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Title: Foregrounding Temporality to Design with Emerging Futures
Creator: Heidaripour, Maryam
Date: 2020
Description: The rhetoric of today’s economy has framed entrepreneurship as a key contributor to inventing the future, which raises questions about who is...
Show moreThe rhetoric of today’s economy has framed entrepreneurship as a key contributor to inventing the future, which raises questions about who is counted as an insider, how the future is being designed, and for whom. The concentration of future-making has too long been in the hands of a few, given future’s tremendous impact on the many. This dissertation joins the growing body of scholarly explorations on channeling the design capacity to transition toward a future with a plural world system, where the economy offers a multiplicity of possibilities. Central to this exploration is to rethink how shaping futures might be done differently, with different people, and in different forms.By incorporating feminist temporality, I challenge the established mode of design investigation. My empirical chapters demonstrate the ways in which sharpening our temporal sensitivity could impact what we study, how we study it, and what we can find. In particular, I rearrange the power dynamics in design activities by opening up the position of knower to the emerging collectives. I then introduce the concept of designing a time-space yet to come that makes you wonder—an open invitation to rethink who we are and what we want to become.While it remains to be seen whether this contribution will have a meaningful impact on design knowledge, I argue that it makes a solid case for incorporating feminism in design. Feminist theory offers the theoretical underpinning for ontological reframing of design and helps us understand what other forms of design practice are emerging in this era of increasing complexity. I conclude with my take on an emerging design practice where the fundamental element of design is to enable other ways of knowing to inquire about what they truly want to become.
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Title: Sustainable Solutions in Complex Spaces of Innovation
Creator: Nogueira, André Martins
Date: 2019
Description: Even though the interconnectivity between human activities and the integrity of ecological systems has long been recognized, the development...
Show moreEven though the interconnectivity between human activities and the integrity of ecological systems has long been recognized, the development of design practices that account for such interconnectivity can be considered relatively new. As such, contemporary institutions and their arrangements were not designed accordingly to their potential to promote sustainable and equitable flows of different types of resources; they lack the capability and structure to operate in the speed and scale in which humans are dynamically interacting with themselves, and with the natural environment. As the world has passed the 7.5 billion mark, such a condition is generating unintended socio-ecological-technical consequences being empowered by the fast-changing technology industry. New lenses and models for understanding the connectivity of social, ecological and technical systems underlying contemporary institutional arrangements are required to advance expertise in redirecting the flow of different types of resources for the sustainability of these systems. However, how humans perceive systems is largely framed by who is included in the discussion and the experiences and interests that they bring to bear. Even though there will always be a discrepancy between what is perceived, and the actual system at play, there are greater opportunities to expand such perception by drawing more deeply on systems thinking and the notion of resources. This dissertation advances design knowledge in the pursuit of bridging the gap between theoretical discourses and the pragmatism necessary to intervene socio-ecological-technical dynamics by exploring how designers might embed principles of sustainability into choice-making processes for innovation, and it proposes a new approach through which designers can advance their practices in enabling more sustainable flows of resources.
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Title: Research through Provocation: A Structured Process to Design New Information Technologies
Creator: Rivera Gomez, Jaime Alejandro
Date: 2023
Description: This doctoral research presents a structured way to generate provocative prototypes, called provotypes, to design new information technologies...
Show moreThis doctoral research presents a structured way to generate provocative prototypes, called provotypes, to design new information technologies. Emphasizing the exploration of alternative interaction models beyond the current archetypes, this study considers emerging complexities about our relationship with technology in the long term to incorporate knowledge from science models in the early stages of the project when cross-disciplinary consensus is required. Thus, avoiding personal biases that are not aligned with how people use technology.The methodology analyzes six case studies using provotypes in multiple contexts, including academic research explorations, corporate innovation projects, and students applying the approach in educational settings. The research also involved a controlled experiment studying how different interactive configurations influence one's motivation to engage in positive behavior change. The results can be summarized in three main contributions: A provocation model to influence the shared meaning inside cross-functional teams, a tool to create provocations exploring alternative interaction models, and finally, the heuristics of provotyping to guide researchers and designers to generate early low fidelity prototyping.
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Title: The Studio Practice for Sustainable (Craft) Production
Creator: Werdhaningsih, Hendriana
Date: 2022
Description: Craft market demand globally is rising. On the other hand, the domination of economic goals in craft production is threading the social system...
Show moreCraft market demand globally is rising. On the other hand, the domination of economic goals in craft production is threading the social system and the environment. Craft production facts do not represent the sustainable development principles that should be a central concept for this age. Design as practice and method had not yet correctly facilitated craft production to embrace the harmony of the social, environmental, and economic systems. Believing that studio is a core design practice, this research investigated studio practice through interviews, field research, and action research conducted in Indonesia and the US. It developed a model called Studio Practice for Sustainable (Craft) Production, the SP2 Model. The Model helps designers, the crafts community, and stakeholders ensure their role in the studio practice and determine their goals for sustainable development. The SP2 Model offers alternative practical solutions in craft production, contributes to polycentric discourse, and designs interventions in sustainable development models.
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Title: Sensemaking for Power Asymmetries in Anti-Oppressive Design Practice
Creator: Meharry, Jessica J
Date: 2022
Description: Within professional design practice in capitalist market contexts, the goals of user-centered and human-centered design methodologies is to...
Show moreWithin professional design practice in capitalist market contexts, the goals of user-centered and human-centered design methodologies is to make algorithmically-based technologies understandable for users, satisfy customer needs and desires, and thereby increase corporate profitability. However, there is growing concern that the computational methods, data management, and business models that drive these technologies are leading to global asymmetries of knowledge, information, and power. The asymmetries of power generated by these designed interactions can be considered the kind of wicked problem that design seeks to address. Yet the dominant goals and methods of professional design practice limit their ability to design ethically within market contexts. These methodologies fail to adequately consider systemic context and power relations, potential for bias in algorithmic computation, and specific forms of systemic oppression. These gaps then lead to inadequate design solutions. This study explores these gaps in design methodologies that could be transferable to a range of professional (and non-professional) practices by looking at potential new levers within familiar design methods and their effectiveness as facilitating problem reframing towards equitable solutions. This dissertation advances knowledge in design by exploring how professional designers can better understand how to use sensemaking processes for salience of power asymmetries, algorithmic materiality, and systemic oppression. It proposes an anti-oppressive design framework that is rooted in a critically-informed design praxis. These orientations rethink and recreate design knowledge by helping professional designers shift the market-focused paradigm for which they are designing.
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Title: Expanding the Magic Circle and the Self: Integrating Discursive Topics into Games
Creator: da Rosa Faller, Roberto
Date: 2020
Description: This study focuses on games for self-development and how they communicate ideas, challenge established assumptions, cause reflection, and...
Show moreThis study focuses on games for self-development and how they communicate ideas, challenge established assumptions, cause reflection, and provoke change. It explores the integration of discursive topics – specifically those perceived as difficult, political, philosophical, taboo, or controversial – into games, and how to manage player exposure to these topics through design while avoiding player disengagement to achieve self-development goals. Using a Research Through Design approach, this study was conducted in two phases. The first exploratory phase resulted in an analytical framework with four distinct lenses: engaging play experience; player’s emotional investment; the friction points of discursive topics; and, controlled exposure to the topic. During the second phase, this framework was used to analyze eight case studies and three prototypes. The resultant insights from analysis revealed five categories – topic depiction, emotional climate, emotional anchors, topic delivery, and exposure timing – that form the Discursive Topic Integration Framework for self-development. This framework offers a new theoretical perspective for design scholars and practicing designers about how to manipulate the “magic circle” (a safe temporary space for the act of play), by intentionally designing for discursive topics and their friction points. It contributes strategies about when, how, how frequently, and with what intensity discursive topics may be introduced and abstracted in games. It frames the discursive topic, creates the emotional climate, and anchors the player inside the magic circle of the game so that they feel engaged, motivated, and curious without becoming overwhelmed. This study also generated two additional frameworks, including: the Self-Development Opportunity Matrix that can be used to generate or evaluate self-development goals; and, the Five Categories of Transitional and Traumatic Experiences that can assist in the design of games and other experiences that build a person’s capacity, self-determination, and commitment to positive change.
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Title: Design for Equivalence: Mutual Learning and Participant Gains in Participatory Design Processes
Creator: Geppert, Amanda Anne
Date: 2023
Description: The ways in which people are or are not—aware, eligible, able, invited, required, supported, willing, and/or forced, among other conditions—to...
Show moreThe ways in which people are or are not—aware, eligible, able, invited, required, supported, willing, and/or forced, among other conditions—to participate in the procedures or experiences that constitute world-making activities—from voting, policymaking, or designing algorithms, technologies, products, programs, services, interventions, infrastructures, or systems, among other things—that affect their lives—is a central issue of our time. It demands careful consideration and is of great consequence as to whether or not the worlds we create are equitable, sustainable, and just, so that all people have free and equal standing and a real opportunity to belong and flourish. This study took up this issue in the context of participatory design practice and research and the making of sexual and reproductive health interventions with and for adolescents who are marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, and Chicago, Illinois, United States. The study advances knowledge in design by exploring how problem-focused, front-end participatory design processes expand or constrain the epistemic authority of less powerful actors, more specifically, systematically excluded individuals and groups. The study was conducted in two parallel phases. First, through a theoretical elaboration and critical analysis, it examined the application of Mouffean agonism in recent formulations of participatory design processes to address complex social and political issues with marginalized individuals and groups. The analysis demonstrated that a key construct—the chain of equivalence—is absent and resulted in the failure of these processes to achieve the collective, counter-hegemonic, and emancipatory responses strong enough to counter power as imagined by Chantal Mouffe. Second, an explanatory embedded multiple case study was conducted on two front-end participatory design workshops to understand what less powerful actors gain by engaging in collaborative processes of design and how practices and processes do or do not support their epistemic authority and matters of care. Thematic analysis suggested how the practices of collective information sharing and gathering—mutual learning and learning— affect participant gains and design process outputs. Additionally, thematic analysis informed a theoretical, conceptual, and practical move to expand beyond the original scope of the Mouffean chain of equivalence to include collaborating actors who may not be equivalently disadvantaged by current power relations, but who are committed to participatory design processes that prioritize the issues and matters of care of less powerful actors. When considered together, findings from both research phases inform the development of design for equivalence, at once a theoretical stance and a methodological framework to inform the selection of approaches, theories, processes, methods, practices, and tools for participatory design processes that support the epistemic authority of participants in challenging social and structural inequalities and creating articulations of the common good strong enough to counter dominant paradigms.
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