Crafting a Place for Attending to the Things of Design at CHI

Over the past two years, we have organized workshops at the CHI conference that have focused on the “Things of Design Research. The goal of these workshops is simple: to explore and develop a venue at CHI for research through design (RtD) practitioners to materially share their work with each other. RtD often centers on the making of things— artifacts, systems, services, or other knowledge in the interaction-design and human-computer interaction (CHI) research communities. Yet, over the years, we have felt that the things of design research have remained conspicuously overlooked, under-engaged with, and, for the most part, absent from the CHI conference. If RtD is to continue to develop as a research practice in the HCI community—and we want to build a community of designers doing research with and through designed objects—we need more things at CHI

Lanterns: Configuring a Digital Resource to Inspire Preschool Children's Free Play Outdoors

Previous HCI research has highlighted opportunities for digital technologies to support outdoor play amongst children. However, the tendency has been to focus on older children and forms of play that are structured and rule-based. We report on a Research-through-Design (RtD) inquiry, grounded in an Embodied Interactional approach, that investigated configurations of off-the-shelf Internet of Things (IoT) tool-kits to inspire new forms of free play outdoors for preschool children. We designed the Lanterns, a tangible interactive resource that is made using household materials and guided by a template, and which explores new possibilities to inspire social play and embodied interaction outdoors. Based on observations of the Lanterns being used by preschool children and Early Years Practitioners outdoors, we identify qualities of free play promoted by the Lanterns outdoors, such as enchantment, improvisation, anticipation and choice. We discuss our findings by defining three sensitising concepts to support future design research in this space: Choosing the Way; Improvising through Movement; Anticipating a Response

Designerly ways of speaking: investigating how the design tribe of researchers speak on design thinking

This thesis investigates how a community of design researchers speak on ‘Design Thinking’, a key concept in design research. The thesis traces the development of Design Thinking theory over the last 100 years. It identifies errors associated with how influential research (for example, Buchanan; Cross) frames the history of investigation into Design Thinking. For example, influential theorists do not consider a complete history of investigation into the way that designers think when discussing timescales of Design Thinking research. The thesis then summarises existing research into ways of speaking associated with Design Thinking and identifies significant gaps in the knowledge. Gaps include the absence of an agreed definition of ‘Design Thinking’ despite repeated calls. A lack of existing studies which use methods specifically designed to investigate ways of speaking have helped to create the gaps in knowledge. The thesis asks: how do Design Thinking researchers speak on Design Thinking? What purposes do these ways of speaking serve? The original work involves using methods specifically designed to investigate ways of speaking (Corpus Linguistics and Content Analysis). Three studies on ways of speaking are undertaken. The data set consists of peer-reviewed papers which focus on Design Thinking. The papers are published in design journals so are representative of ways of speaking used by the small academic design research community. This thesis terms this community the Design Tribe. Ways of speaking contrast progressive Design Thinking with a range of dominant, established ways of thinking (for example, STEM models). A distinctive lexicon characterises the way that researchers speak on Design thinking. Design Thinking is: agile, complex, fluid, multimodal and collaborative; established alternative ways of thinking conceal, standardize, are rigid, squash and reduce. The study reveals a range of inconsistencies associated with the ways that researchers classify Design Thinking. These issues highlight the part that a distinctive lexicon plays in enabling researchers to claim knowledge on Design Thinking. While there is little evidence to suggest a distinctive Design Thinking, there is certainly a distinctive and coherent form of discourse. This thesis terms this discourse, ‘designerly ways of speaking’. The thesis also uses critical theory developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to speculate on aspects which help to sustain designerly ways of speaking

Designing for Ambivalence: A designer’s research into the role of smartphones for mothers and young children

This practice-based research explores the role of smartphones for mothers of pre-school children who are their primary carers. For many women, the first few years of motherhood demand the complex negotiation of maternal and non-maternal identities. A period loaded with idealisations of motherhood and childhood, this is often a time of isolation in which mothers use and adapt surrounding resources to respond to multiple demands. In this context, the smartphone is at times used for connecting to work or to non-domestic realms, and at others is given to young children to keep quiet or entertained. Transforming from tool into toy, the smartphone becomes object of competition for parental attention, but equally turns the mother into a rival since its use is often shared. Smartphones represent work, autonomy or distraction for the mother, but also play and pacification for the child, offering multiple and competing discourses that this research explores. During the trajectory of this research, I have developed a series of experimental and critical design proposals that give form to behaviours brought by smartphones in the childrearing task. The development of these proposals formed the first stage of exploration in this research. A second stage took place in the encounters between people and the designs. At times producing both attraction and rejection, the design proposals helped me engage in conversation with others about practices, often private, that are ridden with ambivalence and guilt. Informed by critical design, psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, this research is an example of the possibilities for design to expose unintended uses of technology, to challenge conventional user portrayals by depicting mothers as complex users and to explore potentials for change

A practice-led inquiry into the nature of digital jewellery: craft explorations and dialogical engagement with people

In the widely explored area of wearable technology research, the theoretical work on digital jewellery has been largely done outside the art and craft context. Taking a jewellery perspective, this research focus on atypical personal interactions with digital technology in order to address questions associated with digital devices and potentially open up our expectations of the digital as a material within jewellery practice. Principally this thesis investigates he question “How can we design digital jewellery that are highly experiential and personally meaningful to the wearer?” This thesis addresses the need for jewellers to assert their relevance in the current debates around digital culture and the meaning associated with wearing digital devices. This practice-led research project investigates the role of digital jewellery to support self in transition in order to progress these debates. For this research, I created research methods to support participatory engagements. Following the values of experience-centred design, I designed exemplars of digital jewellery. Microcosmos, Topoi, Travelling with the Sea and Togetherness: Anthos and Chronos Brooches are examples of digital jewellery that have resulted from this research. These concepts were inspired by the lives of three participants and myself who frequently travel back to our native countries but who live permanently in the UK and who experience feelings of being in-between. Within the participatory engagements, novel design methods have been created for this particular research context. The method of Staged Atmosphere introduces the performative aspects of design probes in the context of a plane and the method of Dialogical Sketching offers a sensitive way to explore aspects of self in non-descriptive and imaginative ways with participants. These methods practised in this research contribute to design by enriching the role of creative practice to offer highly dialogical and sensitive to the research methodologies. My approach to designing digital jewellery has resulted in the development of a framework for understanding and conceptualising digital jewellery. The framework discusses the poetic qualities of the jewellery pieces by unfolding the narratives associated with their form, function and interaction. The framework contributes to discussions around how jewellery practices and digital technologies can suggest experientially rich interactions for people