ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

Designer as Ethnographer: A Study of Domestic Cooking and Heating Product Design for Irish Older Adults

In many ways, the design of domestic cooking and heating products reflects the zeitgeist of Irish culture throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. From domesticity to materialism, these products have evolved to meet fundamental human needs within the home. Concurrent with this, the methods and processes designers use to create domestic artefacts have evolved and changed. The emergence of Design Ethnography illustrates an evolution where Design has appropriated an established method of Anthropology for its own particular objectives. However, the integrity of the ethnography practised by designers has been criticised by many, e.g. Dourish questions whether it creates forms of “discount ethnography” (2006, p.548). The designer ethnographer has different objectives to the anthropologist and the particular principles, methods, and understanding of design ethnography have not been fully elucidated for use by professional designers. Bichard and Gheerawo observe “…if anthropologists and ethnographers appear to be becoming designers as such, then perhaps designers should allow themselves to reflect on their ‘field’ and ‘work’ more as anthropologists and ethnographers”(2011, p.55). The identification and construction of a design ethnography, epistemology, and methodology that is distinct from, while respectful of that of anthropology, is required. Design ethnography has been heralded for its ability to investigate future complex issues for humanity, and to produce powerful, democratising, and radical effects (Plowman, 2003). Meeting the demands of a growing older population will be one of these future complexities. Ireland is rapidly becoming an ageing society with its population living longer in ill health (McGill, 2010). 89% of older Irish people would prefer to live at home rather than in institutional care (McGee et al., 2005). Therefore developing healthy environments in which they grow old must be a priority. Particular attention must be given to the design of domestic products that provide older people with basic daily requirements. Domestic cooking and heating products offer basic health and wellbeing needs in the form of nutrition and heat. Prior to designing these products a deep understanding of older people’s needs must be determined. To achieve this, empathy and sensitivity are essential (Newell et al., 2010). Comprehensive field studies such as ethnographies are important in gaining understanding and eliciting true user insights (Seidel, 2009, Newell et al., 2010) This thesis contributes to two domains. Firstly, it identifies and develops an understanding of the essence of design ethnography, and a process by which designers can harness ethnographic methods for the purposes of design practice. Secondly, it provides an example of a designer ethnographic approach to product design for older people, producing insights and product design requirements for cooking and heating products. The research involved design ethnographic fieldwork over twelve months within the homes of forty older adult participants across Ireland and from various socio-economic groups. Personas, design requirements, and concepts were produced, which allowed the researcher to reflect on the role of design ethnographer and inform future practice. Insights into product requirement were deep and far reaching, revealing important and diverse health and wellbeing needs to be addressed for older people in domestic products. A methods and process framework is formulated for conducting future design ethnography, from fieldwork and data analysis to design practice

Systemic Design for the innovation of home appliances The meaningfulness of data in designing sustainable systems

This work addressed the domestic environment considering this context as a complex system characterised by significant impacts in terms of resource consumption. Within the theoretical framework of Systemic Design (SD), this thesis focused on home appliances, in order to understand how to reduce the impact directly attributable to them, while optimising and simplifying daily tasks for the user. A design methodology towards environmental sustainability has been structured, by focusing on the use of data for design purposes and on creating value for the user through meaningful products. It considers the user, the product and the environment as central topics, by giving them the same relevance and the literature review is structured accordingly, investigating needs and requirements, ethical issues, but also current products and future scenarios. During my experience at TU Delft, I spent six months in the Department of Internet of Things at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Together with computer scientists, we developed a prototype to collect some missing data, establishing the importance of grounding the decision-making on reliable information. IoT and data gathering open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of products and households useful for design purposes, up to understand how to fill the gap perceived by the user between needs and solutions. It considered the potential benefits of using IoT indicators to collect missing information about both the product, its use and its operating environment to address critical aspects in the design stage, thus extending products’ lifetime. This thesis highlighted the importance of building multidisciplinary design teams to investigate different classes of requirements, and the need for flexible tools to cope with complex and evolving requirements, the co-evolution of problem and solutions and investigating open-ended questions. This approach leaves room for addressing every step of the traditional life-cycle in a more circular way, shifting the focus from the life-cycle centrality of the previous century to a more complex vision about the product

Human-Centred Design: sustainable ideas and scenarios for the development of projects and products based on knowledge and human abilities

Human-Centred Design is defined as the discipline relating to products and services that, in different ways, takes into account the psycho-physical wellness of human beings, and is formulated according to an approach based on User-Centred Design (UCD). The User-Centred Design approach considers the relationships and the interactions users have with products while using them, and is developed within disciplines not properly belonging to the field of design. At the beginning of last century, with studies in psychology (1899) and semiotics (1913-16) the way was opened for the analysis of everyday objects from a systemic point of view. Within the production scenario, modern industry transforms any materials into working and functional objects, but later on, having crossed the absorption threshold, and with production surpluses, the trend will be to reconsider the objects, endowing them with deeper psychological meaning. Together with the psychological there is the semiotic analysis, which, with de Saussure, establishes the existence of a link between words and things, in such a way that human activities are structured like languages and the analysis sees the Linguistics as the basis of a general science of signs, whose purpose is to deepen the social use and the functionality of the objects. The semiotic theorization of Barthes and then Baudrillard, relating to the analysis of objects, follows Saussure’s lead in thinking of the object as a sign or message. Within this area of semiotic analysis, divergent positions from different thought’ schools follow one after the other. Among these, we find Jean Baudrillard’s (1968) and Charles Sanders Pierce’s (2001); both, however, agree on various points: on the determination of the systemic and therefore relational character of the objects, and on the understanding of the mechanisms which are the basis of perceptive judgments, as well as the related elaborations which structure our consciousness (C.S. Pierce), and which come together as a frame of reference in the User-Centred Design approach. Psychology has recently found in Donald A. Norman - the director of the Cognitive Science Society at the University of California, a psychologist with an international reputation for his studies on “short term memory” and contemporary cognitive psychology - a supporter of the analysis of the learning processes. Moreover, his research on memory has a particular bearing on the creation and function of artificial intelligence, highlighted in a theory on the processes of elaboration of data by the brain known as “human information processing”. He orients his studies within the area of “cognitive science” and hypothesizes on the errors due to the appearance incompatibility conditions between man and the environment. In addition to this, cognitive psychology, which has dealt with this subject for more than fifty years, has contributed decisively to the current ergonomic study on the man-machine relationship in terms of User-Centred Design.Peer Reviewe

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Geographic Citizen Science Design

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles. Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds. Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area