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Fixing the Future: Cultivating a Capacity to Repair IoT Devices through Experiential Futures
No full textAs the global consumption of electronic devices continues to grow, so too does the volume of electronic waste (e-waste) that reaches landfill sites, which by 2030, is expected to reach 74.7M tonnes worldwide. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that across Europe less than 40% of e-waste is subject to sustainable recovery and further reinforced by the planned obsolescence of devices. An increasing amount of e-waste can be characterised as so-called ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This paper firstly describes how our research engaged with industry and community stakeholders to explore their perceptions and behaviours relating to electronic devices, specifically their understanding relating to the repairability, maintenance, and longevity of IoT devices. Secondly, we describe the key workshop findings, revealing the current attitudes and behaviours towards IoT repairability and the participants future expectations for repairable IoT. Thirdly, we introduce a mobile experiential research platform and describe how this has previously been used to introduce stakeholders to the notion of Human Data Interaction (HDI) and the highly detrimental impacts of IoT-AI data generation on the environment. We conclude by describing the creation of a new interactive physical-digital experience for the platform which is based on insights synthesized from our explorative workshops and highlights how we have embedded a rhetoric of repair and maintenance of smart devices and IoT systems to encourage the development /resurgence of repair cultures to reduce the production of IoT e-waste
Collaborating with an Amazonian tree: a bio-product design experiment with ancestral references
No full textIn this article, we describe and discuss the findings from a design study aimed at producing objects with an Amazonian tree by employing a design technique based on collaboration with living organisms, adopting approaches to design that prioritizes respect for the environment, as well as shedding light on the potential of ancestral knowledge in shaping sustainable design practices. The Crescentia cujete species produces cuias, fruits that turn into domestic objects through an ancestral artisanal process that can be considered highly ecological from a design perspective. The study starts with a literature review in Biodesign, Biology, and Anthropology. Then, a mixed method approach was adopted, involving historical research on cuia´s production process, direct interaction with trees in a bioeconomy context, interviews and participative observation of traditional artisans, and the integration of these methods. The historical record indicated that biofabrication using cuieiras is an ancient practice, and the results of the experiments demonstrated the potential of cuieira trees for biofabrication nowadays, as evidenced by a broad range of tests that enhance our understanding of this plant-human collaboration. The success of this partnership is partly attributed to the designers\u27 deep engagement with the trees, establishing a level of intimacy that facilitates a strong alliance in design. Furthermore, the process of form-giving involves an ongoing dialogue that acknowledges the dependence of form on ecological considerations. Finally, the discussion and conclusion draw attention to the design field\u27s undervaluation of indigenous objects and techniques and highlight the disparity between industrialized systems versus designing with living organisms
Designing Healing from Eating Disorders: Systemic and imaginative approaches.
No full textThis abstract presents the final exploration of my Ph.D. research on Designing Healing from Eating Disorders (ED). The following wishes to be presented in the Doctoral and Postgraduate Consortium, under the theme “Organization and Policies”. The goal of the research is to develop design guidelines and methods, fabricated through participatory design approaches, that provide imaginary and socially embedded alternatives to show what it could mean to care for mental health systemically, while moving away from consequences of the biomedical model’s history, understandings, and exclusions of factors, in the construction of mental disorders and treatments. The research focuses on the experience of Eating Disorders. The first three explorations entailed interviews and probes collecting experiences of ED survivors, support networks, experts (e.g. psychotherapists, nutritionists, etc…), and environments, which analysis allowed to create a design model that delineates healing phases, and suggests which approaches in design for health and mental health could be paired and used in each phase. The final exploration aims to take a critical stance on the project: before testing the model through ethnographies of participants’ everyday life and design of prototypes, the researcher noticed that the currently developed design model seems once again to center the experience of ED and recovery as an individual responsibility and endeavor. One of the reasons is that participants interviewed recovered or were trained through the current biomedical understanding of ED and its medical language. Furthermore, one of design’s issues in health and mental health is the risk of using design instrumentally, by supporting existing practices in healthcare, rather than using design as change provoking practice to ingrained ways of doing and knowing (Koskinen et al., 2011). ED is commonly considered a stubborn condition in the mental health disciplines and services, highlighting the difficulty to recover and the risks of relapses within those experiences. Psychiatrists such as Fassino & Abbate-Daga (2013) mention how ED could be seen as a symbol of the crisis of psychiatry and the reductionists model, asking for more complex models to look at the disorder. Lester mentions ED as bodies “carrying symptoms of larger systemic issues” (2019; 84). This calls for unconventional approaches to contribute and provide new perspectives on the issue of ED, as an example of how to rethink and care for mental disorders. The final exploration will focus on the use and integration of speculative design (Dunne & Raby, 2013), ontological designing (Willis, 2006), Designs for the Pluriverse (Escobar, 2018), and ethnopsychiatry (Nathan & Stengers, 2002) to provoke a paradigm shift in ways in which we think about bodies, bodies’ capacities and boundaries, eating, and to re-describe the issue of ED through language that would allow to see it as a deeply relational, material and socio-cultural issue. Is perhaps the issue of mental health an issue of imagination and accountability? The newly developed framework should be used to propose ways to design care for ED as a social responsibility. Examples of explorations and case studies will be shown
Climate Adaptation in Design Education: Applying a four-step Research by Design Strategy
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the insights gained by testing in a design studio a particular research by design strategy, focusing on the generation of innovative climate adaptation solutions. The strategy is based on the Design Thinking Process and has been applied in the climate adaptation design studio, which took place in 2022 at a Master of Architecture degree program in the Netherlands. The case study area was the Zernike university campus in Groningen, the Netherlands, which is situated in the verge between the city and the surrounding rural landscape, facing the urgent climate change challenges of the wider region, mainly floodings due to increased frequency of rainfalls and sea level rise. Furthermore, the area faces particular challenges, such as the increasing demand for serving additional needs, beyond the current educational and business related functions, such as (student) housing. Three indicative design research projects were selected to illustrate the tested research by design strategy, while systematic input has been collected from the participating students regarding the impact of this strategy on their design process. The results reveal that this strategy facilitates the iterative research by design process and hence offers a systematic approach to convert the threats of climate change into opportunities by unravelling the potentials of the study area, resulting in place-based, innovative and adaptive solutions
Exploring the effect of softness and weight of materials on positive emotion regulation: a case study of LEGO
No full textEmotional well-being manages people’s emotions and copes with challenges throughout life. Positive emotion and emotion regulation have beneficial effects on overall emotional well-being (Colombo et al., 2021; Quoidbach et al., 2010; Yoon & Kim, 2022). In the sensory perception of humans, touch interaction is regarded as a vital contributor to regulating our emotions. Considering that appropriate touch experience can lead to more positive emotion regulation, the study attempts to figure out how the touch experience relates to positive emotion regulation. Among several factors of tactile perception, our focus was on texture and weight, which are presumably closely related to positive emotion regulation. For the study, an experiment was designed in which LEGO-based blocks were used as an experimental stimulus in the sense that LEGO as a toy is highly associated with positive emotion. In the experiment, 20 participants were recruited and asked to make assembled ones with combinations of softness (soft and hard) and weight (light and heavy). The findings indicate that the combination of Soft-Heavy was most preferred among the participants because it gave them a sense of comfort and stability. Moreover, diverse positive emotions were associated depending on the levels of texture and weight. A possible implication of the findings is that a particular combination of product materials\u27 texture and weight could facilitate positive emotion regulation. Limitations and future studies are also discussed at the end
‘Becommoning\u27: a design-framework for the initiation of new commons
No full textThis article explores the establishment of new commons initiatives from an integrated design perspective. Such a deeper understanding of the initial phase of becoming a commons -i.e. becommoning- and its design is crucial as members embark on a laborious, time-consuming and uncertain process in which they need to make critical design choices for their future commons. The design perspective is brought forward by the collective creation through which group values are explicated, the communal resource and its governance take shape and conditions are forged for the commons to emerge. So, the study presents the ‘becommoning’ framework as a first exploration for such a designerly approach to identify the steps and activities communities need to make at the very begin to start unfolding their initiative. The framework is applied in a case study, namely, for exploring the design of housing commons and related genres like cohousing, residential communities that are recognized as micro-laboratories offering insights for pursuing alternative societal models
Methods for Designing Woven Textile-forms: Examples from a pedagogical textile design workshop
No full textWhen designing Woven Textile-forms, both the 3D object and the textile it is composed of need to be de-veloped simultaneously, a process requiring an adaptation of currently established methods from both textile and fashion design. This paper provides an overview of existing examples for woven form-construction approaches through the lens of fabric (non-)rectangularity. It subsequently presents the method of flattening a 3D form into a weaveable 2D format, and the alternative weaving methods of Modular Weaving, Non-binary Weaving and Multi-selvedge Weaving destined at constructing non-rectangular seamless Woven Textile-forms. It further describes a range of associated prototyping and visualisation techniques including Maps of Bindings, paper models, Thread Maps, and miniature nail looms. These are destined at helping textile designers in conceiving textiles in the shape of the final ob-ject instead of flat rectangular surfaces, and at providing woven form designers with alternatives to conventional cut-and-assemble approaches, thus creating new grounds for cooperation between both disciplines. The utility of these methods and techniques was tested during a workshop for textile design Masters’ students at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the results of which show that the integration of form-thinking into the textile design process is possible and generates new oppor-tunities for form-making beyond cut-and-assemble
Agential Digital Materials – A Fashion and Textile Perspective
No full textThe Neo-Couture project investigates the intersection of haute couture principles and emerging digital technologies. In this paper, we introduce a developing Neo-Couture framework, grounded in five key areas: Humanness, Interactions, Hierarchy, Material Agency, and Bespokeness/Rarity. Drawing upon the concept of ‘intra-action’ (Barad, 2007:33) from agential realism, the study explores how humans and computational tools mutually influence each other, offering fresh insights into creative processes in fashion and textiles. Where previous research has aimed to categorise AI tools; here, tools are considered \u27material agents,\u27 emphasising the emotional and agential aspects of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The concept of \u27intra-action\u27 is important in highlighting the co-creative dynamics between humans and digital agents. This study finds a nuanced interplay between human practitioners and computational tools. While participants experienced a range of emotions, from feeling in control to experiencing tension, the findings challenge the idea of universal tool design, advocating for bespoke, adaptable solutions. These insights are particularly relevant for interdisciplinary fashion and textile practice in conjunction with Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), digital design and AI fields, and hold potential for haute couture practice. Future research will be undertaken into user-centred experiences when working with digital tools, to examine the experiences of specialised groups of professionals in the fashion industry
