Research Seminar: Panos Papalambros

May 12, 2025

3:00 p.m. CAT

Virtual

Designing in the Designed World: A Journey from Design Optimization to Design Science

Speaker: Panos Y. Papalambros, special faculty in the Center for Inclusive Digital Transformation in Africa

Abstract: Design is how we humans change the world. Increasingly we live in a designed world dominated by human-made physical and digital artifacts. We have been designing this world aiming to optimize some measure of a desirable outcome. But what is desirable, and to whom? Design Science studies the creation of artifacts and the impact of embedding them in our physical, psychological, economic, social and digital environments. Design science goes beyond traditional design thinking and aims to inform how we address problems in a technology-driven society and how we can contribute to their positive resolution – design a better world for all. I trace the evolution of how we have viewed design over time through some personal examples and I advocate building a broad community for rigorous, yet pragmatic, design scholarship transcending the traditional disciplinary boundaries.

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