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Service Design and Circular Economy in hybrid retail design
No full textThis paper serves as a pilot study exploring hybrid (physical and digital) retail design within the context of the circular economy, and it examines the prerequisite of the hy-brid retail environment in facilitating customer engagement with circular economy practices. Utilizing an exploratory qualitative approach, we collect primary data through semi-structured interviews with an SME retail brand and ten of its customers. Additionally, we conducted observations of both the physical store and its social me-dia. This contributes to the limited existing literature on hybrid retail design within the context of the circular economy, particularly in the fashion industry. By bridging two theory domains – Circular Economy and Service Design – this study emphasizes the suitability of the Service Design approach in retail design to promote mainstreaming of the circular economy
Analyzing user experience with a smart product-service system: Children-owned wearables
No full textContemporary smart product-service systems increasingly enable multiple users to interact with multiple touchpoints of the same system simultaneously. We looked deeper into the use practice of one such smart product-service system, children-owned wearables. Our data comes from a short-term auto-ethnography and a user review analysis of 9 children-owned wearables. Experiences designed for children assume they have limited agency, leading parents to switch roles between being the end and mediating users. As mediating users, parents become service providers for their children. These user dynamics can hinder children’s experience with wearables and their interaction with other wearable users. Our findings extend the theoretical understanding of human-centered design and service design by depicting the significance of multiple and shifting user roles and users as service providers during the use practice of children-owned wearables
Using Living Labs To Engage Communities And Stakeholders In The Development And Knowledge Exchange Of Urban Health And Sanitation Solutions In The Global South
No full textEngaging communities and stakeholders in developing user-centred urban health solutions, whilst linking the research to their own development, pose major challenges for design researchers working in the Global South. In a number of circular sanitation projects in a community school in Ghana, we co-designed and installed an anaerobic digester delivering electricity and sanitation improvements. To enhance impact we developed and pilot-tested a Living and physical Lab design approach. One project focussed on hand hygiene. We introduced students to ‘making the invisible visible’ by visualising microbes from their hands and assessing handwashing effects. Our findings suggest that visualisation of microbes not normally apparent to school children raised their awareness and prompted communication to peers and family. Building change agent capacity through community engagement like Living Labs can promote sustainable development in the community. Design researchers should further explore schoolchildren’s potential as home and community change agents
Infrastructuring Sustainable Food Futures: A Case Study In Collaborative Innovation For Circular Seafood
No full textTransitioning to a circular economy requires transforming practices across the Ready-to-cook product value chains through shared knowledge. However, generalised solutions rarely succeed, but must be tailored to each context. This study explores using participatory design-informed “infrastructuring” to collaboratively develop novel methods tailored to stakeholders’ existing practices. The Seafood AGE project serves as a case study. We developed two remote, distributed facilitation methods using accessible digital platforms. These engage stakeholders in mapping current practices, analysing responses to speculative fish products, and exploring feasibility of prototypical circular approaches. Key findings demonstrate the potential of co-creative infrastructuring to bridge design research and industry. This enables customised transitions aligned with diverse real-world con-texts. This has implications for design researchers seeking to employ participatory methods that enable stakeholders to co-create context-specific knowledge food systems and futures aligned with circular principles
Establishing an experience design management framework through a literature review
No full textSince Pine & Gilmore (1999) introduced the concept of Experience Economy two decades ago, both academic and practical worlds have embraced the idea, with various frameworks and applications built and evolved around related concepts, design, and management. However, the concept of managing artifacts, which directly impact experiences, has received limited development. Through a literature review approach, this study defines experience design management as the management of artifacts that can influence the perceived customer experience, to achieve business strategic objectives, balancing the resource capabilities of service providers with the value propositions of service recipients. Besides, this study summarizes the framework, processes, and key factors of XDM, to help designers conduct experience design practice and innovation with a clear overview. The results shed light on future directions of research and development of experience design management, with implications for both business success and academic significance
Frame journey: A complementary approach at understanding well-being in factory environments for labor workers
No full textWith a diversifying workforce well-being is an increasingly important topic to be addressed in manufacturing. Whereas mental well-being has been well studied in the HCI community for knowledge workers, well-being for factory workers has been mainly assessed in terms of ergonomics and task optimization. Concerns are about safety and accident prevention, but not about the tacit experience of the workers themselves. In this paper, we analyze an assembly line from two viewpoints: the HCI/Design, and the industrial engineering. We show the differences and commonalities in methods and identify both sides limitations. We present four themes of well-being which emerge from the combined understanding of both sides and identify the gains of a combined approach. This paper presents a first step towards a human-centered understanding of well-being in factory environments and towards design opportunities for digital interactive support systems
Design and Latin America: Exploring materiality and imaginary in design education
No full textThis paper recounts the delivering of the course Design and Latin America: delinking and decolonizing, at University of Brasília. Such experience is in tune with the recent emergence of academic research on the imperativeness of addressing coloniality, and the need to sulear design practice in Latin America. Starting from a brief introduction to Latin American history and social thought, and from an understanding of design as the production of life, discussions were held on the potential of unconventional creativity for nurturing critical consciousness in the field, while acknowledging concrete and subjective power relations. For the development of virtual practical activities, literature was the main tool adopted (specifically short stories related to the Latin American context). Through this methodological framework, it was possible to identify that for reality to decolonize it is essential to know other sides of history, and to bring to light the coloniality of thought and collective imagination
Extremes: On How the Study of Appropriation Might Inform Inclusive Workplace Design in Manufacturing
No full textDisabled people, from younger to older adults, are at comparative disadvantage regarding work. Design for inclusion at work tends to focus on individual adaptations (often stigmatising) or general accessibility guidelines (often insufficient). Furthermore, there is a tendency to focus on inability rather than on extreme abilities, which seem to be the ones enabling workers to appropriate existing products and create their own designs. Therefore, design research requires more input from diverse workers as users to inform the design inclusive industrial workstations. Departing from theory and ending with analyses of workers\u27 designs, this paper argues that the articulation of the concept of ‘extremes’, as used in inclusive design theory, with the study of appropriation in industrial shopfloors can be a source of information, inquiry and inspiration for new design research towards worker inclusion
Situating Imaginaries of Ethics in / of / through Design
No full textWithin the last decade a large corpus of work in HCI as well as the commercial design practice has focused on systematically addressing questions of ethics, values and moral considerations embedded in the design of digital technology. Recent critiques have highlighted that these efforts fall short of actual transformative impact. We use the sociological concept of imaginaries to argue that value and ethics work needs to be considered within the larger context of socially shared visions of a desirable future and outline how existing sociotechnical imaginaries pre-frame contexts in which value work is deployed. We demonstrate that imaginaries provide the language and conceptual framework necessary to address underlying ethical worldviews before ethics driven design methods and toolkits can be successfully employed. Finally we suggest how to engage imaginaries to facilitate a broader shift towards a more politically sensitive approach to designerly value work
Design For Empowerment
No full textThis track aims to explore empowerment as the primary focus of design for social change, and not merely a side effect or an outcome of design activity. While plenty of studies evidence empowerment through design, a more nuanced discussion on the ways in which empowerment by design is planned, achieved and articulated, how and what kind of empowerment is being facilitated through design projects is timely and necessary. These discussions are essential for introducing a critical perspective currently absent in the articulation of empowerment within design for social change. In the design literature, strong voices have emerged advocating for deeper awareness and accountability to address biases, privileges and positionality of designers, uncovering the ‘dark’ and unintended consequences arising from the noble intentions of empowerment in social design interventions, and mapping the interconnected dimensions, entanglements and power relations that emerge in ‘experts–diffuse’ design settings. In this track, contributions from interdisciplinary design research and practice informed by political theories of power, and/or by disciplines such as development studies, community organizing, and community psychology that can broaden and deepen current articulations of design for empowerment and social change are welcome. Suggested topics include: Explorations on how theories of power and empowerment inform design projects and practice; Theory-informed critical tools for power analysis used in design; Methodologies that facilitate discussions on power and empowerment in design projects; Methods and tools for elicitation of individual stories and collective narratives of ‘change and empowerment’ in design; Explorations of tensions and dilemmas of politically engaged design