Creating an Institutional Repository

Creating an institutional repository (IR) requires much forethought and planning. Setting up a university IR committee will help direct policy and collection goals, and will encourage faculty participation. There are many things to consider in design such as branding, policy, copyright, collection development, author submissions and discoverability. Publishing in an IR requires original works, and copyright issues arise, especially if authors wish to publish in other journals. Our IR goal was to promote scholarship and encourage faculty to create publishing profile space in SelectedWorks, which can become a virtual curricula vita. The ultimate goal is discoverability and open access contribution to scholarship in the field. This article is a personal recounting of our experience in setting up FireScholars, our institutional repository at Southeastern University

Malentangled: Function Redacting Tape

The neologism entanglement proposes that all things are connected through super-complex meshworks of mutable interdependencies. This entanglement of interdependencies is often obscured through forgetness, a radically reductive process by which things are taken to be isolated and interdependencies are forgotten. In some instances – for example when objects break – people are again reminded of the interdependentness of things. Malentanglement theory proposes that forgetness may also encounter a remindness through humour, and not only through catastrophe (depunctualisation). The ‘Function Redacting Tape’ project takes redaction as a method for doctoring documents, but it deploys this method in the material context of design. Project Participants are provided with black PVC adhesive tape and invited to consider the functions of designed objects. They are then asked to redact these functions (using the tape) and in doing so to make documented interventions that draw back the metaphorical veil of forgetness for reasons of design enquiry. The project functions as a sort of rudimentary cultural probe that might shed some light on entanglement, humour, and design, whilst simultaneously testing the employment of humour to aid participation in design research

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Welfare Waivers

[Excerpt] The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it is willing to waive certain federal work participation standards under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to permit states to experiment with “alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.” The work participation standards are numerical performance standards that each state must meet or risk being penalized through a reduction in its block grant. These are standards that apply to the states, not directly to individuals, though they may influence how states design their welfare-to-work programs. Such waivers will be the first “new” waivers to test welfare-to-work strategies in more than 15 years. The waiver initiative would permit states that undertake an alternative welfare-to-work strategy to assess their programs using measures different from those in the current standards. HHS announced this policy through the release of an Information Memorandum on July 12, 2012. State requests for waivers will have to be approved by HHS and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and meet specified criteria. Under the 1996 law that created TANF, states had the authority to operate programs created under waivers of pre-1996 welfare law until their scheduled expiration. The last such waiver expired in 2007. Additionally, the Administration of President George W. Bush made a legislative proposal to create new “superwaiver” authority that would, among other things, have allowed for the waiver of the federal TANF work participation standards. That proposal passed the House three times between 2002 and 2005. A scaled-back version of this proposal was reported from the Senate Finance Committee, but not approved by the full Senate, twice during that period. This report discusses • the current TANF work participation standards; • the HHS initiative to waive TANF work participation standards; • pre-1996 welfare waivers, including how they were treated under TANF; and • the “superwaiver” proposal. This report is not a legal analysis of the Secretary’s authority to waive TANF work participation standards. Rather, it describes and provides context for this HHS initiative

Made-up rubbish: design fiction as a tool for participatory Internet of Things research.

As Internet of Things (IoT) technologies become embedded in public infrastructure, it is important that we consider how they may introduce new challenges in areas such as privacy and governance. Public technology implementations can be more democratically developed by facilitating citizen participation during the design process, but this can be challenging. This work demonstrates a novel method for participatory research considering the privacy implications of IoT deployments in public spaces, through the use of world building design fictions. Using three fictional contexts and their associated tangible design fiction objects, we report on findings to inform transparency and governance in public space IoT deployments

Success? The impact of involving customers in E-commerce development

In e-commerce, customers have become Information System users. In this environment of non-mandatory usage, remote, untrained users need to quickly feel comfortable and satisfied with a site encounter. Throughout the literature for four decades, a commonly cited factor pertaining to system success has been user participation in the systems development process. Among other things this is likely to lead to increased user satisfaction and the perceived usefulness of the application. This study uses findings from thirty cases of recently completed e-commerce sites in which project leaders accounts of customer participation in e-commerce development activities are analysed, along with their perceptions of success, as well as those of customers of the sites. The business need for a rewarding customer experience on an ecommerce site would suggest customer input would substantially infiuence the site design. The study finds that although participation by customers in developmental activities is occurring, it is having little infiuence on the design and success of the site

Designing to heal: post-disaster rebuilding to assist community recovery

The physical destruction accompanying disasters typically creates an urgency to rebuild and help survivors get back on track. There are inspiring examples of how architects and other built environment professionals have contributed to rebuilding. In many cases their efforts have facilitated the re-establishment of eroded communities and created a sense that things were getting better. At times, however, these interventions have overwhelmed the remnants of the pre-disaster community, replacing them with assets and opportunities irrelevant to their needs and values, and setting them down a path not of their choosing. Increasing the chances that such projects will resonate with the communities requires getting the process and the product of design right. This paper is divided into two parts: Part A outlines the relevance and significance of disasters and post-disaster recovery; Part B highlights the need of designers to harness community skills, emphasises survivor participation in the planning and realisation of their post-disaster environment, and suggests some characteristics of design that may smooth the path to recovery

Open Design: Contributions, Solutions, Processes and Projects

Open design is a catchall term for various on- and offline design and making activities. It can be used to describe a type of design process that allows for (is open to) the participation of anybody (novice or professional) in the collaborative development of something. As well as this, it can mean the distribution and unrestricted use of design blueprints and documentation for the use by others. In this paper, the authors highlight various aspects of open and collaborative design and argue for the use of new terms that address what is open and when. A range of design projects and online platforms that have open attributes are then explored, whereby these terms are applied. In terms of design, the focus is specifically on the design of physical things rather than graphical, software or system design

Collective navigation of complex networks: Participatory greedy routing

Many networks are used to transfer information or goods, in other words, they are navigated. The larger the network, the more difficult it is to navigate efficiently. Indeed, information routing in the Internet faces serious scalability problems due to its rapid growth, recently accelerated by the rise of the Internet of Things. Large networks like the Internet can be navigated efficiently if nodes, or agents, actively forward information based on hidden maps underlying these systems. However, in reality most agents will deny to forward messages, which has a cost, and navigation is impossible. Can we design appropriate incentives that lead to participation and global navigability? Here, we present an evolutionary game where agents share the value generated by successful delivery of information or goods. We show that global navigability can emerge, but its complete breakdown is possible as well. Furthermore, we show that the system tends to self-organize into local clusters of agents who participate in the navigation. This organizational principle can be exploited to favor the emergence of global navigability in the system.Comment: Supplementary Information and Videos: https://koljakleineberg.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/collective-navigation-of-complex-networks-participatory-greedy-routing

Iterating through Feeling-with Nonhuman Things: Exploring repertoires for design iteration in more-than-human design

In this paper, we explore the notion of sympathy in the context of more-than-human design to include nonhuman participation in a design iteration process in an ongoing project named the Morse Things. We explore ways in which nonhuman agency, particularly breakage, can participate in an assembly of human and nonhuman designers. Motivated by Ron Wakkary’s theory of designing-with and the concept of repertoires, we propose feeling-with as a potential repertoire for increasing nonhuman participation before, during, and after the design process. Finally, we explore four instances of sympathy and how breakage as a nonhuman force can lead us to new design iterations to redesign the new set of Morse Things

Iterating through Feeling-with Nonhuman Things: Exploring repertoires for design iteration in more-than-human design

In this paper, we explore the notion of sympathy in the context of more-than-human design to include nonhuman participation in a design iteration process in an ongoing project named the Morse Things. We explore ways in which nonhuman agency, particularly breakage, can participate in an assembly of human and nonhuman designers. Motivated by Ron Wakkary’s theory of designing-with and the concept of repertoires, we propose feeling-with as a potential repertoire for increasing nonhuman participation before, during, and after the design process. Finally, we explore four instances of sympathy and how breakage as a nonhuman force can lead us to new design iterations to redesign the new set of Morse Things