Workshops

By Jochen Schollaert

Choose your Honda car & restyle it!
Explore the many Honda cars of the past & present and choose one of your liking. Fuse it with a concept, a culture, a user … anything; and reinvent it. While you’re at it, think about what it needs as an electric vehicle. Make a mood board and start sketching. Once your direction is fixed you will further refine it by hand or AI like Vizcom.

What to expect

Choose your Honda; analyse it’s key styling features …

… Inject it with a concept; change it to an EV …

… and style your vision!

By Susie Brand-de Groot & Wouter Eggink

In this workshop we will explore the meaning of products, by redesigning, bending and retelling the stereotypes associated with them. We will start from existing objects, using practical and analytical approaches to design a new presence for them. We will use techniques ranging from philosophy of technology and design histories to theatre design, drama, storytelling and performance. In order to address and express the meaning of objects with creativity and imagination.

In the workshop we will start from an existing design “object” of your choice. Every object has a so-called ‘script’ engrained in its design; more or less obvious or hidden features that ‘prescribe’ how the object should be used, cherished, hated, exposed, identified or discarded. We will work to reveal all the meanings of these objects within society and re-write the scripts to our desired ones. The second part of the workshop will then be dedicated to design, build and perform an expressive exhibition experience that will tell the new story to the audience in the most compelling way on Friday afternoon.

By Sally Stone & Joan Beadle

This project uses approaches to adaptive reuse to engage and examine the process of upcycling as an instigator to creating new products.This engages with this centuries current environmental urge to adapt, transform and build human experiences rather than construct new things.

This project investigates the latent potential contained within found material resources. We will work directly with the properties of pre-used clothing. Our discoveries will allow us to propose products that support and protect us in our daily interactions and working practices, whether these are bureaucratic activities, leisurely meanderings, or frenetic creativities.

This proposal aims to:

• Examine and connect with our emotional and sensorial relationships to materials
• Repurpose found materials into speculative products for imagined futures
• Explore innovative and alternative design skills and techniques
• Reprocess these found materials to provide altered but continued usefulness
• Explore sustainable practices to create desirable futures for the already worn.
  

This is a learning-through-doing project; a design activity that is based upon paying radical attention to resources to gather in-sights and knowledge. Through exercises in co-construction, collective development and exchanges of materials and methods we will devise new surfaces and structures. We will work with an expansive approach to materiality: thinking through making, and, inventing methods of deconstruction and reconstruction. We will explore the languages of materials and our interactions with them, finding ways in which materials can suggest purpose. The global production of Fast Fashion results in a legacy of short use garments which often end up deposited in landfill sites around the world. Creative practice can help us to reconsider the potential of these items and instead of viewing them as redundant we can re-discover them as a valuable resource.

By Andries Reymer & Robin Dauchot

Colruyt Group, Belgium's top retailer, has a long-standing reputation for serving up everything from groceries to energy solutions for both everyday shoppers and business clients. With a wide range of products and services, Colruyt is all about making the customer journey as smooth and valuable as possible.

In this workshop, we invite product development students to dive into this challenge:

How can Colruyt take their customer experience to the next level, creating more personalized interactions that build lasting loyalty?

From insights to impact

Across a 5-day sprint, we'll guide students from immersion to pitching, eploring every stage of the innovation process. Students will identify key opportunities, design fresh solutions, and ptototype ideas that bring real value to the client. By the end, they'll pitch their concepts, showing how personalization can truly enahnce the shopping journey.

By Jan Willem Hoftijzer & Annemiek Van der Wal

Product design and sketching are closely linked. That was true in the past, and it still is. Sketching has many other functions and meanings besides visualizing your design, both for the designer and others involved. Sketches and visualizations are often the hub for communication, development, presentation, and the activity facilitates thought process and creativity.

This workshop provides knowledge and exercises related to this. From advanced visual (intuitive) creativity techniques, to communicating and persuading using interactive “talking pictures” and visual stories. Using various media, the different facets of the visual design process are covered: 'the agency of sketching'. Indispensable for the creative modern designer!

By Nicolas Erreweyaert

This workshop invites participants to explore simplicity and functionalism by redesigning everyday objects and crafting them as realistic scale models. Each team will select items from a specific setting—such as a park, kitchen, or public space—and reimagine these with a focus on clean, recognisable designs. By keeping their redesigns simple yet purposeful, participants can focus their efforts on producing models with meticulous detail, capturing every nuance in form and
material.

 

The week concludes with a walkthrough exhibition, where visitors can experience these finely crafted models within reconstructed settings, offering fresh perspectives on familiar objects and demonstrating the power of thoughtful design.

Day 1: Introduction and context selection
The workshop begins with an introduction to the principles of simplicity and functionalism in product design, inspired by influential design movements and figures known for their focus on purposeful, intuitive forms. Later, the team selects a specific setting, such as a park, kitchen, or public area, as the context for their design work. This setting will be used as a foundation for the produced models. In the afternoon the team will explore the setting in real life to look for interesting opportunities to
redesign.

Day 2: Aiming for simplicity
With insights from their research, participants create a refined version of the selected objects, focusing on simplifying forms and improving functionality. They explore how to reduce a design to its essential components while ensuring it serves its purpose effectively within its context. In this stage we aim to create designs that are simple, yet recognisable.

Day 3-5: Model making
Participants will be introduced to foundational principles and references to inform their approach. With a clear vision of functional, minimalistic design, participants work to craft models that capture both the object and its surrounding environment. This phase challenges them to replicate materials, textures, and details to bring their designs to life within a realistic context.

Learning outcomes
• Simplify designs to their essential forms, making them functional and visually clear.
• Ensure each design fits naturally into its intended environment.
• Gain experience in crafting realistic models with detailed materials and textures.
• Practice precision and attention to detail in model-making.
• Strengthen skills in explaining and justifying design choices based on simplicity and detail.

By Chiara Percivati & Valerio Lorenzoni 

In this workshop, we will explore and create musical instruments using electronics kits like Arduino and Daisy, sensors, 3D-modelling, 3D printing, laser cutting, coding, and sound design. Our goal is to develop a new generation of instruments that augment the capabilities of musicians, pushing the boundaries of musical performance with enhanced technology. The tutors, who have experience with various aspects of instrument augmentation, will guide and support students through the creative process. This hands-on workshop will be a collaboration with students from the Conservatoire (instrumental, composition, and electronic music classes), fostering a multidisciplinary environment alongside UA students. 

The workshop will culminate in a performance on Friday, showcasing the participants’ work. The title, "Future Shock Orchestra," references Alvin Toffler’s influential book on adapting to the information age and alludes to Herbie Hancock’s iconic album, blending modern and traditional jazz. We aim to reinterpret these ideas in the context of contemporary musical performance. 

For this workshop, we are seeking motivated product development students who:
• Have completed the course “Electronische aspecten van Productontwikkeling” or have
otherwise gained experience with Arduino kits.
• Play an instrument or have an interest in music, and are excited to collaborate with
musicians.

By Casper Boks

The goal of this workshop is to let students get experience with how memes can be used as a tool in design projects, both in the context of ‘mining the internet for information’, and ‘improving interaction with informants related to challenging topics’.

When designers are confronted with design challenges related to wicked problems such as mental health, social inclusion and democracy, they often resort to the designer’s standard toolbox (observations, interviews, surveys). However, these are time-consuming and may not reveal opinions and sentiments in cases when they are awkward to share, or complicated to put in words. Netnography, and in particular memes, can be used to make complexity manageable. the invisible visible and thus understand complex social phenomena better and manageable in a design process.

In the workshop we will explore two ways to explore memes in design projects; analysis of memes that are found on the internet, and second, using memes when interacting with users. The end result of the workshop will be in tool prototype to help designers find and analyse existing memes, and/or a tool to help designers use memes when engaging with informants. The idea is that developing a tool to convey learning is a great way to learn yourself. If for some groups this is too ambitious, the end result can be a physical representation of the workshop journey. The exhibition will be filled with memes to make it a fun experience to make and see.

Workshop set up:
Day 1: Introduction lecture on memes, icebreaking exercise, presentation of design challenges, familiarity with tools, group making
Day 2: Memes analysis to inform the designer. Introduction lecture, internet exercises, exploration of online communities, ways to sort and analyse memes, experimenta with examples of how memes have been used in previous design projects, early prototyping, peer review.
Day 3: Memes development to challenge the user in an interview or focus group context. Introduction, plenary brainstorms, group work, early prototyping and testing, peer review.
Day 4: Choice of direction, further iteration and prototyping, peer reviews
Day 5: Finalising end result and preparing for the exhibition.

By Wim Boudewyns

Thanks to current advances in technology and a global demand for faster, more efficient, and sustainable delivery systems, drones have become a viable solution for package transport. Fixed wing drones in particular offer longer range, greater energy efficiency, and higher speeds compared to traditional multirotor drones, making them suitable alternatives to traditional transport in urban or even remote area’s.

In a fast-paced progam we will develop such a drone, including an innovative loading/unloading platform and optimize the design using Aishaper.com ‘s online aerodynamics evaluation tool. We will get extra support from 3 Voxdale experts: Tom Dewaele will kick off the workshop with a design session. Ward Vanhoutte will support as a CAD expert, and Patrick Vlieger will give a consult as a simulation expert. 

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By Dirk Van Gogh, Helena De Smet, Veerle Tytgat, Vera Roggli & Elien Haentjens 

You are most welcome to explore and play together with Soft Connection Lab, the research project in the arts at KASK school of arts, Hogeschool Gent. The research project focuses on creating intangible connections by using tangible braiding techniques. Would you like to find out how 3500-year-old braided bonnets were actually designed for disassembly? Are you curious what application a camel belt from Rajasthan could find in architecture, or would you like to discover the link between a group of dancers and a hi-tech carbon braiding machine? We are eager to share our knowledge about braided structures with you.

Soft Connection Lab has developed several ways of working based on abstracting, magnifying and slowing down to enhance designers' insight into a vast variety of braided structures. We classified this variety down to 4 gestures, based on the movement of the hands while making. During the XDM week, participants will explore the versatility and untapped potential of this often forgotten textile braiding discipline. Through playful experiments, we think we can inspire designers and provoke innovative applications in the field of product development.

What

During the workshop you will explore how to build a participatory practice inspired by traditional crafts and heritage practices, and how an emotional bond can be shaped through crafted textile connections. More than ever before, ‘connection’ is put forward as a starting point in the creation of new objects. We challenge the participants to trigger stronger emotional bonds in product-service-design using specific textile structures.

How to

This workshop is mainly ‘hands on’. After introducing Soft Connection Lab's research project, participants gain insight into the four gestures and braiding methods through manufacturing practice. Thorough insight we consider to be crucial to trigger new applications in the field of product development. In the first part, we offer 4 ‘gestures’: Crossing, Winding, Twining and Pulling through. During the second part, we design while searching for innovative applications, and in the third part we realise and make full-scale prototypes and models.

​More about Soft Connection Lab​

By Kaat Kenis, Maud Gruyters & Stine Moons

If everything in the world around us is designed, why do so many places feel uncomfortable or even impossible to access? This workshop is about embracing the concept of the misfit — a term that originated in critical disability studies. It highlights the mismatch between humans and their environment. Too often, we, designers, create for an imagined ‘perfectly average body’: a golden standard that never really exists. The misfits on the other hand are numerous. Human bodies are so diverse that designing for the average becomes almost irrelevant. 

But misfitting isn’t only about disability, it’s about anyone who feels excluded or unwelcome in a space because of its design. Think about moments when you’ve felt like you didn’t belong, when a space or situation wasn’t made for someone like you. By recognizing them, we can begin to see just how many people are (un)intentionally excluded and how design can invite them back in.

So what if we used misfitting as a starting point for design? Instead of seeing friction as a problem, what if we saw it as source of inspiration and possibilities? In this workshop we will use speculative design (where we imagine what if-scenarios) and creative interdependency (collaborating and drawing from each others experiences), to rethink how people interact with the designed world and each other. You will reflect on your own experiences of discomfort or friction in everyday spaces and use them to reimagine the world differently. How can we stretch and expand these points of interaction to make their misfitting visible and make other people able to experience it? Throughout the week we will work towards provocative probes: physical, interactive concepts that challenge the way we think about design and misfits. We will take these probes into the city, observe how people interact with them and spark conversations about how design can do better.

Through this workshop we will reimagine design to transform moments of exclusion into opportunities for connection.