Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Tackling Ultra-Poverty Through the Graduation Approach: Situating Sustainable Livelihoods in the Landscape of Social Protection and Safety Nets

BRAC was founded in Bangladesh in 1972 and now works in nine other countries with very impoverished populations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Philippines, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Liberia. From its years of experience designing and implementing microfinance and other programs, BRAC gained the insight that a unique set of interventions is required to bring out of extreme poverty those who they, and now others, call the "ultra-poor": people living on half or less of a US $1.25-a-day poverty threshold. BRAC pioneered the approach in 2002 by combining social safety nets with support for income-generating, and named it the Graduation approach, or Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) program. Graduation programs complement small cash stipends and in-kind asset transfers with several other sequenced interventions including savings, training, social integration and health care services. Over the last decade the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), the Ford Foundation, and other donors have supported ten pilots across different continents which have been carefully analyzed, and in which over 75% of participants have met Graduation requirements. This paper summarizes the landscape and institutional context within which the Targeting the Ultra-poor program sits, in order to help BRAC and other organizations to expand its scale and encourage others to support and adopt this approach, thereby helping an additional one million families graduate from ultra-poverty by 2020

Interacting with heritage: On the use and potential of IoT within the cultural heritage sector

This paper discusses the potential for the use of IoT technologies within cultural heritage, including the creation of new interactive experiences, visit personalisation, visitor data analysis, connected and distributed museum visits and the provision of pre- and post-visit experiences. We argue that cultural heritage offers a key opportunity for the development and deployment of new IoT systems, with potential benefits both for the cultural heritage domain and the IoT community. We present a number of areas of potential work for IoT researchers that are applicable to the heritage domain and to the broader IoT context, including challenges around poor connectivity, identifying and tracking visitors, and providing systems that are easily installed configured and maintained in environments with minimal infrastructure and poor technical support

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

TLAD 2011 Proceedings:9th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the ninth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2011), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2011 - the 28th British National Conference on Databases. TLAD 2011 is held on the 11th July at Manchester University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will present eight peer reviewed papers. Of these, six will be presented as full papers and two as short papers. These papers cover a number of themes, including: the teaching of data mining and data warehousing, databases and the cloud, and novel uses of technology in teaching and assessment. It is expected that these papers will stimulate discussion at the workshop itself and beyond. This year, the focus on providing a forum for discussion is enhanced through a panel discussion on assessment in database modules, with David Nelson (of the University of Sunderland), Al Monger (of Southampton Solent University) and Charles Boisvert (of Sheffield Hallam University) as the expert panel

Joining sustainable design and internet of things technologies on campus : the IPVC smartbottle practical case

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are favored environments for the implementation of technological solutions that accelerate the generation of smart campi, given the dynamic ecosystem they create based on the involvement of inspired and motivated human resources (students, professors, and researchers), moving around in an atmosphere of advanced digital infrastructures and services. Moreover, HEIs have, in their mission, not only the creation of integrated knowledge through Research and Development (R&D) activities but also solving societal problems that address the academic community expectations concerning environmental issues, contributing, therefore, towards a greener society embodied within the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article addresses the design and implementation of a Smartbottle Ecosystem in which an interactive and reusable water bottle communicates with an intelligent water refill station, both integrated by the Internet of Things (IoT) and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), to eliminate the use of single-use plastic water bottles in the premises of the Polytechnical Institute of Viana do Castelo (IPVC), an HEI with nearly 6000 students. Three main contributions were identified in this research: (i) the proposal of a novel methodology based on the association of Design Thinking and Participatory Design as the basis for Sustainable Design; (ii) the design and development of an IoT-enabled smartbottle prototype; and (iii) the usability evaluation of the proposed prototype. The adopted methodology is rooted in Design Thinking and mixes it with a Participatory Design approach, including the end-user opinion throughout the Smartbottle Ecosystem design process, not only for the product design requirements but also for its specification. By promoting a participatory solution tailored to the IPVC academic community, recycled plastic has been identified as the preferential material and a marine mammal was selected for the smartbottle shape, in the process of developing a solution to replace the single-use plastic bottles.7519-C505-DF9E | Ant?nio Jos? Candeias CuradoN/

TLAD 2011 Proceedings:9th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the ninth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2011), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2011 - the 28th British National Conference on Databases. TLAD 2011 is held on the 11th July at Manchester University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will present eight peer reviewed papers. Of these, six will be presented as full papers and two as short papers. These papers cover a number of themes, including: the teaching of data mining and data warehousing, databases and the cloud, and novel uses of technology in teaching and assessment. It is expected that these papers will stimulate discussion at the workshop itself and beyond. This year, the focus on providing a forum for discussion is enhanced through a panel discussion on assessment in database modules, with David Nelson (of the University of Sunderland), Al Monger (of Southampton Solent University) and Charles Boisvert (of Sheffield Hallam University) as the expert panel