2,288 research outputs found

    With the Participatory Consumer Audience in mind: exploring and developing professional brand identity designers reflexive practice

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    This PhD reflects upon first-hand unidirectional and passive consumer audience experience approaches prevalent in professional UK brand identity design. It explores: How brand identity designers might move towards an improved reflexive practice in the design of consumer audience experiences. This practice-led research focuses on the ideas generation stage of their design process. An ongoing constructivist audience paradigm shift signals that when thinking about and using their positionality in relation to their consumer audience experiences, designers need reflexive practice to support critical reflection of themselves, their biases and assumptions. This research uncovered a lack of relevant theory regarding reflexive practice specific to the context of brand identity design. This insufficiency throws into doubt designers' relational, participatory and equitable approaches in their working practices and their abilities to address market imperatives, including client requirements connected to the ongoing audience paradigm shift. Aligned with John Dewey's ethical pragmatism and drawing from Creswell, Tashakkori and Teddlie, my study adopts a mixed methods methodology. Alongside established qualitative and quantitative methods, this includes my practice via design visualisations, as discussed by Drucker, and builds upon Carl DiSalvo's approach of practice used to do inquiry and design as a method of inquiry. My practice enabled me to critically reflect, evaluate and construct reflexive practice knowledge, including the development of reflexive practice communications, to advance understanding of and improve other designers' reflexive practice, and to communicate my process of reflexive design practice research. Thirty UK-based professional brand identity designers participated in this research: nineteen participants in Phase One, a questionnaire, and six in Phase Two semi-structured interviews. Phase One and Two findings identified a gap in that designers are not employing a reflexive design practice and lack the resources to do so. Seeking to improve these shortcomings, eighteen initial reflexive design practice principles were explored and tested in Phase Three, a workshop involving five design participants. Results showed that the principles facilitated participants to advance prior thinking and engage in a reflexive design practice. Further reflections and insights from the same five Phase Three participants uncovered a need to refine and reduce the principles and communicate them in a guide. Eight revised overarching and eighteen sub-principles in a prototype guide were explored in Phase Four in applied practice by three brand identity designers involved in Phase Three. Results corroborated workshop findings and provided further recommendations. Contributions of this research are three-fold. First, offering an advanced understanding of professional brand identity designers' reflexive practice and process knowledge. Second, it produced a reflexive design guide with eight overarching and eighteen sub-reflexive design principles and corresponding digital app, thereby offering a preliminary new design practice method. This method offers a way to improve designers' thinking about and operation of their relational positionality, participatory consumer audience experience approaches, and reflexive design practice actions. Third, it provides a contribution to knowledge via its methodology, which integrates design visualisation practice into a mixed methods approach

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    Digitalization and Development

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    This book examines the diffusion of digitalization and Industry 4.0 technologies in Malaysia by focusing on the ecosystem critical for its expansion. The chapters examine the digital proliferation in major sectors of agriculture, manufacturing, e-commerce and services, as well as the intermediary organizations essential for the orderly performance of socioeconomic agents. The book incisively reviews policy instruments critical for the effective and orderly development of the embedding organizations, and the regulatory framework needed to quicken the appropriation of socioeconomic synergies from digitalization and Industry 4.0 technologies. It highlights the importance of collaboration between government, academic and industry partners, as well as makes key recommendations on how to encourage adoption of IR4.0 technologies in the short- and long-term. This book bridges the concepts and applications of digitalization and Industry 4.0 and will be a must-read for policy makers seeking to quicken the adoption of its technologies

    “So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy

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    Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts for organisations, society, and individuals. Offering multi-disciplinary insight into some of these, this article brings together 43 contributions from experts in fields such as computer science, marketing, information systems, education, policy, hospitality and tourism, management, publishing, and nursing. The contributors acknowledge ChatGPT’s capabilities to enhance productivity and suggest that it is likely to offer significant gains in the banking, hospitality and tourism, and information technology industries, and enhance business activities, such as management and marketing. Nevertheless, they also consider its limitations, disruptions to practices, threats to privacy and security, and consequences of biases, misuse, and misinformation. However, opinion is split on whether ChatGPT’s use should be restricted or legislated. Drawing on these contributions, the article identifies questions requiring further research across three thematic areas: knowledge, transparency, and ethics; digital transformation of organisations and societies; and teaching, learning, and scholarly research. The avenues for further research include: identifying skills, resources, and capabilities needed to handle generative AI; examining biases of generative AI attributable to training datasets and processes; exploring business and societal contexts best suited for generative AI implementation; determining optimal combinations of human and generative AI for various tasks; identifying ways to assess accuracy of text produced by generative AI; and uncovering the ethical and legal issues in using generative AI across different contexts

    SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT FOR URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT PLANNING FOR UNCERTAINTY

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    The urban water sector is confronted with a multitude of challenges. Rapid population growth, changing political landscapes, aging water infrastructures, and the worsening climate crisis are creating a range of uncertainties in the sector around managing water. Scenarios have been used extensively in the environmental domain to plan for and capture uncertainties to develop plausible futures, including the field of urban water management. Scenarios are key in enabling plans and creating roadmaps to attain desired futures. Despite the advantages and opportunities that scenarios offer for planning, they also have limitations; generally, and within the urban water space. Firstly, the growing uncertainty surrounding urban water management systems necessitates a focused review specifically aimed at the use of scenarios in urban water management. This thesis presents a systematic review to empirically investigate the crucial dimensions of urban water scenarios. Through this review, key knowledge gaps are highlighted, and recommendations are proposed to address these gaps. Secondly, scenarios often depict distressing, almost dystopian futures. Though negative future visions help understand the consequences of present trends and aid in anticipating imminent threats, the limited exploration of positive future visions can make it challenging to find the direction to transform. Optimistic scenarios delve into what people want for the future and capture how their aspirations shape them. Imagining positive visions encourage innovative thinking, creates agency, and creates pathways to desired futures. There is therefore a recognition to move towards more positive, desirable futures. This thesis uses a narrative, participatory scenario process, the SEEDS method, to develop positive visions of urban water futures. The Greater Sydney region in New South Wales, Australia is used as a case study to evaluate the applicability of this approach for urban water management. The urban water sector in the Greater Sydney region faces a multitude of challenges including impacts from climate change, managing diverse water supply sources, and meeting future water demand. These challenges create an increasingly uncertain future for the water sector, where the scale and nature of water services needed in the Greater Sydney region can be unclear. Hence, the Greater Sydney region is selected as the case study region to apply the SEEDS method and develop scenarios for urban water management to plan for future uncertainties. Thirdly, only a few scenario studies include surprises, the unexpected events, which make scenarios useful for planning. Challenges around capturing surprises in scenarios include a lack of structured approaches as well as a lack of evaluation of those methods that have been developed. This thesis discusses the effectiveness and suitability of various surprise methods for scenario development. These methods have been applied in the context of the SEEDS method for urban water management. Finally, there is a lack of evaluation of the tools used to cope with surprises as well as a lack of evaluation efforts of urban water management scenario studies. The assessment of the SEEDS approach for urban water management as well as the different surprise methods for scenario development requires evaluation criteria. This thesis develops and presents an evaluation criteria list based on existing literature that captures key criteria required for adequate assessment of the surprise methods and the scenario process. This thesis contributes to the fields of scenario development and urban water management, and the use of surprises within scenarios. Critical gaps in existing urban water management scenario practices are highlighted and key recommendations are proposed to fill the gaps. Through the pilot study and full-scale implementation of a positive-visioning, narrative-based scenario approach - the SEEDS method, the thesis demonstrates that the SEEDS method is applicable for urban water planning and shows potential for use at different stages of water planning. The positive visions generated through the SEEDS method highlight fundamental aspirations for the urban water sector, possible challenges, and conflicts, and discuss pathways to achieve positive future visions. By using in-situ experimentation and engaging participants with expertise in the relevant field, this thesis provides a realistic evaluation of the scenario process and surprise methods. This thesis thus fills the critical gap about the lack of evaluation in urban water management scenario processes by assessing the scenario method using selected evaluation criteria. Further, the thesis contributes towards the development of quality surprise methods through application and evaluation, thus addressing the gap about the lack of evaluation of the methods used to explore surprise events. Finally, the lack of surprises in scenarios is addressed by presenting different methods that can be used to explore surprise events. Guidance is provided to researchers working with scenario development to understand the different surprise methods available and for choosing the appropriate method(s) to plan for uncertain futures

    Digital emancipators or oppressors : Evidence from Mobile Personal Finance Applications

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    This study seeks to investigate the impact of mobile personal finance applications on young adults' perceived financial well-being and unanticipated side effects, specifically emancipation and oppression. The study first examines the impact of these applications on financial well-being, examining the motivations and goals of the users behind using these applications. Second, it explores the unexpected side effects on an individual's behaviour and experience, looking at how the pursuit of financial well-being affects the user's freedom in other areas of life. The research is part of the DigiConsumers project, which aims to improve young people's digital financial skills. The research was carried out in two phases. The first phase used the method of empathy-based stories (MEBS) for data collection. This degree represents the second phase, redefining the research questions and analyzing the new theoretical framework. The study investigates using mobile financial applications by users in personal financial management. This reveals that the use of the applications is focused on a few purposes, such as consumption, borrowing and financial monitoring and budgeting. The demographic composition of the participants affected the services used. The research shows that applications concerning today's economy are more important to their users than applications concerning the future economy. Although some areas require improvement, users achieved their goals, and remarkably improved financial well-being with budgeting and planning tools. These apps were found to be both emancipating and oppressive. Users experienced emancipation by simplifying and speeding up tasks such as budgeting, saving and investing. Easy payment transactions also increased the emancipation of some users. However, some faced oppression due to impulsive buying, confusion about the value of digital money, and the over-facilitation of money transfers. The study also found indirect effects of PFM tools on personal and social connections. Personally, the tools speeded up actions, and offered freedom from being tied to time and place, but correspondingly caused stress related to security, privacy and user errors. Social applications, e.g. ai alleviated stress regaTämä tutkimus pyrkii selvittämään mobiilien henkilökohtaisten taloussovellusten vaikutusta nuorten aikuisten koettuun taloudelliseen hyvinvointiin ja odottamattomiin sivuvaikutuksiin, erityisesti emansipaatioon ja sortoon. Tutkimus tarkastelee ensin näiden sovellusten vaiku-tusta taloudelliseen hyvinvointiin, tutkien käyttäjien motivaatioita ja tavoitteita näiden sovel-lusten käytön taustalla. Toiseksi se tutkii odottamattomia sivuvaikutuksia yksilön käyttäytymi-seen ja kokemukseen, tarkastellen miten taloudellisen hyvinvoinnin tavoittelu vaikuttaa käyttäjän vapauteen muilla elämänalueilla. Tutkimus on osa DigiConsumers-projektia, joka pyrkii parantamaan nuorten digitaalisia taloustaitoja. Tutkimus toteutettiin kahdessa vaihees-sa. Ensimmäinen vaihe käytti eläytymismenetelmäksi kutsuttua menetelmää (MEBS) tiedon-keruuseen. Tämä gradu edustaa toista vaihetta, uudelleen määrittäen tutkimuskysymykset ja analysoi uutta teoreettista viitekehystä. Tutkimus tutkii käyttäjien mobiilien taloussovellus-ten hyödyntämistä henkilökohtaisessa taloudenhallinnassa. Tämä paljastaa sovellusten käy-tön keskittyvän muutamiin käyttötarkoituksiin kuten kulutukseen, lainaamiseen ja talouden seurantaan sekä budjetointiin. Osallistujien demografinen koostumus oletettavasti vaikutti käytettyihin palveluihin. Tutkimus osoittaa, että nykyhetken taloutta koskevat sovellukset ovat käyttäjilleen tärkeämpiä kuin tulevaisuuden taloutta koskevat sovellukset. Vaikka jotkin alueet vaativat parannuksia, käyttäjät saavuttivat tavoitteensa, erityisesti parantuneen ta-loudellisen hyvinvoinnin budjetointi- ja suunnittelutyökalujen avulla. Näiden sovellusten todettiin sekä emansipoivan että sortavan. Käyttäjät kokivat emansipaation yksinkertaista-malla ja nopeuttamalla tehtäviä, kuten budjetointia, säästämistä ja sijoittamista. Myös hel-pottunut maksaminen lisäsi emansipaatiota osalla käyttäjiä. Sen sijaan osa kohtasi sortoa impulsiivisen ostamisen, digitaalisen rahan arvon sekaannuksen ja rahansiirtojen liiallisen helpottumisen vuoksi. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin myös PFM-työkalujen epäsuorat vaikutukset henkilökohtaisiin ja sosiaalisiin yhteyksiin. Henkilökohtaisesti työkalut nopeuttivat toimia, tarjosivat vapautusta aika- ja paikkasidonnaisuudesta, mutta aiheuttivat vastaavasti stressiä turvallisuuteen, yksityisyyteen ja käyttäjävirheisiin liittyen. Sosiaalisesti applikaatiot mm. ai-heuttivat stressiä sosiaalisen median esittämän kuluttamisen suhteen, mutta paransivat myös viestintää ja jaettuja kokemuksia. Sovellukset voisivat hyödyntää tekoälyteknologiaa ymmärtääkseen paremmin käyttäjiään ja kokonaisuuksia paremmin sekä neuvoakseen käyt-täjiä tehokkaasti. Tämä ratkaisu voisi lisätä emansipaatiota eri konteksteissa ja edistää talou-dellisia tavoitteita eri tasoilla. On olennaista tutkia, miten teknologiaan pohjautuvaa tavoittei-den optimointia voidaan kehittää eettisesti ja läpinäkyvästi kaikille sidosryhmille
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