Crafting workspaces by entangling physical and digital environments

Digital working is often seen to be replacing office-based work practices. This study captures the opposite, the entanglement of features of both physical and digital by software development teams in a multinational IT company. We observed how these software development teams crafted three types of entangled workspaces, characterised by different modulations of digital and physical features of their environment. We take an ontogenetic view of space that sees space as performative and constantly in the making to study the crafting of these entangled workspaces which transcend both physical and digital environments. This sociospatial view provides a novel conceptual basis to study the role of space in digital working

Critical Tools for Machine Learning:Working with Intersectional Critical Concepts in Machine Learning Systems Design

This paper investigates how intersectional critical theoretical concepts from social sciences and humanities research can be worked with in machine learning systems design. It does so by presenting a case study of a series of speculative design workshops, conducted in 2021. These workshops drew on intersectional feminist methodologies to construct interdisciplinary interventions in the design of machine learning systems, towards more inclusive, accountable, and contextualized systems design. The concepts of "situating/situated knowledges", "figuration", "diffraction", and "critical fabulation/speculation"were taken up as theoretical and methodological tools for concept-led design workshops. This paper presents the design framework of the workshops and highlights tensions and possibilities with regards to interdisciplinary machine learning systems design towards more inclusive, contextualized, and accountable systems. It discusses the role that critical theoretical concepts can play in a design process and shows how such concepts can work as methodological tools that nonetheless require an open-ended experimental space to function. It presents insights and discussion points regarding what it means to work with critical intersectional knowledge that is inextricably connected to its historical and socio-political roots, and how this reframes what it might mean to design fair and accountable systems.</p

A Methodological Framework for Crafting Situated Services

Purpose – This paper discusses how service design can be used to activate a transition of textile artisan communities towards a sustainable future. Design/methodology/approach – Two participatory case studies were undertaken with textile artisans in the UK and South Africa. These led to the development of an original methodological framework for “crafting situated services” – services designed to be meaningful to the local communities within which they are embedded. An evaluation study assessed the originality of the framework, its relevance for tackling real-world problems, its extensibility and the rigour of the research process. Findings – The framework brings together a variety of roles, methods and tools that designers can adopt in order to enter communities, make sense of sustainable futures, facilitate the co-design of situated services and activate legacies within communities. Building on emerging anthropological approaches, the framework makes a bridge between service management and service design for social innovation, advancing the field towards design for social entrepreneurship. Originality/value – Arguing against the idea of the designer “parachuting” into communities to create services regardless of the local context, the concept of “situated services” is proposed in this paper, alongside a process for “crafting” meaningful social innovations. This requires the service designer to adopt a more situated and embedded approach to designing with communities in order to align with their needs and aspirations, interweave places, time, people and practices within the process, and co-design contextually better services

Art and Creativity for HIV/AIDS Awareness, Prevention, and Empowerment of Young People in Uganda

Art, youth engagement and informality in the context of HIV prevention have been generally ignored by most researchers and stakeholders within the HIV programming and policy arenas, thus silencing the plight of urban youth infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. In response, this thesis draws on the case of peri-urban settings of Kampala, Uganda to bring geographies of applied sculpture, HIV/AIDS prevention, and youth empowerment into dialogue, informed by the notions of art having the capacity to move beyond the spaces of galleries into an expanded field, and thus, beyond the visual and into the social spheres. In liaison with local NGOs (The Uganda AIDS Support Organisation - TASO, National Guidance and Empowerment Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS - NGEN+ and Lungujja Community based Health care Organisation – LUCOHECO, it adopts a mixed methodological approach, including applied art and participatory techniques - observation, video, storytelling, and interviews, to understand the lived experiences of young people (15-24 years) in marginalized spaces in Kampala. The thesis first examines the general context of using ethnography and applied social sculpture to explore every day experiences by facilitating the engagement of young people in open communication about the epidemic. This is intended to enable them to act in confronting stigma, taboos, and their precarious existence, while raising their awareness about HIV/AIDS. The thesis then explores the everyday precarious existence of young people in informal settings in Kampala. It proceeds to examine how workshops with these young people allowed collective engagement which, in turn, influenced the creation of artworks envisioned to act as communication tools for raising awareness of HIV/AIDS with the potential for livelihood benefits. Finally, the thesis examines young people’s active involvement in participatory workshops for HIV/AIDS prevention, providing ethnographic evidence regarding the artmaking process, the conversations that ensued as they worked, and the creation of applied objects/forms that enabled them to build their confidence to freely express about the precarities affecting their lives, countering taboos, and encouraging them to change their behaviours and practices while potentially acting as change agents in their own communities. It highlights the significance of stimulating open conversations about HIV/AIDS - as a starting point towards confronting stigma and other aspects of precarity, while advocating for the incorporation of the approach into practice by public health experts, policymakers, and development practitioners. The thesis shows the strengths of applied sculpture as an approach that has potential for making sense of ordinary everyday experiences, finding meaning and crafting clarity of young people’s lived experiences in the context of HIV/AIDS. It concludes that applied sculpture is potentially an important tool in tackling HIV/AIDS and its attendant problems by engendering and facilitating open conversations and social economic development through an engagement with the voices and agency of young people in Uganda and beyond

Educational praxis in various Australian indigenous higher education contexts

This thesis critically reports on discourses that impact on the role and work practices of a non-Indigenous educator within Indigenous higher education contexts. The study uses autobiography and narrative inquiry as research methods to examine workplace contexts. The findings reveal competing influences that shape the practices of a non-Indigenous educator

Animators of Atlanta: Layering Authenticity in the Creative Industries

This dissertation explores post-authentic neoliberal animation production culture, tracing the ways authenticity is used as a resource to garner professional autonomy and security during precarious times. Animators engage in two modes of production, the first in creating animated content, and the other in constructing a professional identity. Analyzing animator discourse allows for a nuanced exploration of how these processes interact and congeal into common sense. The use of digital software impacts the animator’s capacity to legitimize themselves as creatives and experts, traditional tools become vital for signifying creative authenticity in a professional environment. The practice of decorating one’s desk functions as a tactic to layer creative authenticity, but the meaning of this ritual is changing now that studios shift to open spaces while many animators work from home. Layering authenticity on-screen often requires blending techniques from classical Hollywood cinema into animated performance, concomitant with a bid to legitimate the role of the authentic interlocutor for the character. Increasingly animators feel pressure to layer authenticity online, establishing an audience as a means to hedge against precarity. The recombined self must balance the many methods for layering creative and professional authenticity with the constraints and affordances of their tools, along with the demands of the studio, to yield cultural capital vital for an animator’s survival in an industry defined at once by its limitless expressive potential and economic uncertainty

Becoming with Clothes : Activating wearer-worn engagements through design

Frequently associated with the superficial and the frivolous, fashion has been treated as a subject of lowly relevance in both practice and research. Not exclusive to fashion, this overvaluation of the superficial and the visual has deemed the relationships between individuals and designed artefacts as weak and unengaged. In order to shift this state of affairs, this research asks about paths towards more active engagements between wearer and worn. More specifically, it is interested in understanding how fashion designers can support this change through practice. In order to answer this question, the experiences between wearer and worn and the ways these two entities interact become a central matter of concern. The realm of experience has been marginalised in the considerations of fashion studies as they have privileged investigations on fashion as a system of signification. Through a literature review, this research confirms that the few considerations on the experience between wearer and worn are articulated at a theoretical level with little applications to practice. This doctoral research is situated between the fields of fashion, design and philosophy, and unfolds as two iterative experiments in fashion design, developed under a research through design approach. Within the experiments, the design process is exposed and its outcomes are investigated through the experiences of the participants. Against the lack of previously developed methods to investigate experience between individuals and their clothes, the research engages in crafting a methodology able to embrace this study subject. Named ‘wardrobe interventions’, this method inspired by Cultural Probes collects data longitudinally on long-term relationships via deployed kits containing a garment and a diary. In the project, the importance of the interaction between wearer and worn is made visible in the theoretical framework, as it prioritises experience and agency over culture and visuality. Here, the data collected is interpreted under the light of a revised phenomenological approach, strongly grounded on theories of material agency. The first experiment, Dress(v.), explores dress in an active form and asks about ways to enhance the wearer’s reflectiveness on wearing practices. The findings from this first experiment suggest care, wardrobe novelty and time as spaces to be explored further towards more engaged relationships. The second experiment, Wear \Wear, builds on these findings. It explores answers to the question of time as a space for design and proposes surprise as a catalyst to active engagements between people and clothes. The results reveal that open-endedness can be used as a tool to motivate stronger engagements and make visible the agency of clothes. The findings expose how knowledge on clothing is constructed through embodied experiences and mutual affects — or in other words, through becomings. Once open to such becomings, wearers are aware of clothing’s ability to act, and more engaged relationships may emerge. This doctoral dissertation expects to share with its readers an urgent need to make visible the agency of clothes. It contributes to previous fashion studies by broadening understanding of the ways humans and clothing interact and presents a methodology to support this endeavour. In the field of practice, the investigation suggests ways of entangling research and practice, highlighting the relevance of wearing as a matter of great concern to designers in the field of fashion

The process of learning craft knowledge in the case of pottery in the UK

This thesis explores the nature of craft knowledge and how and where this knowledge can be learnt. Intrigued by the tension between the risk of pottery craft knowledge being lost and yet the persistence of pottery in the UK, I started to explore why and how this craft resilience happened and is still happening today. There are two aspects which affect the teaching and learning of craft knowledge: the contextual conditions, and the nature of craft knowledge. The contextual political, social, cultural, organisational, economic, and spatial factors have affected the teaching and learning of craft knowledge differently throughout history. These systems have both supported and disrupted the sharing and development of craft knowledge across time and space. Besides these contextual conditions, the nature of craft knowledge has also affected this process. The tacit nature of craft knowledge makes it difficult to teach through formalised language, and, therefore, hard to learn independently from the knowledgeable or share separately from particular communities. There is various literature discussing the teaching and learning of craft through the perspectives of embodiment, master-apprentice relationships, and social communities. However, less attention has been paid to the material perspective when considering craft teaching and learning. Therefore, this thesis explores the materiality involved in embodiment, master-apprentice relationships, and the physical space of a pottery studio. Responding to the resurgence in craft practice in potters’ studios and the theoretical approach to craft learning, this research constructs a theoretical framework of craft learning. Additionally, it explores the micro mechanisms of developing craft knowledge in the studio space in order to support the effective teaching of craft knowledge. Within these contexts, I ask the question: how is craft knowledge learnt in the perspective of relationships between potters and matter, less and more experienced potters, and the learning in studio space? Within this research, I conducted interviews with 20 studio potters in the UK and observed my own pottery learning experience to explore the various relationships between teacher, learner, materials, tools, equipment, space, and time. New materialism provided the theoretical approach to analyse these relationships. The research findings show that non-humans played active roles in the production of craft knowledge and process of learning. Potters learnt craft in the moments of touching and feeling non-human actors’ movements. They listened to the clay, embodied themselves into the tools, and kept pace with the movements of potter’s wheels. Their level of expertise increased through the process becoming attuned with the movements of non-humans. Learning craft also emerged from the intra-actions between non-humans, for example in the firing of pots. This materialised sensitivity was key to the sharing of craft knowledge between the master and apprentice, teacher and learners. This craft learning happened, affected, and was affected by the particular material arrangements and layout of the studio space. The meaning of space was affected by spatial activities and it transformed and changed. In this studio space, the various relationalities between human and non-human actors were shifted, transformed, routinised, and destabilised across time and presented in the moments of practice. The social, imaginative, and material aspects of spaces were co-constructed and weaved together in the physical space of studio. Through the research findings, a conceptual model was developed and constructed to locate craft learning in the aspects of social and material relationships. Previous research has discussed the social relationships and embodiment in the teaching and learning of craft knowledge, however, the aspect of materiality still needs more attention. Therefore, this research contributes to the understanding of craft knowledge, and where and how to learn craft knowledge, through exploring materiality in the micro mechanism of craft learning process. The perspective of materiality, drawing from new materialism, also contributes to the understanding of research methodology through reconsidering the active engagement of non-humans in the research process and recognising the uncertainty, fluidity, and changes present when conducting research. Additionally, this research contributes to the understanding of practical perspectives within the learning of craft knowledge in a small studio space and suggests policies to rebuild the physical and material spaces of studios to revive and reconstruct craft knowledge, craft practice, and craft communities

The process of learning craft knowledge in the case of pottery in the UK

This thesis explores the nature of craft knowledge and how and where this knowledge can be learnt. Intrigued by the tension between the risk of pottery craft knowledge being lost and yet the persistence of pottery in the UK, I started to explore why and how this craft resilience happened and is still happening today. There are two aspects which affect the teaching and learning of craft knowledge: the contextual conditions, and the nature of craft knowledge. The contextual political, social, cultural, organisational, economic, and spatial factors have affected the teaching and learning of craft knowledge differently throughout history. These systems have both supported and disrupted the sharing and development of craft knowledge across time and space. Besides these contextual conditions, the nature of craft knowledge has also affected this process. The tacit nature of craft knowledge makes it difficult to teach through formalised language, and, therefore, hard to learn independently from the knowledgeable or share separately from particular communities. There is various literature discussing the teaching and learning of craft through the perspectives of embodiment, master-apprentice relationships, and social communities. However, less attention has been paid to the material perspective when considering craft teaching and learning. Therefore, this thesis explores the materiality involved in embodiment, master-apprentice relationships, and the physical space of a pottery studio. Responding to the resurgence in craft practice in potters’ studios and the theoretical approach to craft learning, this research constructs a theoretical framework of craft learning. Additionally, it explores the micro mechanisms of developing craft knowledge in the studio space in order to support the effective teaching of craft knowledge. Within these contexts, I ask the question: how is craft knowledge learnt in the perspective of relationships between potters and matter, less and more experienced potters, and the learning in studio space? Within this research, I conducted interviews with 20 studio potters in the UK and observed my own pottery learning experience to explore the various relationships between teacher, learner, materials, tools, equipment, space, and time. New materialism provided the theoretical approach to analyse these relationships. The research findings show that non-humans played active roles in the production of craft knowledge and process of learning. Potters learnt craft in the moments of touching and feeling non-human actors’ movements. They listened to the clay, embodied themselves into the tools, and kept pace with the movements of potter’s wheels. Their level of expertise increased through the process becoming attuned with the movements of non-humans. Learning craft also emerged from the intra-actions between non-humans, for example in the firing of pots. This materialised sensitivity was key to the sharing of craft knowledge between the master and apprentice, teacher and learners. This craft learning happened, affected, and was affected by the particular material arrangements and layout of the studio space. The meaning of space was affected by spatial activities and it transformed and changed. In this studio space, the various relationalities between human and non-human actors were shifted, transformed, routinised, and destabilised across time and presented in the moments of practice. The social, imaginative, and material aspects of spaces were co-constructed and weaved together in the physical space of studio. Through the research findings, a conceptual model was developed and constructed to locate craft learning in the aspects of social and material relationships. Previous research has discussed the social relationships and embodiment in the teaching and learning of craft knowledge, however, the aspect of materiality still needs more attention. Therefore, this research contributes to the understanding of craft knowledge, and where and how to learn craft knowledge, through exploring materiality in the micro mechanism of craft learning process. The perspective of materiality, drawing from new materialism, also contributes to the understanding of research methodology through reconsidering the active engagement of non-humans in the research process and recognising the uncertainty, fluidity, and changes present when conducting research. Additionally, this research contributes to the understanding of practical perspectives within the learning of craft knowledge in a small studio space and suggests policies to rebuild the physical and material spaces of studios to revive and reconstruct craft knowledge, craft practice, and craft communities

An approach to managing the complexity of knowledge intensive business processes

Organisations face ever growing complexity in the business environment and use processes to deliver value in a stable, sustainable and controllable way. However complexity in the business environment is threatening the stability of processes and forcing their continuing evolution in ever shorter time cycles, which then creates significant management challenges. Addressing complexity requires a change in management thinking about processes.The research explores the nature of complexity, how businesses respond to it, and the consequent impact on process complexity. The research reviews the notion of complexity and its relevance to organisations, business processes and knowledge contexts. The research focuses on knowledge intensive firms, as these exhibit several of the features and allow early application of the approach suggested by this thesis. The research draws upon concepts from several fields including complexity and complex systems, business process management, and knowledge management.This thesis addresses the question: “How can organisations address the complexity of knowledge intensive business processes?” In answering the question the thesis argues the need to integrate multiple perspectives involved in managing such processes, proposes an approach to complex knowledge intensive business processes that reduces the management challenge, and argues the need to develop an agile shared knowledge context in support of the approach.This thesis develops a theoretical framework consisting of a set of hypotheses rooted in the literature, and then proposes an approach to addressing complex knowledge intensive business processes based upon these hypotheses. Then,through a series of QDS investigations and action research cycles, this thesis tests the hypotheses, further develops the approach and examines its application in different problem domains in multiple organisations. This thesis then discusses the process and the outcomes of applying the approach, identifies its limitations, assesses its contribution to knowledge and suggests directions for further research