Beebots-a-lula, Where's My Honey?: Design Fictions and Beekeeping

The honey bee is a powerful cultural motif that remains an important symbol for the future. Their role as pollinators, alongside a myriad of other species, is critical to the continued diets of humankind. This Future Scenario explores a possible near future where human intervention poses new risks to their survival. Drawing on folklore and contemporary beekeeping practices, Mr Shore's Downfall tells a tale of discovery and loss as a young beekeeper is introduced to the world of honey bees. Three imagined artefacts are revealed through the story and discussed with consideration of their cultural context, desirability and relation to socio-economic factors. Themes from Mr Shore's Downfall are examined, and the potential of writing practice for design fiction practitioners is considered

Applying Design Fiction in Primary Schools to Explore Environmental Challenges.

This paper presents a case study describing the use of design fiction in a cross-curricular project with four classes across two primary schools in inner-city Sheffield. The project combined elements of a Mantle of the Expert dramatic- inquiry approach with design thinking and design fiction, to explore the world of the honey bee. We worked with the schools and children during half a term, leading them through a set of activities (including drama, design, creative writing, and 3D prototyping) to enable the children to discover and understand the threats facing bees, beekeeping, pollination, and the global environmental ramifications of a world without bees. This paper describes the approach adopted and the created design fictions. We discuss the value and limitations of our approach and conclude by offering suggestions for researchers and teachers wishing to engage young people with complex problem spaces

Outdata-ed museums: creating ethical and transparent data collection processes in museums

UK museums are contradictory sites of education and community outreach, and emblems of colonial legacy and elitism. Physical and socioeconomic barriers prevent meaningful engagement for audiences, but particularly marginalised peoples. To identify and overcome these barriers, museums and cultural institutions are seeking technological solutions that capture and analyse personal data. However, current legislation and attitudes towards personal data also risk perpetuating exclusionary barriers. Many governments and organisations use personal data to suppress, undermine, and violently target minoritised or marginalised communities whilst upholding the status quo that marginalised them in the first place. This inequality is further entrenched by the powerlessness most people feel in the face of how data is collected and used on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on Human Computer Interaction, Human Geography and New Museology, this PhD thesis seeks a solution to these concerns that empowers museums to safely collect the data they need whilst enabling audiences to become active in their own data curation. Using co-creative principles, input is sought from museums and audiences to answer three questions: • How are discourses and practices surrounding personal data negotiated, defined, perpetuated, and resisted in museums? • What is the value of personal data to museums and audiences? • Can mutually beneficial and transparent data exchange foster meaningful, long-term relationships between museums and audiences? To address these questions, a novel theoretical framework that explores museums as place, technology as mediator, and relational personal data through a lens of power is generated. Four sequential studies are then conducted utilising a post-structural feminist epistemology. The first study presents a content analysis of privacy policies to explore what data museums typically collect and how that information is conceptualised and shared with audiences, showing that museums collect a broad range of quantitative data but inadequately express to audiences what, how, or why. The second study presents a workshop with museum staff to determine what data would benefit the museum and what prevents it from being captured. It shows that museums seek qualitative, behavioural data but are limited by resource constraints. The third study uses workshop style activities to ask audiences to conceptualise the value of their desirable data and speculate different ways for their data to be used in the museum. The study highlights barriers to data engagement including fatigue and lack of understanding, and shows trust and transparency to be key motivators in data sharing. The fourth study uses a novel methodology to speculate a data-enabled museum visit, from which a technology probe called ‘MuNa’ is developed and tested in a virtual museum visit with real audiences. Evaluation shows how transparency and trust can be synchronously developed through meaningful engagement with data. This is shown to increase the engagement of audiences with both museum and data, fostering long-term, meaningful relationships between venue and visitor and the creation of data subjects able to advocate for their own data rights. The implications of this research reach across each of its disciplines and into the everyday practices of cultural organisations and audiences. Contributing novel paradigms of understanding surrounding the museum visit experience including different stakeholder perspectives addressing museums, technology, and personal data, the thesis presents evidence of an equitable and sustainable, data-enabled future

Outdata-ed museums: creating ethical and transparent data collection processes in museums

UK museums are contradictory sites of education and community outreach, and emblems of colonial legacy and elitism. Physical and socioeconomic barriers prevent meaningful engagement for audiences, but particularly marginalised peoples. To identify and overcome these barriers, museums and cultural institutions are seeking technological solutions that capture and analyse personal data. However, current legislation and attitudes towards personal data also risk perpetuating exclusionary barriers. Many governments and organisations use personal data to suppress, undermine, and violently target minoritised or marginalised communities whilst upholding the status quo that marginalised them in the first place. This inequality is further entrenched by the powerlessness most people feel in the face of how data is collected and used on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on Human Computer Interaction, Human Geography and New Museology, this PhD thesis seeks a solution to these concerns that empowers museums to safely collect the data they need whilst enabling audiences to become active in their own data curation. Using co-creative principles, input is sought from museums and audiences to answer three questions: • How are discourses and practices surrounding personal data negotiated, defined, perpetuated, and resisted in museums? • What is the value of personal data to museums and audiences? • Can mutually beneficial and transparent data exchange foster meaningful, long-term relationships between museums and audiences? To address these questions, a novel theoretical framework that explores museums as place, technology as mediator, and relational personal data through a lens of power is generated. Four sequential studies are then conducted utilising a post-structural feminist epistemology. The first study presents a content analysis of privacy policies to explore what data museums typically collect and how that information is conceptualised and shared with audiences, showing that museums collect a broad range of quantitative data but inadequately express to audiences what, how, or why. The second study presents a workshop with museum staff to determine what data would benefit the museum and what prevents it from being captured. It shows that museums seek qualitative, behavioural data but are limited by resource constraints. The third study uses workshop style activities to ask audiences to conceptualise the value of their desirable data and speculate different ways for their data to be used in the museum. The study highlights barriers to data engagement including fatigue and lack of understanding, and shows trust and transparency to be key motivators in data sharing. The fourth study uses a novel methodology to speculate a data-enabled museum visit, from which a technology probe called ‘MuNa’ is developed and tested in a virtual museum visit with real audiences. Evaluation shows how transparency and trust can be synchronously developed through meaningful engagement with data. This is shown to increase the engagement of audiences with both museum and data, fostering long-term, meaningful relationships between venue and visitor and the creation of data subjects able to advocate for their own data rights. The implications of this research reach across each of its disciplines and into the everyday practices of cultural organisations and audiences. Contributing novel paradigms of understanding surrounding the museum visit experience including different stakeholder perspectives addressing museums, technology, and personal data, the thesis presents evidence of an equitable and sustainable, data-enabled future