The digital transformation of cultural heritage has expanded the availability of data while revealing structural forms of incompleteness. This study investigates how missing data are conceptualised in the scientific and design literature on digital cultural heritage and how Advanced Design can transform absence into a resource. The research combines a critical thematic review of peer-reviewed publications from 2010 to 2025 with Research through Design practices and case studies developed within the PNRR CHANGES project. The analysis identifies three main configurations of absence: processual gaps arising along the data lifecycle, epistemic exclusions embedded in standards and knowledge models, and projectual shortcomings related to governance and participation. Based on these findings, a design taxonomy and an operational model are proposed, linking each form of absence to specific levers of intervention, such as transparency of workflows, community-grounded annotation and narration, collaborative metadata writing, and long-term maintenance practices. The results show that Advanced Design provides an infrastructural and reflective framework capable of connecting technical processes, cultural interpretation, and community involvement. The study concludes that incompleteness, rather than a defect, can act as a generative condition for digital heritage, fostering more inclusive, situated, and transformative design practices.

This paper introduces a pipeline for integrating semantic metadata, 3D models, and storytelling, enhancing cultural heritage digitization. Using the Aldrovandi Digital Twin case study, it outlines a reusable workflow combining RDF-driven narratives and data visualization for creating interactive experiences to facilitate access to cultural heritage.

The article presents a proposal for a multidisciplinary and multistakeholder learning and collaborative model that connects the worlds of business and academia through the presentation of an experimentation. The model is presented through an experimentation of uniform design, led by University of Bologna, commissioned by the railway company Trenitalia Tper, and in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Milan. The project aimed to dress the staff of the company by involving students and faculty from the two schools of fashion, product, and service courses with local businesses. The experimentation presented here aims to highlight the ways in which a learning model involving professionals from the world of research and industrial production can enable the elaboration of outputs in line with the current challenges of the contemporary fashion system. The experimentation, along with the proposed method and model, aims at testing and verifying the relevance of the so-called collective intelligence in design-driven innovation processes, particularly those of ‘open innovation’. The proposed experiment confirms the relationship between collective intelligence, as a result of the combined knowledge and expertise of a diverse group, and innovation readiness in enterprises. In this light, a model is presented that, through co-design processes, can propose new strategies for an industry transformation, in a challenging application theme such as technical clothing and uniforms, where what is worn is loaded with values and symbols in society.

The paper develops a comparative analysis of the cultural and creative competencies within the educational offer of the University of Bologna, using multiple sources and tools. This contribution is based on the hypothesis that the narration around the value of the cultural and creative disciplines in academia needs to be critically reviewed. This path of observation, mapping, narration, and visualisation resulted in being consistent with the critical role that cultural and creative disciplines have played at the University of Bologna since the 1970s; by developing unprecedented educational models and impacting the territory through the generation of new economic models and the development of a diverse system of cultural and creative industries. The methodological approach of the research is based on a comparative analysis of the main documents regulating the cultural and creative economy on the international, national, and regional levels. The second stage of the research process was built on an explorative strategy based on desk analysis to create the dataset. The question arose about how to make a database accessible to a broader audience: the conclusions show that data visualisations, as a creative tool, can enable story-doing processes and thus create awareness and value.

As the cultural heritage sector intertwines with the computing industry and expands into the creative sector, the paper disseminates the preliminary findings of an applied industrial research project to contribute to the ongoing discussion on key challenges in Digital Cultural Heritage and outline potential future directions. RADICI is a two-year ERDF-funded project, aiming to develop an aggregating platform of digital cultural assets coming from diverse cultural and creative industries sectors, ensuring their interoperability to unlock new value co-creation. Stemming from a design-driven approach, RADICI aims to contribute to regional development by prototyping trans-sectoral value chains in matters of accessing, co-producing, experiencing, and leveraging Digital Cultural Heritage. This paper explores RADICI’s theoretical framework, rooted in a rhizomatic interplay of perspectives, and introduces Advanced Design as the framework driving its development. Particularly, it illustrated how trans-sectoral conversations were carefully designed to fuel co-creation sessions and foster collaboration among stakeholders from academia, business, GLAMs, and CCSIs. Data was collected through participant observations, workshop material, and post-event feedback. By conducting a thematic analysis, actionable insights were harvested and formulated according to a trans-sectoral lens, to inform further, rhizomatic developments of the project.

This conversation with Catherine D’Ignazio explores the potential of “restorative” and “transformative data science” as practices oriented toward justice, care, and the repair of systemic harm. Drawing on the experiences of activists documenting feminicide, the dialogue investigates how absence can be understood not as a lack but as a generative space for new forms of knowledge and action. D’Ignazio highlights the significance of emotional and relational labor, the rejection of automation when it undermines witnessing, and the creation of data networks grounded in reciprocity and autonomy. The interview shows how design, through a situated and critical stance, can help to envision more equitable futures by fostering practices of care, memory, and participation.