The time between the 10^th International Conference Senses&Sensibility’19 in November 2019 and the next edition in December 2021, represents a period of important changes. The pandemic of Covid-19 started in November 2019 changed the lives of billions of citizens, with significant repercussions on the economies and radical changes in the social contexts.

The various responses to this event showed important capabilities in terms of resilience and reactions to the change. This occurred, in various forms, in all the main areas impacted by the emergency (from school to work, from the family to the most extended social communities), and in relation with the territories, the cultural contexts, the communities, and the organization of the productive systems (industrial and manufacturing).

Even if the post-pandemic scenario is still not defined, the need to move the action plans towards process adaptability appears quite evident. In this context, the design reflections are encouraged to move towards a new transitoriness and planned flexibility.

The post-pandemic transition is presented as a high complexity task. Firstly, because it is expected to last a long time, and secondly because it will be a pot for the most cogent questions coming from the past, about instances for many years in the European and Trans-European agendas, such as fair climate, digital transition, recovery and resilience in health, biodiversity protection e gender equality.

The political interest on these topics, together with new reflections regarding concepts as exaptation and dark ecology, are signs of a new awareness in which the means and the forms of the knowledge are placed at the center of the investigation in a new context that is no more spatially static and temporally measurable, but in a continuous variation of solution and complication, according to a principle that we could define as “trans-action”.

The International Conference Senses & Sensibility’21: Designing next Genera(c)tions intends to collect from researchers, practitioners, students, and academics original cutting-edge contributions, with a focus on inter-generational relational dynamics and the role of the inter/trans-actions activable in design, that must be used for building long-time scenarios.

The aim is to activate a new perspective in which the internal problems of the different design fields are addressed with a new co-evolutive responsibility that, through the research, acquires new determinations.

The “Interactions” and “trans-actions” become two possible strategies to activate processes that might involve design practices and enable the capabilities of the multiverse design, requiring the interpretation of the following terms/principles.

Interactions

interception, interchange, interface, interference, interpret, intersection, intergeneration, interconnection, intercultural, interdisciplinary, interstice, international, interface, interval, intermission, internet, ….

Trans-actions

transcript, transdisciplinary, transferability, transference, translation, transform, transfusion, transhumanism, transience, transition, transubstantiation, transpose, transmigration, translate, transcode, ….

To explore a new transdisciplinary field of research, the tracks of the conference will not be given by the organization in a pre-established scheme but will be the result of a co-generative approach based on the areas of interest given by the participants.

The Design course of DICAR (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e dell’Architettura) of Politecnico di Bari, and UNIDCOM/IADE, Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação, question possible scenarios that the academic design community might generate in a context which unites both realities.

There are four ways to participate in the S&S’21:

• Long papers (12 pages)
• Short papers (6 pages)
• “Tales from the field”
•  Workshops

Regardless the type of work, initial submissions are in the format of a long abstract (2000 words).

Long papers

Long papers should report on substantial contributions of lasting value. The maximum length is 12 pages, in English.

A selection of the best long papers will be considered for publication as book chapters to be proposed to Springer. Long papers not selected as book chapters will be published in the Conference e-book of Proceedings with ISBN.

Short Papers

Short papers typically discuss exciting new work that is not mature enough for a long paper. In particular, novel but significant proposals will be considered for acceptance to this category despite not having gone through sufficient experimental validation or lacking strong theoretical foundation. Applications of PhD works are especially welcome. The maximum length is 6 pages, in English. Each accepted short paper will be included in the Conference e-book of Proceedings with ISBN.

Short papers can be either presented in a poster session or communication sessions according to the scientific committee decision.

“Tales from the field”

This category is intended for those that are practitioners, active in the market or non-profit organizations who are exploring design in their work within the communities. The proposals maximum length is 4 pages, English language. In the conference, presentations in this category will take the form of panel/roundtable discussions. The manuscript will be published in the Conference e-book of Proceedings with ISBN.

Workshops

Submissions to this category are expected to propose sessions that go beyond the conventional communication formats and that actively engage participants in other types of activities such as small discussion groups, do-it-yourself, hands-on group work. The proposal should include: the workshop’s title and its goals; the planned format, duration, methods or techniques used to structure the workshop; the way participants should contribute to the workshop; how the workshop topic and format link to the conference, minimum/maximum number of participants; and required equipment or setup conditions (if any). The abstracts will be published in the Conference e-book of Proceedings with ISBN.

Very Important