Bioinclusive ethic and collaborative design: Implications for research and practice

Human society is unsustainable, and solving the environmental crisis has become a pressing, urgent matter. The underlying cause of the crisis seems to be the anthropocentric culture of humans. This human-centric culture shapes opinions and behaviours of humans. Their worldviews and actions are also formed by design. Design has been one of the disciplines that explicitly acknowledges and promotes its human-centric value base. It has instilled these values into the society through design processes and solutions. Collaborative and Participatory Design (C&PD) has especially focused on the human-centric perspectives. Thus, reimagining this sub-field of design might be a starting point to envision a less human-centric design practice overall. To envision a less anthropocentric C&PD, this thesis has gathered inspiration from the bioinclusive ethical framework. This ethical framework views humans as part of nature and urges humans to rethink their perspectives on and relationship with nature. To view Collaborative and Participatory Design through this bioinclusive lens, the researcher conducted two systematic literature reviews, distilled key insights about the ethic and C&PD and, then, integrated these insights to identify potential implication for design research and practice. These implications suggest that C&PD might evolve into a less human-centric design sub-field if it explicitly acknowledges natural entities as non-designers who might be involved in design processes to a varying extent. The field might need to include the necessity to and benefits of natural entity participation in its core drivers and principles. The key approach groups within C&PD might want to envision principles, processes and methods that involve natural entities, embrace their perspectives and provide them sufficient decision-making power. These developments in C&PD field might lead to a less human-centric and more nature-inclusive design. In turn, the renewed value base of design might have the power to shift the anthropocentric positions of the society and address the sustainability crisis

What could work for future workplaces, beyond working?

Workplace is changing. It is no longer just about working; it is about living. Bold initiatives by visionary business leaders have shown us the power of transformation that the workplace has over otherwise staid businesses drifting along with the status quo. At the same time, their competitors act to overtake them. The fact that over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies from fifteen years ago no longer exist is testament to this adapt or die reality. In this paper, we analyse the changing dynamics and identify drivers, needs, challenges and indicate approaches towards solutions. Our collective goal is to kickstart fresh thinking within organizations as to how their workplace programs can offer high value to the businesses they serve. We raise a call for a new generation of thought leaders: one who are able to identify new roads to success through integration of a creative mix of new and expanded disciplines, far beyond the current scope normally associated with physical workplace solutions. To do this successfully businesses need a laser-like focus on their challenges to be solved, and new leaders need to break traditional barriers to reach the most valuable solutions. In a sense the nature of change to which we aspire moves this work well beyond a Workplace context…… but to ignore the obvious catalytic qualities of the workplace to engender creativity, create a common sense of purpose and develop specific deliverables through a project-derived momentum would be to miss a great opportunity. We are therefore enthusiastic about continuing our search for a new generation of business improvement hosted under a workplace banner

Embodying Tao in the ‘Restorative University’

This paper proposes a new generative metaphor, the ‘Restorative University’ which embodies an associated Taoist human–nature narrative. It aims to counter what is contextualized here as the bio-cultural disconnection of universities despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as environmental psychology alongside Taoist philosophy to open up a reflexive dialogue between multiple organizational actors. Moreover, to understand the potential transdisciplinary implications of a particular Tian Tao-inspired narrative, the metaphor of the ‘Restorative University’ is critically reflected upon, using illustrative examples of the University in a Garden, in Malaysia and the Schumacher College, in the UK. For universities committed to sustainability, the paper highlights the significance of collective emotional and aesthetic sensibility and agency (embodying Wu Wei), alongside a grounded, local, bio-cultural sensibility (embodying P’u) within the potential enactment of the Restorative University

Virtual workplaces : when metaphors breakdown

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-81).Our model of work is shaped by the places we choose to work and the tools we choose to work with. As we introduce new technologies and build new environments our model is changing. Today's virtual workplaces are grounded in models of work that have been reformed from our experiences using current technology in physical workspace. However we are discovering opportunities and possibilities for work in collaborative, virtual environments that question physical models. Emerging patterns of distributed collaboration in persistent virtual environments are changing the way we work in time and space, recasting our notion of workplace. Virtual workplaces are interpreted and experienced through metaphors that describe a space of potential for work occurrences. Through the lens of metaphors, this research focuses on breakdowns between collaborative work and the environment in which work occurs. If what we understand and predict is based on what we already know, then by examining the breakdowns between design and use of collaborative environments we can illuminate the space of possibilities for collaborative work.by Thomas W.I. Gallemore.M.S

Toward Education 3.0: Pedagogical Affordances and Implications of Social Software and the Semantic Web

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116348/1/tl20167.pd

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Systems Perspectives on the Interaction Between Human and Technological Resources

Peer reviewe

A Handbook of Theories on Designing Alignment Between People and the Office Environment

Although workplace design and management are gaining more and more attention from modern organizations, workplace research is still very fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines in academia. There are several books on the market related to workplaces, facility management (FM), and corporate real estate management (CREM) disciplines, but few open up a theoretical and practical discussion across multiple theories from different fields of studies. Therefore, workplace researchers are not aware of all the angles from which workplace management and effects of workplace design on employees has been or could be studied. A lot of knowledge is lost between disciplines, and sadly, many insights do not reach workplace managers in practice. Therefore, this new book series is started by associate professor Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) and postdoc researcher Vitalija Danivska (Aalto University, Finland) as editors, published by Routledge. It is titled ‘Transdisciplinary Workplace Research and Management’ because it bundles important research insights from different disciplinary fields and shows its relevance for both academic workplace research and workplace management in practice. The books will address the complexity of the transdisciplinary angle necessary to solve ongoing workplace-related issues in practice, such as knowledge worker productivity, office use, and more strategic workplace management. In addition, the editors work towards further collaboration and integration of the necessary disciplines for further development of the workplace field in research and in practice. This book series is relevant for workplace experts both in academia and industry. This first book in the series focuses on the employee as a user of the work environment. The 21 theories discussed and applied to workplace design in this book address people’s ability to do their job and thrive in relation to the office workplace. Some focus more on explaining why people behave the way they do (the psychosocial environment), while others take the physical and/or digital workplace quality as a starting point to explain employee outcomes such as health, satisfaction, and performance. They all explain different aspects for achieving employee-workplace alignment (EWA) and thereby ensuring employee thriving. The final chapter describes a first step towards integrating these theories into an overall interdisciplinary framework for eventually developing a grand EWA theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003128830, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license