients of creating a new future for the people of Canada and the world. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the philosophy of design; tools and techniques for effective and successful design; methods and tools for designing to meet needs; methods for and research into the assessment of design; teaching and promoting design; humanitarian design; design successes and failures; tear-downs of designs and design-processes; the infrastructure required for design; lessons and methods used in non-engineering design fields; design for commercialization; and related topics.

Cumulus 38° South invites educators, practitioners, and researchers to join our cross-disciplinary conversation, “How can design as a discipline transcend boundaries, shift thinking, and evolve to meet the needs of our future?

This conference originally was driven by the need to move away from a purely functional approach to usability, and focused on a more experiential approach to human-product interaction. Now, the rationalization of the means for design and production leading to a relative standardisation of the products on the market, the sharp competition between the mature companies exhorts to take into account the aspects linked to the perceptions of the final users and to turn innovation into a more experiential approach to human-product interaction.

In the Nordic countries, almost 80% of employed people work in the service sector. The transition from a product to service economy has occurred at a time in which design has become recognised as a major contributor to innovation. Focus is now upon the role that design can play in innovation and design of services and service experiences, and the Nordic countries seem to be taking a leading role in researching this change. This conference is the forum for discussing and accelerating this. Service design focuses upon innovation through the holistic design of service experiences that occur across touch-points and over time. Design brings a different perspective to established service disciplines such as service management and service innovation, and both complements and catalyzes them.

Design has been evolved into a unique but highly influencing discipline in this rapidly changing society. But it has also struggled to find its own rigor and relevance as a disciplined field as its own. In this conference, we invite various perspectives and research outcomes that may address the issues of establishing our own rigor and relevance of design research and practice in the field of Design, as well as discussions and research activities related to all the important design subjects.

The scope of the conference is the design of products, systems and services with a focus on the meanings conveyed by their forms and behaviors. After four successful workshops in the Europe, DeSForM 2009 comes to Asia and creates an international platform where researchers and practitioners across different cultures can share findings and insights about the aesthetics and meanings of human-object interactions.

Design research aims to provide new insights to the ways in which we understand and do design. The conference invites contributions from researchers in universities, design schools and industry who share an interest in understanding and developing design as a trans-disciplinary practice that is always in the making. The scope of the conference reaches beyond the traditional design disciplines and includes other research areas with mutual interest in design research and engaging artefacts. NORDES 2009 directs its interest towards the diversity, challenges and emerging practices and understandings of design. The conference theme reflects a range of issues that characterize design and design research today.

Welcome to CAD'09, the 2009 International CAD Conference and Exhibition.The conference is aimed at CAD researchers, educators, developers, vendors, and the business community dealing with CAD technology and its financial issues. The exhibition is open to all CAD businesses including software houses, hardware manufacturers, vendors, e-businesses, educators, publishers and sectors from various government agencies. CAD'09 has tutorial presentations, parallel paper sessions, product demonstrations, and several forms of exhibits.

The IDETC/CIE 2009 is comprised of 13 sub-conferences, and has the overarching theme "Design for a Changing World".

The TIC-STH conference is an international forum for state-of-the-art research across a broad spectrum of the IEEE science and technology fields of interest. The format of the conference is several parallel Symposia focusing on the advanced scientific and technological problems, especially of the interdisciplinary nature.

The emphasis for this year's Symposium is on scholarship in design education and the creation of archival literature in this area. A Wide variety of subjects are suggested, as described in the detailed topic announcements below. These have been selected to emphasize fundamentals and quantification in the design education field. Authors are encouraged to submit their best work to the topic that makes the best fit – topics and sessions will later be adjusted to create the most effective conference program. Key papers will be advanced to the Journal of Mechanical Design. In addition to the technical paper program, keynote and panel speakers will join the symposium to enhance and encourage dissemination of design education scholarship through journal publications. To encourage new scholars in this area, a student paper competition is offered with awards and the potential for travel funding.

New opportunities and new needs challenge us to rethink electronic publishing, to innovate communication paradigms and technologies, to make information not just a flat equivalent of a paper but a truly digital format, to allow machine processing and new services, to face the future of mobile life. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models, technologies, methods and concepts.

The Organizing Committee accepts submissions of abstracts of original contributions on any subject related to the program topics. Abstracts of no more than 300 words are due by 5 November 2008. Submissions of Abstracts and full manuscripts (in MS Word and PDF file formats) are to be made by e-mail attachment to the Conference e-mail address: LCE2009@uwindsor.ca.

Our upcoming conference, Science, Technology and the Humanities: A New Synthesis seeks to inquire—both on theoretical levels and in case studies—how by taking science and technology into consideration, we might enrich our understanding of history, philosophy, sociology, literary analysis, and the arts.

The conference addresses various aspects of interdisciplinary approaches in Art & Design research, as well as practical and theoretical methods for interlinking with other disciplines. The objective is to explore interdisciplinarity as a new trend that brings together different disciplines, forging new connections and contributions to collective knowledge. Ultimately, the aim is to promote and encourage interdisciplinarity as a way to enhance creativity in research.

THE VISION

To bring together 50–75 engineering designers, educators, and researchers to articulate the issues of sustainable design. And to celebrate the contributions of John H. McMasters to the Mudd Design Workshop series and to design and engineering education.

The conference mission is to provide the international scientific community with a dedicated forum for debate and exchange of ideas and experiences. Breakthrough advances, creative ideas and perspectives on future challenges are expected to create new focus points and to boost further international research. Contributions are encouraged from relevant academic research projects and industrial case studies.

You are invited to submit a paper to the 6th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM'09) to be held in Bath, England, from 6-8 July 2009. All papers will be peer-reviewed and those selected for presentation during the conference will be published in the conference proceedings and may be considered for publication in the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management (IJPLM, www.ijplm.org). PLM09 will bring together researchers, developers and users of PLM in an event that will combine keynote lectures, exhibition, paper presentations, poster and panel sessions with an active social programme in an historic city. We invite PLM researchers, developers and practitioners to join the Conference to shape the future of this new field and advance the science and practice of enterprise systems development. Contributions are invited on all aspects of PLM, including product innovation and creativity, collaborative product development, capture, curation and reuse of design information, enterprise systems integration, supply chain and product recycle management, change management, recycling management, sustainable PLM development and related topics.

The EPDE conference will bring together representatives from education and industry who have an interest in developing new approaches and directions in design education. The conference will provide a forum for educators and researchers from product development, engineering and industrial design, together with industry and government representatives to discuss current educational issues and to identify new approaches, new challenges and new directions for development. This is reflected in this year's conference theme, "Creating a Better World", intended to reflect the increasing emphasis on design in commerce and in education, and in particular the importance of design in addressing such issues as sustainability, old-age and inclusiveness and so on. We encourage varied interpretations of the phrase 'better world' – for example from the point of view of different organisations, disciplines, cultures and communities. Questions that might be explored include: What are the special needs of the old and the infirm? What can we learn from design education practice in different cultures? How can we create a more sustainable way of life? How will technology support design education in the future? How will the academic/industrial interface develop?

The need to be more explicit about research methods, frameworks, and methodologies has arisen from the increasing use of creative and professional practices as part of the practice of research in recent years. While research guidelines and regulations have been either generic enough, or were adjusted, to accommodate the use of some creative and professional practices under certain conditions, the debate about the nature, aims, validity, evaluation, and necessity of such research has continued.

We solicit research papers and case studies on any topic related to design thinking, theory, and practice. We place a premium on evidence-based research. Mindful of earlier conferences in the series we offer the following topics of interest and invite authors to take a specific point-of-view. We anticipate that issues at the intersections will be of particular relevance and interest.

EuropIA12 conference is focusing on how the application of advanced ICT can address the long-term ambitions of the BC industry in order to change itself into a competitive and innovative branch of industry. In addition, the conference is also focusing on how advanced ICT can provide solutions for the increasing demand from society for more sustainable BC products.

Although mainly a Design Institute, for the past 40 years IADE developed expertise in teaching and research in Visual Culture, Photography, Marketing and Advertising. Therefore we are calling for research papers in all areas of Design Research and in areas related with the above mentioned as Cultural Studies, Economics, Gender Studies, Communication Sciences, Visual Anthropology and Sociology, Media Studies, Aesthetics, History of Art, the list could go on and on. The scope of the conference is also to examine the past 40 years evolution in those disciplines and foresee the next 40.

The objective of the congress is to provide a unique environment in which researchers and practitioners in the human factors and ergonomics sciences can frankly exchange and discuss their research ideas, techniques and applications. To realize this objective and to facilitate lively discussion and interaction, the format of the congress program is carefully structured.

The fifth CDEN/RCCI International Design Engineering Conference will encourage a vigorous discussion on the teaching and practice of design engineering to cross the innovation gap – the gap between research and the design and creation of products, processes and procedures that help the people of Canada and the world. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the philosophy of design; tools and techniques for effective and successful design; methods and tools for designing to meet needs; methods for and research into the assessment of design; teaching and promoting design; humanitarian design; design successes and failures; tear-downs of designs and design-processes; the infrastructure required for design; lessons and methods used in non-engineering design fields; design for commercialization; etc.

This one day workshop will take the format of short presentations in the morning followed by a group design/evaluation activity in the afternoon.

The Conference covers five themes, which includes two themes for paper presentation, two themes for workshop and one for panel discussion

• Themes for paper presentation: Design Thinking, Process and Innovation
• Design Entrepreneurship

ICoRD'09 is the second in a series of conferences intended to be held every two years in India to bring together the international community from diverse areas of design practice, teaching and research to showcase cutting edge research with the stakeholders, aid the ongoing process of developing and extending the collective vision through emerging research challenges and questions, and provide a platform for interaction, collaboration and development of the community in order for it to take up the challenges to realise the vision. It also coincides with the Centennial year of Indian Institute of Science, and is part of the Centennial Celebrations of the Institute. The conference is intended generally for all stakeholders of design, and in particular for practitioners, researchers, teachers and students of design.

You are invited to present a paper at the 14th Australian and New Zealand Systems conference. Papers will be considered from all facets of systems thinking as with all previous ANZSYS. Papers are invited from both academics and practitioners.

For EKSIG 2009, we invite submissions for the theme "Experiential Knowledge, Method and Methodology". With this theme we aim to provide a forum for debate about methodology and methods for the inclusion and communication of knowledge in research and practice in the creative disciplines.

Culture is a dynamic and multi-faceted term; Design is also a dynamic and multi-faceted term. The Fifth Annual Design Research Conference to be held at the Interdisciplinary Design Institute at Washington State University Spokane January 15-16, 2009 will focus on the busy crossroads in the geography of these two vast domains under the conference theme of Design + Cultures. In parallel with the ever-expanding impact of (in Herbert Simon�s words) the design of the artificial upon cultural life, the theme of Design + Cultures raises numerous questions and a wide range of problems that can be addressed within a multidisciplinary setting.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in collaboration with members of the Upstate New York and New York City chapters of the AIGA presents "The 1st Biennial Design Web Conference, " a pioneering conference with presentations streamed live October 22, 2008. The theme for 2008 is "Global Interaction in Design Education (GLIDE)."On the day of streaming, registrants will have access to content in the following types of innovative formats: live and/or recorded podcasts and webcasts, downloadable pdf files and Powerpoint presentations with voiceovers, telephone conferences, blogs and wikis. Key presentations streamed live will include synchronous Q&A sessions.

CMC2008, the Third International Conference on Concept Mapping has as a purpose bringing together scholars and practitioners interested in the use of the concept mapping tool first developed at Cornell University in 1972. It is being organized by Tallinn University in Estonia, University of Helsinki in Finland, and the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. If follows on the success of the First Conference held in Pamplona, Spain in 2004 and the Second Conference held in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2006.

Mechanical and electrical systems show an increasing integration of mechanics with electronics and information processing. This integration is between the components (hardware) and the information-driven functions (software), resulting in integrated systems called mechatronic systems. The development of mechatronic systems involves finding an optimal balance between the basic mechanical structure, sensor and actuators, automatic digital information processing and control in which embedded systems play a key role. The field of embedded system and mechatronics is becoming evermore challenging; issues in embedded software lie at the focus of researchers both in industry and academia. The goal of this 4th IEEE/ASME MESA, MESA08, is to bring together experts from the fields of mechatronic and embedded systems, disseminate the recent advances made in the area, discuss future research directions, and exchange application experience. The conference program is organized in a number of symposia.

Sustainable Innovation 08 will provide a platform to discuss in the future opportunities and challenges related to sustainable innovation, technology, product and service design and development. Sustainable Innovation 08 will include invited and refereed papers from academics, consultants, entrepreneurs, investors, technology providers, designers, sustainability, environment and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers as well as other business functions. The event will be a unique learning experience, networking space and an opportunity to think or even jump 'out of the box'. Delegates will come globally from large companies, entrepreneurs, as well as academia, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The conference is supported by an international Advisory Board.

A conference is a chance to come together and show each other what we think and the things we do. At EPIC2008 we invite you to explore the paradoxes and practices of (In)Visibility and bring to light the concepts, theories, plans, worries, approaches and ideas that can expand and advance the practices of ethnographic work in and of industry. Submissions may be theoretical, conceptual, paradigm shifting or descriptive in nature. Submissions undergo a double- blind peer referee process and those selected for presentation will be published in the EPIC2008 Conference Proceedings. Submissions cannot have been previously published.

The organizing committee calls for papers for the coming international conference entitled “The 2nd International Conference of Bionic Engineering (ICBE’08)” to be held on October 10-12, 2008 in Changchun, China, organized by the Key Laboratory for Terrain-Machine Bionic Engineering (Jilin University), Ministry of Education.

Theme: Innovation, Inspiration and Instruction: New Knowledge in the Architectural Sciences. Advances in architecture, engineering and construction are fundamentally reliant on developments in science and technology. Whether these advances are in the environmental sustainability of a building, in its design theory, or in the education of future researchers, science remains a critical component of the built environment.

ICOVACS 2008 (International Conference on Value Chain Sustainability) is the first of conference series that aim to bring academia, professionals, decision-makers and practitioners together, who work in various fields of business and strive for creating and maintaining sustainable value chains.

Original papers in either English or French are sought on all topics in Mechanical Engineering concerns. A non-exclusive list of topics is available at the web site. Papers submitted for presentation at the conference will be refereed and selected based on a full (4-8 pages) paper. All papers selected for presentation will be published in the electronic conference proceedings. Further information and instructions will be announced at a later date and will be posted at the web site.

This event is the premier international meeting in the fields of Design Engineering and Computers and Information in Engineering. This event is designed to showcase cutting edge research and accomplishments, and to enrich the educational experience in these fields. The purpose of this meeting is to advance the understanding of the base of knowledge that we will collectively draw upon in the years ahead to meet the challenges and realize opportunities.

The fifth biennial international Research into Practice will be held at the Royal Society of Arts, London, and will explore the problem of interpretation in research in the visual and performing arts. It is characteristic of research outputs, reports and theses in traditional disciplines that they are expressed in unambiguous language. One reason for this is to establish the grounds and argument from which the conclusions derive. Another reason is to be quite clear and explicit about what is being claimed as original by the author for the research. This characteristic has the effect of reinforcing the dominant knowledge models such as "the scientific method", "empirical methods", etc. However these models come from disciplines whose aims and objectives may differ from those in the arts and humanities. There has been much discussion about the suitability of such models for the visual and performing arts, which seem to rely on a more pluralistic approach to interpretation which values the fact that different generations and different cultures find their own value in the artefact.

In the past few years, new forms of net-based communities have emerged, distributed on various websites and services, and making use of several media platforms and genres to stay connected. Now, as mobile and location-based technologies are reintroducing "place" as an important aspect in the formation of communal and social activities, it is time to consider and rethink the concept of online or virtual communities. Not forgetting the lessons we have learned from studying the earlyvirtual communities, how do we describe, analyse, theorise and design the communities and social formations of the early 21st century? How do we address the blurring of boundaries between places and communities on- and offline?

HCI 2008 is the 22nd running of the British HCI conference; one of Europe's largest and longest running HCI conferences. The tag line for 2008 is “Culture, Creativity, Interaction” reflecting the fact that in 2008 Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture. Throughout the year there will be cultural events ranging from community arts to headline events such as the Turner Prize. In the week before the conference there will be the Annual Beatles Week and immediately afterwards Liverpool will host the British Academy Festival of Science. The Biennial Festival of Contemporary Art also takes place, starting September. Our cultural theme reflects not just events in Liverpool but also recent developments in HCI where the arts and humanities offer us both new insights and new challenges. Though “culture” is not the only theme for the conference we hope to reflect the cultural events happening in the rest of the city and on Merseyside. Our hope is that culture will be a unifying theme for the various strands that form the HCI family of disciplines.

The theme for the 2008 conference is “Smart Textiles – Technology and Design”. We see the conference as a place where design and technology communities come together to discuss and share ideas on the next generations of high-tech textile techniques and products; a place where technology and design can meet and interact, to inform each other, and to bring new ideas back to your own community.

Real-world design research projects illustrate questions, processes, methods and activities, with which they have been planned, approached, executed and evaluated. Projects are connected to various design disciplines, ranging from product design to interface design, visual communication and service design. In other words: projects are related to products, services, interfaces, information, communication and environments, or they focus on integrated systems of products, services and customer experiences.

A new research direction is currently emerging in which pervasive display technology is used to reveal information about wearers and inhabitants, their activities or their surrounding environment. Such applications tend to be multidisciplinary in nature, and cover areas such as location-aware way-finding, environmental monitoring, preventive healthcare, self-expression, ambient persuasion, social networks interfaces, e-fashion, interactive architecture, media facades or emotive artworks. These approaches focus on the "output" side of pervasive computing, as a multimodal "feedback" mechanism for the wearers or any other person in their vicinity.

The 5th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management will be held in Seoul, the capital city of Korea for more than 600 years (http://english.seoul.go.kr). The domestic conference of PLM Best Practices (http://www.plm.or.kr, over 800 gathered in April 2007) will be co-located on 10 July 2008 so that you can meet many local experts from industry and have chance to observe the local and global issues.

School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Design & Emotion Society invite you to the 6th International Conference on Design & Emotion in Hong Kong, October 6-9, 2008. The Conference invites abstract submissions from practitioners, researchers and industry to exchange knowledge and insights relating to the cross-disciplinary field of design and emotion.

The Research Institute for the Built and Human Environment (BuHu) at the University of Salford, UK, is organising its annual two-day International Conference for postgraduates researching in the field of the built environment. The 2008 event, hosted in the beautiful, historical city of Prague by The Czech Technical University of Prague (CVUT), is the 8th conference of this highly successful series.

Papers are solicited for an international, transdisciplinary conference examining visual literacy as it is shaped by, shapes and integrates private and public identity and subjectivity through social institutions and forces including design, education, politics, ethics, technology, media, marketing, commerce, the environment and society. The conference understands visual literacy from the perspective of individuals, communities, groups and organizations to mean the ability to successfully compose and deliver meaningful communication as well as decode and interpret visual messages. It involves perceiving visual images as components of a larger culture matrix, constituting their meaning and significance, discerning relationships between their intended and actual purposes and audiences, and acting with or upon them. Visual literacy generates and is affected by relationships between the visual, literacy and power, including disenfranchisement. Particular themes or topics for papers may include but are not limited to the economics of visual culture, constructing the visual landscape, visual culture and affiliations and disenfranchisements, brands and users, ethnographies of visual culture, the charge of education to superintend visual literacy, visual literacy and power, visual illiteracy, visual culture and social difference, and visual cultures of everyday life.

September 2002 saw the beginning of the Art of Management and Organization Conference series in London. Our aim was, and continues to be, the exploration and promotion of the arts (in the most inclusive sense) as a means of understanding management and organization(al) life. This conference series has given rise to a vibrant global community of praxis – including scholars and practitioners. The conference has resided in London (2002), Paris (2004), Krakow (2006); and in 2008 – we will travel to Banff, Canada. This shift from Europe reflects the growing diversity of our community – which touches every continent. The location of The Banff Centre, a world renowned arts centre, also reflects our desire to encourage participants “out of the classroom” – to not simply intellectually explore the topics at hand, but to also aesthetically experience the conference location in the heart of the majestic Canadian Rocky Mountains, in Canada’s first National Park, and a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Papers and posters are solicited for an international symposium which seeks to look in depth at the broader questions that graphic designers are facing today in terms of the graphic design profession and educational practises. At the same time, the symposium is meant to generate debate and to provide direction, solutions, and identify what new challenges might lay ahead for practitioners, academics, industry and the profession overall. New Views sets out to offer a platform for enabling academics and practitioners from a broad range of international perspectives and approaches to discuss the current state of their practises.

The “EDIProD’2008”, (Engineering Design in Integrated Product Development’2008) Seminar is intended to focus on one of the most critical issues of design science namely on its relevance for industrial practise. It is also of importance that the methods have been based on sound concepts for only then they can be well understood and purposefully implemented. This intention relates the Seminar with that of 2002, which was held under the motto ‘Design Methods that Work’, and with the “EDIProD’2006”.

The fourth conference in our current series is an important opportunity to take stock. We will be using it to reflect on and develop the way we run these events as well as aiming to provide an important oversight of the state of the art in research across the designing disciplines. We promise to pay equal attention to the quality of content and the quality of your experience at the conference. The conference theme, attending to the new kinds of designing that are emerging to challenge our framework of specialisms and reshape our field, will provide some focus for keynote speakers and debates and you may find that relevant to your own work. However this is the main conference for the whole of our society and we are open to all research that informs or arises from designing.

The conference theme for this Participatory Design Conference, PDC 2008, is Experiences and Challenges. Join us to celebrate two decades of biennial PDCs. We invite you to reflect on past experiences and review the important lessons we have learned so as to better meet the new challenges of the future. What are the important trends, phenomena, developments, and views on participation and design etc., which in so many different ways challenge our traditions, our experiences and/or the current ‘wisdom’ within the field?

This conference seeks to make a significant contribution to a necessary transformation that involves changing the direction of current changes toward a sustainable future. It specifically intends to outline the state-of-the-art of design research in terms of visions, proposals and tools with which design can actively and positively take part in the wider social learning process that will have to take place. At the heart of the conference, design researchers will present concrete and documentable research results. This will be complemented by invited keynote speaker presentations that will help paint a clearer picture of the common ground from which the conference will take off. More about conference themes and aims has been uploaded in the website.

Subtle Technologies is a four-day multidisciplinary Festival exploring complex and subtle relationships between art and science. The annual international event combines symposia, exhibitions, workshops and performances that juxtapose cutting-edge artistic projects and scientific exploration.

The 15th Life Cycle Engineering Conference LCE 2008 continues a long tradition of scientific meetings under the aegis of the International Academy for Production Engineering CIRP. For many years extensive research in life cycle assessment, product development and sustainable manufacturing has produced a vast pool of knowledge, the application of which is still hampered by reluctant implementation of serious environmental strategies in practice. A recent boost in global environmental awareness now offers a unique opportunity to further the application of existing knowledge and accelerate developments towards more sustainable engineering solutions for future industrial products.

This biennial conference series provides an international forum for the presentation and discussion of state-of-the-art and cutting-edge design research with a focus on artificial intelligence, cognitive science and computational theories in design. The conference proceedings will form a continuing archive of design computing and cognition research. The conference will be preceded by a series of half-day workshops on specialist topics in design computing and cognition.

ESDA 2008 will provide a forum for researchers and engineers from industry, academia and research institutes to discuss and exchange ideas, methods and results on contemporary topics in mechanical engineering. The scope of the conference covers a variety of major topics in mechanical engineering and related disciplines, ranging from theoretical developments to industrial applications and case studies. The conference consists of technical tracks (currently 20), each focusing on a specific area and headed by world leaders in the field. A detailed list of topics can be found on the conference website.

The conference is aimed at CAD researchers, educators, developers, vendors, and the business community dealing with CAD technology and its financial issues. The exhibition is open to all CAD businesses including software houses, hardware manufacturers, vendors, e-businesses, educators, publishers and sectors from various government agencies. CAD'08 has tutorial presentations, parallel paper sessions, product demonstrations, and several forms of exhibits.

The symposium theme “Systems Engineering for the Planet”, addressing the expanding scope of Systems Engineering application and responsibility. Examples of this expanding scope are Safety & Security, Disaster control, Resource efficiency, Infrastructure, Transportation systems, Climate impact, Water Management, Education & Government, Sustainable developments... you name it.

Although it seems clear that creativity plays an important role in developing intelligent systems, it is less clear how to model, simulate, or evaluate creativity in such systems. In other words, it is often easier to recognize the presence and effect of creativity than to describe or prescribe it. The purpose of this symposium is to explore the synergies between creative cognition and intelligent systems in a cross-disciplinary setting that fosters cooperation both in designing creative systems and in creatively designing systems.

CAADRIA 2008 aims to challenge all participants to explore such parallel territories. Not only looking at one side of the products of those computer-aided technologies, but rather questioning them and examining their processes: how the digital has already altered our design capabilities, significant, and desirable. Our goal is to stimulate discussion, search for alternative process, and discover knowledge in the current realm of digital technologies. What happens when we look beyond such a realm of computer-aided technology itself and into those outside processes it effects?

DIS2008 CONFERENCE: A venue for serious reflection on the practice of designing interactive systems, exploring the aesthetic, social and cultural dimensions of new technologies. DIS welcomes papers on all varieties of interactive systems – hand-held shopping appliances, immersive toys, head-mounted directional maps, e-commerce Websites, digital books, home entertainment systems, virtual communities. DIS welcomes papers on design analysis, design representations, design methods, design rationale capture, presentation and use, and tools and environments for designing interactive systems. DIS welcomes empirical studies of design practices, including comparative studies, experience-based studies and lessons learned from design projects, investigations and development of formal notations and models, and new theoretical perspectives. DIS welcomes papers exploring, defining, and developing the science of design.

Kyoto Seika University and Cumulus (International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media) will hold an International Design Conference in Kyoto in March of 2008. Most programs will be open to the public. More than 100 universities and colleges of Art, Design and Media from the world will participate in the conference. The theme of the conference is: [Cu:]-"emptiness" Resetting Design — A New Beginning

This year's theme is *Partnering through Technology: The Role of Third-Party Service Providers. The symposium's goal is to showcase research strengths in supply chain management and transformation, and to encourage the corporate community to take advantage of these strengths. As has been the case with past events, we aim to enhance interactions among supply chain management practitioners and researchers, creating permanent networking opportunities.

Sustainable Innovation 07 will provide a platform to discuss 'state of the thinking' in sustainable innovation, technology, product and service design and development. It will highlight best practice and provide a range of case studies and examples. Sustainable Innovation 07 will include invited and refereed papers covering sustainable innovation from academics, consultants, designers, sustainability, environment and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers as well as other business functions. The event will be a unique learning experience and networking opportunity. Delegates will come globally from large companies, entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized (SMEs), as well as academia, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The conference is supported by a leading-edge international Advisory Board.

The use of the tabletop as an input/output device is an exciting and emerging research area. This cross-disciplinary domain brings together experts in projector based display systems, augmented reality, user interface technologies, multi-modal interaction, input and sensing technologies, CSCW, and information visualization.

The theme for [Vision plus] 12 is "measurement". How can we measure and quantify the impact and results of informational communication? This has become a hot topic both in business and academia. This is a daunting challenge. [Vision plus] 12 will explore this controversial question from all sides:

• How and to what extent can we measure the success of a given work?
• How do we quantify the role and impact of intangibles like design?
• What techniques and technologies can be used to get measurable results?
• How are information designers building the necessary metrics into their projects?

The research programme Man Medium Machine and the School of Communication, Technology & Design at Södertörn university college, invites to a three-day conference on the theme "The Virtual – interaction". The theme of this year's "The Virtual" conference is interaction. 'Interaction' is naturally at the core of many researchers strive to understand people's use and engagement with information technology. 'Interaction' also attempts to capture the interdisciplinary focus that the conference has developed in previous years. The conference seeks to create a meeting space for research that spans from interaction design and HCI to social and humanistic perspectives on technology. 'Interaction' is also about the relation between people and how they are affected by digital media, their living situation, and so on.

The biannual World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization (MCPC) is the premier event of its kind. Bridging academic research and management practice, the conference provides an interactive and interdisciplinary platform to share ideas about mass customization strategies and to discuss the latest technologies and enablers. The conference is covering a wide range of themes and emerging concepts.

THE VISION: To bring together 50–75 engineering designers, educators, and researchers to articulate the relevant issues of globalization and engineering design education.

Given the increasing importance and usefulness of the relationships among Management, Engineering and Informatics, the main purpose of MEI 2007 is to bring together researchers, professionals, consultants, practicing engineers and managers in the areas of Informatics, Engineering and Management, in order to share their research and experience, focusing more in the relationships among these areas.

The Central Organizing Themes for ICTMA-13 are: (a) Foundations for the Future – Reconceiving "Basics" for the 21st Century, and (b) Modeling Students' Modeling Abilities – Focusing on Design Sciences. These themes emphasize IU's strengths in the learning sciences, cognitive sciences, life sciences and informatics, PU's strengths in Engineering and other applied sciences, and the AFA's traditions of pioneering future-oriented learning opportunities for cadets.

The 2007 ASME design engineering conferences are among the most important conferences in the field. Detailed information to be announced (as of 6 Nov 2006). Submission deadlines subject to change.

Cost Effective Automation is strongly related with the growth of emerging economics in their goal to reach high quality and productivity in their manufactured products. The Joint Conference of the IFAC Technical Committees of Cost Oriented Automation and Enterprise Integration and Networking is focused on practical use of those technologies associated with cost effective automation. However, participants are encouraged to present the results of theoretical research together with application experiences.

The impact of fashion has moved beyond couture, seasonal trend forecasts, runway events and prescribed dressing for the masses. This conference aims to highlight the wide ranging scope and influence of fashion: the circus, the street, the ocean, POP, grunge, horror, gender, body modification, performance and utility. Download the conference brochure here.

Following in the wake of the successful [De s for m] conferences on Design & Semantics of Form & Movement in the Baltic Arts Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne in 2005, and the Evoluon, Eindhoven in 2006, we are working with the TU/e Faculty of Industrial Design and Philips Design BV to organise [De s for m] 3. This will be held on November 1st and 2nd, 2007 in Newcastle upon Tyne in another iconic building; the new Design School of Northumbria University.

With the digital enterprise and digital engineering being central pillars of the new European R&D Strategy over the next six years, DET 2007 is aiming at providing a high quality academic forum for the presentation and debate of new digital technologies developed for industry and commerce. Full details of the scope and remit of DET 2007 can be found at the website: http://www.det-conf.org.uk.

On June 13 and 14, 2007, York University, in conjunction with the DX National Design Conference, will host The First Canadian National Conference on Graduate Education in Design. The Conference will provide a forum for design educators and graduate students to share their experience and research; promote design education in Canada; and explore future directions of graduate education in design and research development. The theme of the conference is Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World. The conference welcomes both research text-based papers and creative practise-based presentations from design educators and graduate students. Papers and presentations that explore relevant theoretical, critical, philosophical, epistemological, methodological, creative and pragmatic frameworks from a variety of design disciplines are invited.

User Experience has become a key word in design over the last decade. In many ways, it has been successful. It has become a cornerstone in many leading design programs all over the world. It has generated theoretical discussion. It has rejuvenated philosophical debate in design research. It has found a home not just in research, but also in design education.

The seminar aims at creating a relaxed academic atmosphere for discussion on topics around design semiotics. The emphasis of the dialogues will be put on design communication, which is approached by different methods within the many areas of design research.

The EPDE conference will bring together representatives from education and industry who have an interest in shaping the future of design education. The conference will provide a forum for educators and researchers from product development, engineering and industrial design, together with industry and government representatives to discuss current educational issues and the nature of design education in the future.

Digital Thinking in Architecture, Civil Engineering, Archaeology, Urban Planning and Design: Finding the Ways
New digital cultures bring inevitable changes to our world and to the techniques, research methods and practices of design. The computer technology transforms slowly but surely the professions of environmental planning, architecture, archaeology and design. In recent years, we witness the emergence of digital methods using computer not only for facilitating technical tasks, but also to analyse project's performance or amplify the creative thinking of designers. Educating the future professionals has become a real challenge due to the clash between fast developing technology and slower evolving new design thinking and values redefinition. Confronting multi-disciplinary theoretical, teaching and practice experiences at the Europia11, will help finding the ways to the future of design.

The conference will focus on topics related to integration of people, organization and technology in broadly defined manufacturing, production, and service enterprises. Particular emphasis will be placed on concepts, methods, tools and solutions for improvement market competitiveness, management of change, management of knowledge, product and process quality, and human-system reliability, in the context of unpredictable and turbulent business environment. The theme of the conference will be: Managing Enterprise of the Future.

The International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) will have a conference 11-15 November, 2007 at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This is a large, international design research conference with an intensive and high quality programme. Keynote speakers will be invited from other disciplines — the social sciences, computing, and business, for example. Multiple paths through the papers will be suggested to help participants find synergies among people and papers. Ample time will be available for informal meeting and discussion. Please consider your research interests in terms of the following description and consult your calendar for availability.

This conference will address a range of critically important themes in the various fields that address the complex and subtle relationships between technology, knowledge and society. Main speakers include some of the leading thinkers in these areas, as well as numerous paper, colloquium and workshop presentations.

Understanding the status of design as a form of research is both important and problematic. The National Science Foundation's Science of Design program, which highlights the role of design in the development of interactive systems, and the First International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology both point to the need for a community concerned with articulating different visions of design science and design research.

The emerging field of multidisciplinary design provides a challenge to the concept of "discipline", and it offers opportunities for new models of design education. Connect 2007 is a platform for the discussion of research and strategies that address the promise and possibilities of design education that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore topics of ambient information with respect to the various technologies and smart materials with which they might be implemented; identify problems in design, development, and evaluation; and derive new fundamental questions that need to be addressed. Workshop attendees should leave with a better understanding of what ambient is and next steps to further research in this domain.

The conference will focus on expanding physical boundaries and expanding bodies of knowledge in digital sensing, interactive, and responsive systems. This discussion will especially relate to architects, engineers, artists and researchers working in the fields of art, architecture, landscape and urban design.

The AEDS 2007 Workshop wishes to contribute to this objective in the field of engineering design research into the development of application-specific methods and methodologies, and their transfer into practice and education in active links and feedbacks to design science.

The conference is aimed at CAD researchers, educators, developers, vendors, and the business community dealing with CAD technology and its financial issues. The exhibition is open to all CAD businesses including software houses, hardware manufacturers, vendors, e-businesses, educators, publishers and sectors from various government agencies. CAD'07 has tutorial presentations, parallel paper sessions, product demonstrations, and several forms of exhibits.

In the general case, a design studio is creative, collaborative, and most-of-all highly material —that is the space is dominated by material objects, surfaces for sharing ideas and inspiration, making ideas and activities visible and tangible by means of physical materials such as post-it notes, sketches, magazine scraps, models, and physical prototypes. The physical arrangement of a design studio creates shared spaces and personal spaces. There are oftentimes walls and other less permanent vertical surfaces that are highly decorated with various images, diagrams, sketches, and objects related to design work-in-progress. The persistence of what is represented on such surfaces is important to the design process and serves as collective memory and external cognition for the design teams. The rich environment of the design studio stimulates creativity in a manner germane to the design tasks at hand. Many of the objects in a design studio may have seemingly little to do with the projects at hand, but in fact serve to challenge and inspire new ideas, to create cross-contextual remindings that lead to breakthrough thinking and conceptualization.