Fearsquare: hacking open crime data to critique, jam and subvert the 'aesthetic of danger'

We present a critical evaluation of a locative media application, Fearsquare, which provocatively invites users to engage with personally contextualized risk information drawn from the UK open data crime maps cross-referenced with geo-located user check-ins on Foursquare. Our analysis of user data and a corpus of #Fearsquare discourse on Twitter revealed three cogent appraisals ('Affect', 'Technical' and 'Critical') reflecting the salient associations and aesthetics that were made between different components of the application and interwoven issues of technology, risk, danger, emotion by users. We discuss how the varying strength and cogency of these public responses to Fearsquare call for a broader imagining and analysis of how risk and danger are interpreted; and conclude how our findings reveal important challenges for researchers and designers wishing to engage in projects that involve the computer-mediated communication of risk

Hacking in the university: contesting the valorisation of academic labour

In this article I argue for a different way of understanding the emergence of hacker culture. In doing so, I outline an account of ‘the university’ as an institution that provided the material and subsequent intellectual conditions that early hackers were drawn to and in which they worked. I argue that hacking was originally a form of academic labour that emerged out of the intensification and valorisation of scientific research within the institutional context of the university. The reproduction of hacking as a form of academic labour took place over many decades as academics and their institutions shifted from an ideal of unproductive, communal science to a more productive, entrepreneurial approach to the production of knowledge. As such, I view hacking as a peculiar, historically situated form of labour that arose out of the contradictions of the academy: vocation vs. profession; teaching vs. research; basic vs. applied research; research vs. development; private vs. public; war vs. peace; institutional autonomy vs. state dependence; scientific communalism vs. intellectual property

Grassroots digital fabrication in makerpaces. Report from a World Café

No description supplie

Prototyping through play : making an urban satellite region hackathon

Behind the “hackathon” process lies the idea of the adoption of our natural sense of play for a more serious purpose. For many—if not most—participants in hackathons who work or study in technology-adjacent fields, a hackathon asks them, ostensibly, to spend approximately 12-24 hours (over one or two days) rushing to complete an urgent project. Often, this involves doing the same tasks they would be doing in their daily work, such as prototyping, programming, or building hardware, but with longer hours and a more intensive pace. Why then would people choose to participate? Alongside its pragmatic values—networking, gaining skills, contributing to projects with an avowedly social purpose, and a certain fraternity of technology enthusiasts—we argue the liminal nature of this work/play space also attracts and binds its adherents

Textiles as Material Gestalt: Cloth as a Catalyst in the Co-designing Process

Textiles is the common language within Emotional Fit, a collaborative research project investigating a person-centred, sustainable approach to fashion for an ageing female demographic (55+). Through the co-designing of a collection of research tools, textiles have acted as a material gestalt for exploring our research participants' identities by tracing their embodied knowledge of fashionable dress. The methodology merges Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, co-design and a simultaneous approach to textile and garment design. Based on an enhanced understanding of our participants textile preferences, particular fabric qualities have catalysed silhouettes, through live draping and geometric pattern cutting to accommodate multiple body shapes and customisation. Printedtextiles have also been digitally crafted in response to the contours of the garment and body and personal narratives of wear. Sensorial and tactile interactions have informed the engineering and scaling of patterns within zero-waste volumes. The article considers the functional and aesthetic role of textiles

(Always) Playing the Camera: Cyborg Vision and Embodied Surveillance in Digital Games

As the increasingly ubiquitous field of surveillance has transformed how we interact with each other and the world around us, surveillance interactions with virtual others in virtual worlds have gone largely unnoticed. This article examines representations of digital games’ diegetic surveillance cameras and their relation to the player character and player. Building on a dataset of forty-one titles and in-depth analyses of two 2020 digital games that present embodied surveillance camera perspectives, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix 2020) and Watch Dogs: Legion (Ubisoft Toronto 2020), I demonstrate that the camera is crucial in how we organize, understand, and maneuver the fictional environment and its inhabitants. These digital games reveal how both surveillance power fantasies and their critique can coexist within a space of play. Moreover, digital games often present a perspective that blurs the boundaries between the physical and the technically mediated through a flattening of the player’s “camera” screen and in-game surveillance cameras. Embodied surveillance cameras in digital games make the camera metaphor explicit as an aesthetic, narrative, and mechanical preoccupation. We think and play with and through cameras, drawing attention to and problematizing the partial perspectives with which worlds are viewed. I propose the term cyborg vision to account for this simultaneously human and nonhuman vision that’s both pluralistic and situated and argue that, through cyborg vision, digital games offer an embodied experience of surveillance that’s going to be increasingly relevant in the future.publishedVersio

Cultivating sportswear innovation: A mixed approach combining the lead user method and participatory design

This thesis aims to study how could the mixed approach combining the lead user method and participatory design cultivate sportswear innovation in local sports culture. The research consists of an exploratory literature review and an empirical case study. Since sportswear has exceeded its primary function purpose toward fashion, culture, and wearable technology, customers’ needs have become more diverse and heterogeneous. Even though designers in major sportswear firms have involved users during the product development process, most of the involved users are sports hobbyists who work in the firms. Besides, both centralization of the organizational design process and lack of cross-department collaboration in sportswear firms are the additional barriers to translate the actual customers’ needs into the desired products. To explore a new perspective to solve the described problems, the thesis will review user-driven innovation and participatory design, which both have a reputation in “democratizing innovation” (Bjögvinsson et al., 2010). The lead user method in user-driven innovation theory and the conceptualization of design “Things” (Ehn, 2008) in participatory design studies are underlined. The literature review concludes by demonstrating the complementary characteristics of the lead user method and participatory design. Based on that, a framework that combines the two areas for sportswear innovation is proposed. The empirical case study examines the mixed approach in practice based on one experimental project, “The future of flying Finns,” which consists of two collaborative workshops. In both of the collaborative workshops, identified lead users and industry experts together co-identify innovation opportunities and generate solution ideas from the exploration of the Finnish trail running culture. The research collects the data from two focus group interviews, observation, and self-reflection. Two within-case analyses conducted to examine the collected data provide the insights into the research, which leads to the final cross-case analysis that focuses on investigating the similarities and differences between the two. The research results are the basis for three guidelines for practicing the mixed approach: planning a collaborative workshop in an innovation project, designing a co-creative toolkit, and mapping innovation context with collective knowledge. First, findings of planning a collaborative workshop are enhancing the effectiveness of participatory design, recognizing the requirement of abstract thinking for lead users, and catalyzing the process with well-prepared workshop materials. Second, findings of designing a co-creative toolkit for collaborative innovation sessions include a clear toolkit structure for communication and vision, inspiring visual aids, and playfulness with a shared interface. Finally, the findings demonstrate the roles and contributions of lead users, industry experts, and facilitator in the innovation context mapping process. In conclusion, this research implies that the mixed approach is capable of co-identifying innovation opportunities and creating new values and meanings to local runners by switching the focus from performance-driven innovation to social innovation. Moreover, it is flexible in team formation through selecting lead users and industry experts with different knowledge backgrounds to explore new innovation opportunities

The Playful Citizen

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies

Playin’ the city : artistic and scientific approaches to playful urban arts

An Theorien und Diskussionen über die Stadt mangelt es nicht, denn Städte dienen uns u.a. als Projektionsfläche zur Auseinandersetzung mit unserer Vergangenheit, der Gegenwart und unserer Zukunft. Diese Ausgabe 1 (2016) der Navigationen untersucht spielerische Formen dieser Auseinandersetzung in und mit der Stadt durch die sogenannten playful urban arts.The city has been discussed and theorized widely, and it continues to serve as a space in which our sense of the present, past, and future is constantly negotiated. This issue 1 (2016) of Navigationen examines new ways of engaging with cities through what are called the playful urban arts. Playful engagements with the urban environment frequently strive to create new ways of imagining and experiencing the city. In and through play, city spaces can become playgrounds that have the potential to transform people’s sense of themselves as human actors in an urban network of spatially bound and socio-economically grounded actions. Emerging from the playin’siegen urban games festival 2015, the essays and panel discussions assembled in this issue provide an interdisciplinary account of the contemporary playful urban arts. Wiht contributions by Miguel Sicart, Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, Judith Ackermann and Martin Reiche, Michael Straeubig and Sebastian Quack, Marianne Halblaub Miranda and Martin Knöll, and Anne Lena Hartman