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that the Centre for Design Research requires
and advances. RHYME, for example, has been
presented at numerous international research
conferences where technology, tangible interac-
tion and the special needs of children have been
articulated via co-creation and ‘musicking’. The
YOUrban project, in conjunction with the Insti-
tute of Urbanism and Landscape at AHO, has a
large number of publications and events in 2012
that have helped to anchor the centre’s inter-
disciplinary research, locally and internation-
ally. Here PhD students have had a central and
inspirational role in bringing together design
practice and knowledge with a growing exper-
tise in interpretation and critique.
Collaboration with other leading research
institutions in Norway has also been part of
securing our strategic research initiatives, such
as in the central work of ensuring excellence
in service design within the national Centre of
Service Innovation (CSI), led by the Norwe-
gian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen.
In addition, we have collaborated with SIN-
TEF, a leading research partner in Norway
in exploring relations between social media,
youth and civic identity and participation. We
have continued to work closely with partners
at the University of Oslo in interaction and
communication design. Direct participation
with a number of design and development
companies has been a key strategic and indeed
operational aspect of our work in 2012, such as
with Bengler and Faster Imaging in the YOUr-
ban project. This is part of a wider initiative to
situate design inquiry in contexts of creativity
and innovation, work and application. Already
established through earlier work in service
design and systems design, this has extended in
2012 to securing a large project with the ship-
ping company Ulstein. This project highlights
moves from sketching and action based inquiry
into fully formed conceptual design work that
has real impact within industry and is part of
a longer term strategic research direction into
innovation at AHO. This project has squarely
placed us on the applied design research map in
Norway and lifted design-influenced maritime
research onto an international level. In 2012,
digital video has been central here, as it has in
the YOUrban project.
The mediation of research is central to our
work. This extends to our large website, and
to participation on the board of two interna-
tional journals and publication in others such
as the International Journal of Design. This is
one of the areas for which the Centre for Design
Research is known internationally. In 2012 we
applied for – and subsequently secured – a Ful-
bright award for 2013 in this area and will host
the editor of the leading online journal KAIROS.
Exhibitions are a key part of mediating design
research and in 2012 this was evident across a
number of projects, eg. RHYME (especially stu-
dent projects), YOUrban, Symbiotic Realities,
