Catherine Elsen Email & Phone Number

My research interests primarily concern design tools and methods and their articulation with users’ experiences, creativity and innovation in the context of architectural, design and engineering processes. While getting in touch with customers and end-users’ needs and desires, during the analysis of a design brief or all along the ideation phase, designers are unavoidably exploring possibilities through the use of so-called «mediating objects». Those mediating objects, i.e. design tools (such as free-hand sketch, Computer-Aided Design softwares, protos, ...), design methods (such as participatory methods, co-design, creative problem solving...) and their linked representations (drawings, annotated post-its, 2D or 3D models, foam and 3D printed models, ...), actively shape the project conceptually, economically or in terms of productivity. Mediating objects indeed alternately support, augment, filter or even deviate the designers’ intentions and how the project is perceived, more or less faithfully, by the external observer. As each back-and-forth between stakeholders and mediating objects largely impacts nowadays projects’ time-to-market and returns on investments, I’m devoting most of my time to investigate actual (mis)uses, to locate areas of improvement and to specify next generation creative and design tools.This research interest also more broadly expends towards design thinking and related company cultures where design tools and representations have a role to play not only for design practitioners but for any actor somehow involved in incremental or disruptive innovative processes. The last 10% of my time is therefore dedicated to teach classes and give talks in order to sensitize academic and non-academic audiences to the leverage effect mediating objects can have on their creativity and productivity.Specialties: Ingénierie de Conception - Design EngineeringProcessus de conception en architecture et design industriel - Design Process in architecture & industrial designParticipation & Co-designCréativité et innovation - creativity and innovationDesign Thinking

Listed skills include Innovation, Design Thinking, Concept Ideation, Design Engineering, and 15 others.