The purpose of this walk is to stir dialogue among conference attendees and others who currently have, or have had experiences of mental health problems, recruited for participation via a local mental health organization. In essence, the idea is to wander around the city in pairs, guided by conceptual maps as props or co-reflection tools, in order to discuss current notions around mental distress in an embedded way, through the walking. In 1967, Foucault spoke about heterotopias of crisis and heterotopias of deviation, thus places in which individuals whose behaviour is different in relation to the required mean or norm were placed, such as psychiatric hospitals. Now that these spaces are disappearing, how can we reconceptualise crisis or transformation, and deviation or difference? We experiment this through asking participants: what are the moments or instances that come to mind when we walk through the city, which relate to our notions and experiences of transformation and difference?

Suitable for all and requires sensible clothing and footwear. Maximum of 10

This walk will leave from the main conference venue (Dalhousie Building) at 1350 on Wednesday 10 April. Delegates will arrive back at Dalhousie at approximately 15:30.

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Our walk proposal is inspired by the ‘Happy Accidents’ track which asks how the opportunities for chance meetings and creative connections between researchers and/or designers can be maximized. We propose to experiment with walking as a means of achieving this for design researchers while attending a conference, while also offering an early morning walk as a means of supporting design researcher’s wellbeing during a conference.

Walkers will be collected by mini bus from Slessor Gardens, Dundee and driven to Tentsmuir forest in Fife.  The route through the forest will incorporate views of the river Tay. The walk itself will last approximately 1 hour, walk and storytelling approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes travel time to and from Dundee.

Suitable for able bodied walkers, due to the route along sand and over sand dunes into the forest, and requires trousers, trainers/walking boots, warm clothing and a rain coat.  Maximum of 15

The Walk will take start from Slessor Gardens on Thursday 11 April at 06:30. Delegates will be returned to Dalhousie at approximately 09:00.

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Walking in the city without a definite aim, allowing the occurrence of chance encounters and sensory experiences, is an idea that has been explored in various ways through the 20th Century, through the figure of the ‘flâneur’ as described by Walter Benjamin, in Surrealism, and DADA using chance operations, and later by the Lettrists and Situationists, with their concept of the ‘dérive’ (drift). These practices, which are loosely termed ‘psychogeography’, have been rediscovered and reinvented in recent years by (amongst others) Stewart Home, Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Nick Papadimitriou. The interdisciplinary nature of psychogeography, with its open ended and playful character, presents an approach to the city which resonates with the concerns and practices of design. These themes provide the background to this early morning walk which will use dice to define a spontaneous route around the conference environs.

Suitable for all and requires sensible clothing and footwear.  Maximum of 12

This Walk will start outside the main conference venue (Dalhousie Building) on Thursday 11 April at 07:00. Delegates will arrive back at Dalhousie at approximately 08:50.

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Design is not constrained to physical objects and increasingly the digital can be a source of inspiration for new modalities and techniques that can be used to enhance our perceptions of the world. We interact with technology (e.g. smartphones) on a daily basis whilst traversing the physical environment, but little work has been carried out to examine how the physical world that we live in and the digital world that we inhabit interact with each other. We invite conference attendees to participate in a 2-mile gander (lasting 1 hour) hosted by the UX-d Research Group and invite them to challenge their design thinking by examining how the digital and physical worlds interact with each other.

Suitable for all and requires sensible clothing and footwear.  Maximum number of 20

The Walk will start outside the main conference venue (Dalhousie Building) on Friday 12 April at 11:30 and delegates will arrive back at Dalhousie at approximately 13:00

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