Photography in architectural education: A tool for assessing social aspects of the built environment

AbstractArchitectural undergraduate education uses visual methods within both teaching and design processes. One method, photography, is mostly used for illustrative documentation. However, using photography more creatively offers rich potential for student engagement with the social environments they work within. In this study, students digitally photographed the built environment of Karaköy, Istanbul and went through a process of keywording and interpretation of their photographs. The results function in a documentary capacity, but also provide insights into the students’ social understandings of the built environment, which, in the context of architectural teaching and learning, has value for both students and instructors

PORTS: an interdisciplinary and systemic approach to studying energy use in the home

In this paper, we present an alternative and novel approach to identifying energy demand reduction opportunities in the home. Through the creation of detailed narratives informed by our interdisciplinary research team of social scientists, designers and engineers, we employ a systemic view of how energy is consumed in the home. By interrogating clusters of people, objects and resources through time and space as they come together within our qualitative and quantitative research, we have identified opportunities for sustainable HCI design. This paper outlines our approach and presents an example product concept in relation to laundry

Designers and Stakeholders Defining Design Opportunities "In-Situ" through Co-reflection

this article proposes co-reflection as a workshop to situate design practice in its context of application and presents a case study done at the eLearn Center of the Open University of Catalonia. Co-reflection is a re!ective practice. In the half-aday workshop developed, co-reflection was specifically tailored for group dynamics in situ. The workshop was the kick-off meeting of a design research project and involved both designers and stakeholders. The project focused on how to communicate and disseminate relevant information between members of the eLearn Center. the aim of the kick-off meeting was to define design opportunities by framing both collaboration and a design space. this double aim has been achieved by: a) exploring and framing a design space by re!ecting on short design activities in situ, and b) motivating stakeholders to collaborate in the design research project by making them re!ect on the expertise and interests they can share and gain. Participants’ evaluations have been used as feedback and treated as insightful considerations for further action research

Seeing Through Things:Exploring the Design Space of Privacy-Aware Data-Enabled Objects

Increasing amounts of sensor-augmented research objects have been used in design research. We call these objects Data-Enabled Objects, which can be integrated into daily activities capturing data about people's detailed whereabouts, behaviours, and routines. These objects provide data perspectives on everyday life for contextual design research. However, data-enabled objects are still computational devices with limited privacy awareness and nuanced data sharing. To better design data-enabled objects, we explore privacy design spaces by inviting 18 teams of undergraduate design students to re-design the same type of sensor-enabled home research camera. We developed the Connected Peekaboo Toolkit (CPT) to support the design teams in designing, building, and directly deploying their prototypes in real home studies. We conducted Thematic Analysis to analyze their outcomes which led us to interpret that privacy is not just an obstacle but can be a driver by unfolding an exploration of possible design spaces for data-enabled objects.</p