An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in Product-Service Systems?

Copyright @ 2014 Greenleaf Publishing.Eco-efficient Product-Service Systems (PSS, in which the economic interest of the stakeholders involved in the offer continuously foster the optimisation of environmental resource consumption) represent a promising approach to sustainability. However, despite their potential win–win characteristics, the application of this concept is still limited. One key reason is that eco-efficient PSSs are often radical innovations and their adoption usually challenges existing customers’ habits (cultural barriers), companies’ organisations (corporate barriers), and regulative framework (regulative barriers). Starting from these considerations this chapter first investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptance of eco-efficient PSS alternatives. A debate is then opened on the aesthetics of eco-efficient PSSs and the way in which aesthetics could enhance specific inner qualities of eco-efficient PSSs, i.e. facilitating and enhancing their wider diffusion. Through the analysis of several case studies, and integrating insights from semiotics, the chapter then outlines several research hypotheses on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptance and satisfaction

Fast filtering and animation of large dynamic networks

Detecting and visualizing what are the most relevant changes in an evolving network is an open challenge in several domains. We present a fast algorithm that filters subsets of the strongest nodes and edges representing an evolving weighted graph and visualize it by either creating a movie, or by streaming it to an interactive network visualization tool. The algorithm is an approximation of exponential sliding time-window that scales linearly with the number of interactions. We compare the algorithm against rectangular and exponential sliding time-window methods. Our network filtering algorithm: i) captures persistent trends in the structure of dynamic weighted networks, ii) smoothens transitions between the snapshots of dynamic network, and iii) uses limited memory and processor time. The algorithm is publicly available as open-source software.Comment: 6 figures, 2 table

Affective graphs: the visual appeal of linked data

The essence and value of Linked Data lies in the ability of humans and machines to query, access and reason upon highly structured and formalised data. Ontology structures provide an unambiguous description of the structure and content of data. While a multitude of software applications and visualization systems have been developed over the past years for Linked Data, there is still a significant gap that exists between applications that consume Linked Data and interfaces that have been designed with significant focus on aesthetics. Though the importance of aesthetics in affecting the usability, effectiveness and acceptability of user interfaces have long been recognised, little or no explicit attention has been paid to the aesthetics of Linked Data applications. In this paper, we introduce a formalised approach to developing aesthetically pleasing semantic web interfaces by following aesthetic principles and guidelines identified from literature. We apply such principles to design and develop a generic approach of using visualizations to support exploration of Linked Data, in an interface that is pleasing to users. This provides users with means to browse ontology structures, enriched with statistics of the underlying data, facilitating exploratory activities and enabling visual query for highly precise information needs. We evaluated our approach in three ways: an initial objective evaluation comparing our approach with other well-known interfaces for the semantic web and two user evaluations with semantic web researchers

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Diagramming social practice theory:An interdisciplinary experiment exploring practices as networks

Achieving a transition to a low-carbon energy system is now widely recognised as a key challenge facing humanity. To date, the vast majority of research addressing this challenge has been conducted within the disciplines of science, engineering and economics utilising quantitative and modelling techniques. However, there is growing awareness that meeting energy challenges requires fundamentally socio-technical solutions and that the social sciences have an important role to play. This is an interdisciplinary challenge but, to date, there remain very few explorations of, or reflections on, interdisciplinary energy research in practice. This paper seeks to change that by reporting on an interdisciplinary experiment to build new models of energy demand on the basis of cutting-edge social science understandings. The process encouraged the social scientists to communicate their ideas more simply, whilst allowing engineers to think critically about the embedded assumptions in their models in relation to society and social change. To do this, the paper uses a particular set of theoretical approaches to energy use behaviour known collectively as social practice theory (SPT) - and explores the potential of more quantitative forms of network analysis to provide a formal framework by means of which to diagram and visualize practices. The aim of this is to gain insight into the relationships between the elements of a practice, so increasing the ultimate understanding of how practices operate. Graphs of practice networks are populated based on new empirical data drawn from a survey of different types (or variants) of laundry practice. The resulting practice networks are analysed to reveal characteristics of elements and variants of practice, such as which elements could be considered core to the practice, or how elements between variants overlap, or can be shared. This promises insights into energy intensity, flexibility and the rootedness of practices (i.e. how entrenched/ established they are) and so opens up new questions and possibilities for intervention. The novelty of this approach is that it allows practice data to be represented graphically using a quantitative format without being overly reductive. Its usefulness is that it is readily applied to large datasets, provides the capacity to interpret social practices in new ways, and serves to open up potential links with energy modeling. More broadly, a significant dimension of novelty has been the interdisciplinary approach, radically different to that normally seen in energy research. This paper is relevant to a broad audience of social scientists and engineers interested in integrating social practices with energy engineering