The situal self: fashioning identity discourses and loved objects

That we are what we have… is perhaps the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour’ (Belk 1988 p. 139). Women’s individual identity discourses are encoded socially and culturally through relationships with material objects and practices of dress. Relationships with loved objects yield an emotional and intellectual approach that literally unpicks fashion, exposing its operations, its relations to the body whilst at the same time binding feminine structures. This more expansive view of fashion situates the relationship material objects have to the self and how women relate to the material world as a universe of meaning making. The phenomenological inquiry presents a set of methods for practice based research including observations from workshops, in-depth interviews, case studies, films and questionnaires. The research as practice approach includes visual and verbal narratives that portray the essence of the self, interpreting the conceptual complexities that are inherently tentative, temporal and temporary in identity construction. The intimate research portraits are presented as the interplay between image and text; whilst the films portray the silent spaces in research contexts. These visual apparatus speak of expressions of embodiment. It is the articulation of these feminine practices that elucidates the incorporation of the socially constructed body into the corporeal. The situal thus embodies the lived relation as a result of the phenomena experienced in the specific social encounter. The situal, positions the social practices of fashion as a series of intimate identity discourses. Through this collective engagement, heterogeneous forms of knowledge emerge, transforming the act of dressing into a wider view of self and life

Mapping Robots to Therapy and Educational Objectives for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The aim of this study was to increase knowledge on therapy and educational objectives professionals work on with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to identify corresponding state of the art robots. Focus group sessions (n = 9) with ASD professionals (n = 53) from nine organisations were carried out to create an objectives overview, followed by a systematic literature study to identify state of the art robots matching these objectives. Professionals identified many ASD objectives (n = 74) in 9 different domains. State of the art robots addressed 24 of these objectives in 8 domains. Robots can potentially be applied to a large scope of objectives for children with ASD. This objectives overview functions as a base to guide development of robot interventions for these children

Technical Communication and the Development of a Request For Designation (RFD) Submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

In this dissertation, I use autoethnography to retrospectively examine the development of a document submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Specifically, I retrospectively examine my perceptions of the corporate history and corporate culture surrounding the development of the biotech product, how the history and culture influenced the company’s development of a Request For Designation (RFD) FDA submission, and how the RFD affected subsequent events in the company.RFDs are a relatively new type of FDA submission designed specifically for a newly added division within the FDA--the Office of Combination Products (OCP)--formed to evaluate combination products. Combination products are biotech products not easily classified as being solely a biologic, device, or drug. The OCP reviews a combination product’s RFD to assess if a biotech product achieves its primary mode of action (PMOA) through physical (device), chemical (drug), or organic (biologic) means. The purpose of the RFD is to persuade the OCP reviewer to classify the product as per the sponsor’s preferred recommendation--assuming the sponsor can build a sufficiently viable argument supporting the sponsor’s recommended PMOA. The OCP’s determination of PMOA directly affects the development time and expense involved in obtaining clearance from the FDA to market a new biotech product.Although a maximum of only 15-pages in length, an RFD can determine the fate of a new biotech product or the company sponsoring the product. Considering the critical nature of an RFD, it seems natural that hiring a technical communicator to assist in the development of a persuasive-yet-factual RFD should be paramount to a biotech company. However, there is currently little or no discussion of the roles technical communicators play in the development of RFDs and other FDA submissions.By documenting my experiences and observations, it is my intent to objectively share my discoveries and thoughts on developing an RFD (and tangentially other FDA submissions) with other technical communicators so as to provide insight into this new area of exploration within the discipline

Collaborative Networks, Decision Systems, Web Applications and Services for Supporting Engineering and Production Management

This book focused on fundamental and applied research on collaborative and intelligent networks and decision systems and services for supporting engineering and production management, along with other kinds of problems and services. The development and application of innovative collaborative approaches and systems are of primer importance currently, in Industry 4.0. Special attention is given to flexible and cyber-physical systems, and advanced design, manufacturing and management, based on artificial intelligence approaches and practices, among others, including social systems and services

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Crossroads Rhode Island: Proposed Social Enterprise Business Plan

Crossroads Rhode Island provides their clients with a continuum of care that includes basic emergency needs, shelter, housing, case management and vocational services for individuals and families. In order to provide these services they rely on the generosity of their donors and supporters who have helped Crossroads to become the largest homeless services organization in Rhode Island. It is important to Crossroads that they stick to their core values of safety, respect, and effectiveness when helping the homeless or at-risk individuals and families secure stable homes

Playing by the rules: co-designing interactive installations with pupils

During the last couple of decades our perception of what constitutes a good learning environment has changed. Thanks to the use of technology, education is evolving from a passive model towards a more productive model, where students generate knowledge, teach each other, and collaborate on activities that make learning fun and interesting. In some previous works we have adopted this attitude: creating interactive installations thought for learning in an amusing way. Design-based research has demonstrated its potential as a methodology suitable to both research and design of technology-enhanced learning environments, a further step consists in co-design: students directly involved in designing with researchers. This paper provides some comments on the evaluation of the learning experience using two interactive installations promoting eco-friendly behaviours, and describe our experience in codesigning with pupils. We also report the ethnographic research performed underlining the weaknesses and the strengths, the difficulties and findings during the whole work

Circular Pedagogy for Smart, Inclusive and Sustainable Education

Higher education institutions seem to be engaged in a reactive process when thinking about education for sustainable development, instead of being proactive. A every stage, educational models remain very limited to specific goals and agendas driven by the fad of the moment and without articulating a sustainable educational model that we argue should be uttered within the concepts of intercultural competencies, smart, inclusive, and sustainable education where learners engage on a circular learning process as captured by the circular pedagogy for higher education. If the academic community is serious about driving actions that help us to enact change and impact to develop a more sustainable conscious socio-economic and environmental global society, we need to rethink our education models and pedagogies so that they are attuned with the complexity of our evolving reality