Changing my life one step at a time – using the Twelve Step program as design inspiration for long term lifestyle change

To explore how people manage and maintain life style change, we conducted interviews with eight members of different Twelve Step Fellowships with 2-23 years of recovery about how they maintain and develop their recovery in everyday life. They reported how identification, sharing, and routines are keys to recovery. Our lessons for design concerns how these concepts support recovery in a long term perspective: Sharing to contribute in a broader sense to the fellowship and to serve as an example for fellow members created motivation even after 20 years of recovery; reflecting over routines in recovery was essential since life is constantly changing and routines need to fit into everyday life; concrete gestures were helpful for some of the abstract parts of the recovery work, such as letting go of troubling issues. Design aimed to support maintenance of lifestyle change needs to open up for ways of sharing that allow users to contribute their experiences in ways that create motivation, and support users in reflecting over their routines rather than prompting them on what to do

Information Outlook, August 2005

Volume 9, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2005/1007/thumbnail.jp

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Does innovation matter for economic development? An empirical study of small and medium-sized enterprises in the city of Kumba – Cameroon

In recent years, the development priorities of African countries have focused on private sector development to build a strong market economy that gives a more dynamic role to indigenous entrepreneurs and their innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper investigates the potential for indigenous SMEs in Cameroon to successfully emerge as agents of economic development through innovation. The analysis includes the personal characteristics that make up an indigenous entrepreneur as well as the contemporary environments in which SMEs operate. Building on Schumpeter’s notion that entrepreneurship contributes to economic development through the interplay of new firm creation, innovation and competition, questionnaires and interviews were conducted with indigenous entrepreneurs of selected SMEs in the city of Kumba, one of the most important concentrations of economic activity in the English-Speaking region of Cameroon. The results reveal that while economic profit is a priority for most entrepreneurs, SMEs exists mainly to alleviate poverty through income generating activities and contribute to economic development by providing employment and income for the poor. The SMEs studied focused on adapting, imitating and modifying existing innovations rather than pursuing genuine Schumpeterian innovation. This suggests that innovation is not a priority for the SME sector and therefore policies aimed at catching up with modern technology should be the central focus in providing assistance for indigenous entrepreneurs and these are suggested in this paper

Emotional assuring, trust Building, and resource mobilization in start-up organizations

Based on a five-year field study of six new ventures, we investigate whether and how organization foun-ders use affective influence, a form of emotion management, with diverse stakeholders, namely investors, board members, customers, and employees. We found wide differences in founders' propensity to use affective influence actions and that not all affective influence actions were effective in mobilizing re-sources for the new firm. We identified a particular form of beneficial affective influence we call "emo-tional assuring," which refers to affective influence actions that seek to build three different dimensions of trust in regard to the new firm: (1) the firm's integrity, (2) the founder's competence as an entrepreneur, and (3) the founder's benevolent character. Although firms that practiced little emotional assuring could mobilize adequate resources as well as firms that did it in munificent environments, the latter gained an upper hand and were more resilient under tough economic conditions. We also identified the moderating conditions and limitations of emotional assuring.Affective influence; emotional assuring; emotion; entrepreneurship; organization creation; resource mobilization; trust;

Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development