92,131 research outputs found
Artful Living: Examining the Relationship Between Artistic Practice and Subjective Wellbeing Across Three National Surveys
Over the past few decades, elected officials and policy leaders have increasingly focused on "quality of life issues," seeking ways to not only create jobs and grow the economy but also to help people both strengthen family and community life and advance health and happiness. The arts have a role to play in this new agenda. In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts collaborated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to host a convening examining the relationship between the arts and wellbeing. From that meeting emerged an interagency task force involving 13 federal agencies and departments with the goal to encourage more research on how the arts help people develop their full potential at all stages of life. Rocco Landesman helped frame the new initiative when he remarked, "How do the arts help build us as a people and as individuals? We share a fundamental mission -- how to improve the quality of life. The arts are central to human development".This report represents an initial exploration of the thesis that the arts are essential to a high quality of life. Using three national datasets, we examine the correlation between artistic practice and wellbeing among a representative national sample of adults, a sample of undergraduate seniors, and a sample of former arts graduates. Overall, we find strong support that artistic practice is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, a more positive self image, less anxiety about change, a more tolerant and open approach to diverse others, and, in some cases, less focus on materialistic values and the acquisition of goods
Itâs the Little Things that CountâŠ
This paper will discuss the importance of detailed design decisions in the long term sustainability of any infrastructure system. It presents the concept of Universal Composition, first introduced by UCLâs new Universal Composition Laboratory (âUCL-squaredâ) and emerging from the need to design in space and time for multiple senses towards the creation of more accessible, understandable and meaningful environments. It thus presents infrastructure design from the point of view of human perception, and argues the need to design for the senses in order to encourage sustainable behaviours concerning human mobility, transport and locational choice. After first explaining people-environment interactions, it discusses how the design of our urban infrastructure systems and environments can help stimulate our senses and thus behavioural change. Through two examples concerning bus stops implemented in London, it will explain how the role of both low and high tech technologies can help enhance interaction, improve accessibility and encourage usage. Thus, this paper aims to show that seemingly small details have a big role to play in the creation of infrastructure systems which enable, rather than inhibit, long term sustainable developmen
Resonating Experiences of Self and Others enabled by a Tangible Somaesthetic Design
Digitalization is penetrating every aspect of everyday life including a
human's heart beating, which can easily be sensed by wearable sensors and
displayed for others to see, feel, and potentially "bodily resonate" with.
Previous work in studying human interactions and interaction designs with
physiological data, such as a heart's pulse rate, have argued that feeding it
back to the users may, for example support users' mindfulness and
self-awareness during various everyday activities and ultimately support their
wellbeing. Inspired by Somaesthetics as a discipline, which focuses on an
appreciation of the living body's role in all our experiences, we designed and
explored mobile tangible heart beat displays, which enable rich forms of bodily
experiencing oneself and others in social proximity. In this paper, we first
report on the design process of tangible heart displays and then present
results of a field study with 30 pairs of participants. Participants were asked
to use the tangible heart displays during watching movies together and report
their experience in three different heart display conditions (i.e., displaying
their own heart beat, their partner's heart beat, and watching a movie without
a heart display). We found, for example that participants reported significant
effects in experiencing sensory immersion when they felt their own heart beats
compared to the condition without any heart beat display, and that feeling
their partner's heart beats resulted in significant effects on social
experience. We refer to resonance theory to discuss the results, highlighting
the potential of how ubiquitous technology could utilize physiological data to
provide resonance in a modern society facing social acceleration.Comment: 18 page
Interdisciplinary working in service design: case studies for designing touch points
The paper argues that interdisciplinary design can be successful in services design. It offers information about 2 case studies in which interdisciplinary teams address design services problems. The paper explains the design method employed in the case studies. It also identifies âuser design centredâ as the main concept that drove the design approach. It explains the meaning of âuser centred designâ, of âservices designâ and highlights the importance of âinterdisciplinary services designâ. The paper also offers a framework for interdisciplinary working in service design.
KEYWORDS: Service Design, Touch Points, Interdisciplinary workin
A Proposal To Support Wellbeing in People With Borderline Personality Disorder: Applying Reminiscent Theory in a Mobile App
In this paper the research draws upon reminiscence therapy, which is used in
treating dementia, as an applied theory to promote well being in people who
experience low moods. The application proposed here aims to promote wellbeing
for people suffering from mood disorders and dementia but could potentially be
used to enhance wellbeing for many types of users. Use of the application is
anticipated to improve mood in a group of users where severe emotional problems
are prevalent. The research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a
reminiscence based application in promoting well being in people specifically
with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The long term objective of this
research is to establish the effectiveness of reminiscence theory on user
groups aside from dementia, particularly other mental illnesses. The research
advocates involving end users within the design process both to inform and
evaluate the development of a mobile and tablet application.Comment: Conference pape
Play in the city: Parkour and architecture
The ability to play freely in our cities is essential for sustainable wellbeing. When integrated successfully into our cities, Urban Play performs an important role; physically, socially and culturally contributing to the image of the city. While Urban Play is essential, it also finds itself in conflict with the city. Under modernist urban approaches play activities have become progressively segregated from the urban context through a tripartite of design, procurement and management practices. Despite these restrictions, emergent underground play forms overcome the isolation of play within urban space. One of these activities (parkour) is used as an evocative case study to reveal the hidden urban terrains of desire and fear as it re-interprets the fabric of the city, eliciting practice based discussions about procurement, design and management practice along its route
Designing a Travel Guide to the Un-Natural World: Exploring a Design-led Methodology
The analogy of designer as tourist in the un-natural world is used as an aid for thinking my way into the nature of design research. An exploration of how the design researcher, like a tourist, travels widely through the un-natural world of thought, theory and concept. If we are to design a travel guide for the un-natural world then what would this guide book look like, why do we need it and how could it work? The paper will propose that a âtravel guide to the un-natural worldâ in the form of a design-led methodology is needed for research into sustainable development and is useful not only for the design discipline but for the research community at large. These premises have been derived from the aptitude of the design process and the creative methods it employs to deal with the complex messiness of issues such as sustainability. Such a design-led methodology would be useful for the wider research community due to the integrative abilities of the design process and the trans-disciplinary scope of the tour through the un-natural world. Design-led methodology will be explored using examples from field work in Tumut (rural New South Wales, Australia)
Keywords:
Design Research, Design-Led Methods, Metadesign, Sustainability.</p
Painting the ideal home: using art to express visions of technologically supported independent living for older people in North East England
This paper describes the investigation of the development of future technological products to support older people in everyday living through the agency of a community art group. Recent research has identified a number of challenges facing designers seeking to use traditional participatory design approaches to gather technology requirements data from older people. Here, a project is described that sought to get a group of older people to think creatively about their needs and desires for technological support through the medium of paint. The artistic expression technique described in this article allowed the identification of issues that had also been found by previous research that used a range of different techniques. This indicates that the approach shows promise, as it allows information to be gathered in an environment that is comfortable and familiar using methods already known by the participants and which they find enjoyable. It provides a complement (or possible alternative) to standard protocols and has the potential benefit of extracting even richer information as the primary task for participants is enjoyable in its own right and is not associated with an interrogative process. Furthermore, it is argued that some of the key risks of traditional approaches are lessened or removed by the naturalistic setting of this approach
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Touch, E-textiles and Participation: Using E-textiles to Facilitate Hands-On Making Workshops with Blind and Visually-Impaired People
Reflections on the heuristic experiences of a multidisciplinary team trying to bring the PCA to participatory design (with emphasis on the IPR method)
This paper introduces a heuristic case study, reflecting on the use of the Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) method as part of An Internet of Soft Things, a multidisciplinary design research project working with the UK mental health charity, Mind. The three authors represent three different disciplines within the project â Psychotherapy, e-Textiles, and Human-Computer Interaction â and naturally bring their own experiences and expectations to the multidisciplinary team process. The aim of the project is to develop, through practice, a methodology for a Person-Centred Approach to design, informed by the theories and practice of Carl Rogers, and thereby to address the increasing need for researcher reflection in Participatory Design. The paper outlines the project and describes our experiences of IPR within it; it discusses how we are taking this work forward and closes with some guidelines based on our personal observations in working with this method
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