BALANCING FOOD VALUES: MAKING SUSTAINABLE CHOICES WITHIN COOKING PRACTICES

Within user-centred design and topics such as persuasive design, pleasurable products, and design for sustainable behaviour, there is a danger of over-determining, pacifying or reducing people’s diversity. Taking the case of sustainable food, we have looked into the social aspects of cooking at home, in specific related to the type of food that is purchased. This paper describes what it means for people to make more sustainable choices in food shopping and how that can be mediated while taking different ‘food values’ that household members have into account. In a design experiment, we developed a service for selecting daily dinner meals while supporting choices of sustainable food which reported on environmental impact, health and nutrition values, and purchase data. Through visualizations of alternative food choices, the experiment provided a space for households to negotiate food values, while opening up possibilities for changing cooking practices

Design for resourceful ageing : intervening in the ethics of gerontechnology

This paper discusses an innovative approach to the design of technologies for older people. The approach contains a critique of “gerontechnology” as taking decisions out of the hands of older people and materializing what it means to live healthily and well into “foolproof” designs that easily become inappropriate in the variety of situations in which older people end up using them. The proposed design approach focuses on re-delegating such ethical decisions to the point at which technology is used. It does so by considering technologies as resources that can complement the ageing competences of older people and adapt in a variety of ways. To gain design knowledge of the way existing technologies as well as prototypes function as resources across webs of practices, and the dimensions of ‘openness’ along which they may adapt within such practices, the approach enlists networks of everyday things as co-ethnographers

Everyday futures:A new interdisciplinary area of research

An interdisciplinary group of researchers have formed the Everyday Futures Network in July 2016. An inaugural workshop was held at Lancaster University's Institute for Social Futures. Tim Chatterton and Georgia Newmarch's article examines the diversity of ways of living that coexists at any moment in time between different cultures and social groups. The authors argue that some members of the society, including technology designers and researchers, have more power than others to decide the types of futures that get promoted and prioritized. Daniel Welch, Margit Keller, and Guiliana Mandich point out that all too often future visions such as the circular economy gloss over the changed everyday lives essential to their realization. Maureen Meadows and Matthijs Kouw offer a method for developing multiple visions of a better everyday future, emphasizing plurality and potentially conflicting ideas of the good life

"By Their [Data] You Will Know Them":Historical Reflections on Capturing Patterns in Everyday Life

With large quantities of digital data collected on our everyday lives, concerns arise as to how this data may affect these very lives. To derive relevant research questions concerning Everyday Futures, our essay reflects on the use of digital data in everyday decision-making. We do so by comparing historic and contemporary examples of health related data-action loops on three different scales: the body, the home and the city. We conclude that while the use of data to inform sensitive decisions is not new, digitization gives rise to a number of important research themes, including tensions between developers and users, theory and opportunity, sensors and senses, norms and diversity, 'expert' and actor, and that what is (thought to be) measured versus what is not. Moreover, we illustrate how our multiscale, historic, multidisciplinary reflection forms a potential method for everyday futures research

Democratising and Anticipating Everyday Futures Through Critical Design: A Review of Exemplars

This article explores design’s relation with the future by analysing a collection of exemplars from design fiction and speculative design for their potential to democratise and anticipate visions of future everyday life in design. Future visions – both implicit and explicit ones – have a realising power of their own. This is especially true for design, the products of which co-shape the lives of millions of users. Rather than calling for a “better” future vision however, this paper draws on research from the social sciences and futures studies to argue for the importance of diversifying and enriching visions of future everyday life within design. Critical design is well equipped to contribute to this objective because it questions the status quo and is relatable and actionable for designers. The paper reviews exemplars from critical design for their potential to democratise and anticipate future everyday life. To analyse their ways of engaging with future everyday life, the exemplars are positioned in the future cone model of probable, possible and preferred futures. Through this positioning, a distinction emerged between two forms of critical future engagement: alternative fictions and extrapolative fictions. Alternative fictions are explicitly positioned outside of generally expected futures, while extrapolative fictions are explicitly positioned within them. Both have their own strengths and limitations for democratising and anticipating future everyday life. Alternative fictions enrol actors as “future people” and create scenes to depict future contexts, but can also include deployments in present day contexts to explore alternative human-artefact relations. Alternative fictions tend to be accompanied by alternative design practices. Extrapolative fictions do not include deployments and rarely propose alternative design practices, but they can play an important role in highlighting the underexposed risks of mainstream design pursuits. Critical design can and should play a role in democratising and anticipating future everyday life. Alternative and extrapolative fictions can complement each other in this pursuit. Extrapolative fictions question the status quo from within and use the power of design to highlight underexposed aspects of expected futures. Alternative fictions question the status quo from without and use the power of design to creatively generate different objects that can be used to flesh out alternative ways of living and their related context. Further research is needed into how critical fictions are best integrated into mainstream design practices

Practices-oriented design

Practices-oriented design groups a range of design approaches that draw on practice theory – a group of social theories that take practices as their fundamental unit of analysis. This chapter offers a design-tailored introduction to practice theory, a brief overview of its uptake into design literature and a description of one particular practices-oriented design approach that was developed through a series of design projects focussing on reducing domestic energy demand. By illustrating practices-oriented design with a detailed approach and an example on domestic heating, the chapter shows how practice theory offers a conceptual framework that is helpful for understanding and tackling complex societal issues such as sustainability. By paying explicit attention to history and diversity, the approach opens up avenues for more radical change, while at the same time staying close to the practicalities of making change happen. In the heating case, a variety of interventions that involve change in both domestic and professional practices contribute to a redefinition of domestic comfort that involves fresh air and warm clothes. Avenues for further research in this area lie in exploring the implications of viewing practices of design as an integral part of the ‘behaviours’ it is trying to change