Using design fictions as a tool for engaging citizens in debating future pervasive health systems and services

The benefits provided by health-related technologies are often counterbalanced by the societal, legal and ethical challenges connected with the pervasive monitoring of people, as necessitated by such technological interventions. Through the ProtoPolicy research project we explored the co-creation and use of design fictions as a tool for open debate of pervasive health systems. Design fictions were co-created and tested in a series of design workshops with community groups in the UK. A thematic analysis of a debate among older people on a smart home and assisted living design fiction highlighted societal and ethical issues relevant to personal and pervasive health system design. We conclude that ethics, like ‘usability’, may be usefully based on engagement with directly or indirectly implicated publics and should not be designed into innovation by experts alone

The Little Book of Speculative Design for Policy-makers

This Little Book tells you what Speculative Design is, what the benefits for policy-making are, and how it can be used by policy-makers. This book is based on our research conducted for the ProtoPolicyAsia: empowering local communities and Government in Malaysia in addressing social issues in ageing and disabilities, funded by the AHRC

Rethinking how healthcare is conceptualised and delivered through speculative design in the UK and Malaysia:A Comparative Study

The paper aims, firstly, at presenting cross-cultural design-driven research responses that explore alternative ways of conceptualising the delivery of healthcare, through participatory speculative design. Secondly, it aims at offering a comparative study, which explores this approach in the theme of ageing in place, with different groups of senior citizens in the UK and Malaysia.In a series of codesign workshops, speculative design served as a safe and creative environment for participants in the UK and Malaysia to explore new ideas for health and well being. Our findings reveal that aside from the high interest in healthcare demonstrated by participants, the feasibly of adopting speculative design as a tool to engage with vulnerable groups (in non-Western contexts) is supported. Moreover,evidence of how such an approach encourages involvement, gives voice and expanses imagination, could be adopted by policy-makers and governments to enhance engagement with hard to reach groups such as senior citizens

Design Fiction and Participation:from Social Dreaming to Speculative Heterotopia

Over the last decade design fiction, the speculative design method, has been cultivated within the design community. It has been increasingly adopted, or at least experimented with, in various areas of government, industry and academia, as new methods to engage with potential futures are sought out. Orienting design practice as an overtly fictive act, design fictions are a form of worldbuilding used variously in the service of rhetoric, innovation and research. The method has been the preserve of designers, researchers and artists working in industry and academia, with a particular nexus between design and HCI. The design fiction works that they create often focus on the normative. Though non-normative perspectives are generally elided in the development of the method, Participatory Design --an approach to design that involves stakeholders as co-creators in design processes-- has, until recently, demonstrated minimal interest in adopting speculative practices. Working from an egalitarian impulse, the thesis explores design fiction as a participatory practice. Taking Research through Design as a methodology, the study offers reflections in, and on, the facilitation and prototyping processes undertaken by the author and others as part of two design projects which worked with older people on government policy in the UK; ProtoPolicy and What If?. Two methods bricolage and black an adapted annotated portfolio were used. The use of bricolage as a method allowed me to develop artefacts as part of an iterative conversation between practice and theory. This process explored and diagrammatically visualised the concept of heterotopia and other relevant theories as a potential theoretical framework supportive of a participatory approach to design fiction. The portfolio gathered together products of the external participatory design fiction projects in a thematic exploration of participation, design fiction and heterotopia. The thesis offers two contributions to knowledge. The first is speculative heterotopia, a theoretical framework to underpin a participatory approach to the design fiction method. The second is a scaffold to guide design facilitators in supporting participants through the possibilities within a design fiction project. The thesis concludes by highlighting issues for facilitators and participant groups created by adopting a participatory approach to design fiction making use of speculative heterotopia

Does ADR’s “Access to Justice” Come at the Expense of Meaningful Consent?

Over the last forty years, ADR processes, in particular mediation and arbitration, have been advanced as vehicles to secure access to justice for individual litigants and to improve efficiency in overburdened court systems. These processes have functioned as alternatives to the court adjudication of disputes, complementing the judicial system, and operating in what has been famously described as “the shadow of the law. The primary benefits promised by ADR were party autonomy and empowerment. ADR processes would allow parties to “fit the forum to the fuss.” These processes would give parties the opportunity to create their own mosaic of justice, personalized and individualized justice, not unlike the fairness remedies that equity courts had historically provided I argue that claims about ADR’s ability to provide access to justice should be more modest. As it turns out, ADR falls short on its original promises, giving short shrift to the value of consent. Over the last few decades, party autonomy has diminished in both mediation and arbitration, and it is not clear that ADR has resulted in greater efficiencies for the courts. In this Article, I question whether ADR processes have provided the kind of access to justice envisioned by proponents, or whether they have been stumbling blocks to achieving that goal. My skepticism is prompted by the withering away of consent in arbitration and mediation, two of the most commonly used ADR processes

Spimes:A Multidimensional Lens for Designing Future Sustainable Internet Connected Devices

There are numerous loud and powerful voices promoting the Internet of Things (IoT) as a catalyst for changing many aspects of our lives for the better. Healthcare, energy, transport, finance, entertainment and in the home – billions of everyday objects across all sorts of sectors are being connected to the Internet to generate data so that we can make quicker and more efficient decisions about many facets of our lives. But is this technological development completely benign? I argue that, despite all their positive potential, IoT devices are still being designed, manufactured and disposed of in the same manner that most other ‘non-connected’ consumer products have been for decades – unsustainably. Further, while much fanfare is made of the IoT’s potential utility for reducing energy usage through pervasive monitoring, little discourse recognises the intrinsically unsustainable nature of the IoT devices themselves. In response to this growing unsustainable product culture, my thesis centres on the role that sustainability can potentially play in the design of future IoT devices. I propose the recharacterisation of IoT devices as spimes in order to provide an alternative approach for facilitating sustainable Internet-connected product design practice. The concept of spimes was first introduced in 2004 by the futurist Bruce Sterling and then outlined further a year later in his book Shaping Things. When viewed simply, a spime would be a type of near future, internet-connected device which marries physical and digital elements with innate sustainable characteristics. Whereas the majority of sustainable design theory and practice has focused on the development of sustainable non-connected devices, a credible strategy for the design of environmentally friendly Internet-connected physical objects has yet to be put forward. In light of this, I argue that now is the right time to develop the spimes concept in greater depth so that it may begin to serve as a viable counterpoint to the increasing unsustainability of the IoT. To make this case, my thesis explores the following three key questions: • What are spimes? • Can we begin to design spimes? • What does spime-orientated research mean for unsustainable Internet-connected design practice? I outline how, in order to explore these important questions, I utilised a Research through Design approach to unpack and augment the notion of spimes through three Design Fiction case studies. Each case study concretises different key design criteria for spime devices, while also probing the broader implications that could arise as a result of adopting such spime designs in the near future. I discuss the significance of reflecting upon my Spime-based Design Fiction Practice and how this enabled me to develop the spimes concept into a multidimensional lens, which I contend, other designers can potentially harness as a means to reframe their IoT praxis with sustainability baked-in. The key aspects of my process and its outputs are also summarised in form of a design manifesto with the aim of inspiring prospective designers and technologists to create future sustainable Internet-connected devices

Alternative timelines: Counterfactuals as an approach to design pedagogy

Counterfactual histories modify the outcome of a historical event and then extrapolate an alternative version of history. In literature, imaginaries based on a counterfactual history can offer thought-provoking insights on contemporary life:   It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan. (Dick, 1992)   The Man in the High Castle describes the consequences of one popular starting point for counterfactual histories, Germany winning World War II. Historians tend to focus on military "decision points" at which events could have taken another path (Bernstein, 2000), or they imagine the absence of powerful individuals to speculate on how things might have been different. Since history is “often written by the victors, it tends to ‘crush the unfulfilled potential of the past’, as Walter Benjamin so aptly put it. By giving a voice to the ‘losers’ of history, the counterfactual approach allows for a reversal of perspectives” (Deluermoz & Singaravélou, 2021). A counterfactual approach offers much potential as a methodology for practice-based design research and pedagogy – designers typically design for the world as it is rather than as it could be (Dunne & Raby, 2013). Design happens within entrenched systems whose foundations in many cases were laid centuries ago. Systems of economy, infrastructure and popular culture inform and constrain design methods, motivations and approaches to the evaluation of designed artefacts. Technological advances are applied via these rules, facilitating the iterative development of products and providing a neat lineage from the past and, more importantly, into the future (Auger et al, 2017). This version of design is increasingly being revealed as fundamentally flawed – highly successful in placating shareholders, it is not fit for purpose where ethical or environmental issues are concerned.   Counterfactuals provide an almost surreptitious method of combining design theory with practice. Through a rigorous analysis of history, the designer identifies key elements that are problematic when viewed through a contemporary lens. The approach can expose dominant structures of power and the influence these have on design culture and metrics: for example, the influence of legacy systems and how they limit the imagination and reveal the hidden or unexpected historical events that influenced the timeline. In A New Scottish Enlightenment, Mohammed J. Ali proposes a different outcome to the 1979 Scottish independence referendum (Debatty, 2014). A “yes” vote leads to the creation of a new Scottish government, whose ultimate goal is the delivery of energy independence and a future free from fossil fuels. The project was exhibited shortly before the 2014 referendum. This starting point (a yes or no vote) resonates because it vividly presents a life that could have been. It makes us think about the power of our vote and the potential implications of a “bad choice”. The second aspect that gives the project wider relevance is the agenda used to drive extrapolation from its fictional starting point – a simple paradigm shift on energy generation and distribution. By defining energy independence as a national goal, it becomes possible to outline the ways this might happen. Important earlier examples of a counterfactual approach to design include Pohflepp and Chambers (Auger, 2012; Dunne & Raby, 2013).   Here is a rough summary of a counterfactual design methodology:   1.      The approach begins with the choice of subject – what is to be designed and the creation of a detailed and diverse timeline of its history. 2.      The identification of key moments that have led to the state of things; in particular the elements that could be critiqued from alternative value systems. 3.      The creation of a counterfactual timeline based on numerous possibilities – this is the key difference in method between historiography and design. The approach facilitates the creation of new value systems, motivations, rules and constraints that can be applied in practice. 4.      The design of things along the new timeline; it can be furnished at key moments with artefacts informed by the alternative rules.   A recent Master’s project at the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay followed this brief. Themes included rethinking approaches to aging based on the elimination of the royalist doctrines of 18th century France; a counterfactual history of agriculture with the tool acting as intermediary between the person working and their environment; and the archive – an examination of the modalities for a deployment of queer, feminist and trans-feminist archive design forms in everyday life. With its focus on underrepresented groups and unrealised possibilities, this last concept resonates with a broader discourse about decolonising design. What alternative value systems and approaches to design might have emerged if 20th-century design history had not been defined by the works of Morris, Dreyfus, Bel Geddes, Gropius, Rams, Starck, Ives, Dyson, and the rest?   Taking up Benjamin’s point about “the unfulfilled potential of the past”, the most vital use of counterfactuals in design is to allow different voices to emerge that were drowned out by dominant or “standard” narrative(s). Recognising alternative histories can open up valuable future paths and create space for new possibilities and imaginaries to flourish. Works Cited   Auger, James (2012). Why Robot? Speculative design, the domestication of technology and the considered future. PhD thesis, Royal College of Art, London.   Auger, James, Hanna, Julian and Encinas, Enrique (2017). Reconstrained Design. Nordes, Oslo, 2-4 June 2017. ISSN 1604-9705.   Bernstein, R. B. (2000). Review of Ferguson, Niall, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3721   Chambers, James (2010). Artificial Defence Mechanisms. https://jameschambers.co.uk/artificial-defense-mechanisms   Debatty, Régine (2014). A New Scottish Enlightenment. We Make Money Not Art. https://we-make-money-not-art.com/a_new_scottish_enlightenment/   Deluermoz, Quentin & Pierre Singaravélou (2021). A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been. Yale University Press.   Dick, Phillip K. (1992). The Man in the High Castle. Vintage.   Dunne, Anthony & Fiona Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.   Pohflepp, Sascha (2009). The Golden Institute. http://cargocollective.com/saschapohflepp/Work/The-Golden-Institut

Attending responding becoming : a living-learning inquiry in a naturally inclusional playspace

Traditional scientific paradigms emphasise writing in the third person, effectively marginalising the subjective perspective of the researcher. Many systems thinking, cybernetics and complexity approaches are better in this regard, as they involve systemic interventions where the relationships between the researcher and other participants really matter. Writing in the first person therefore becomes acceptable.In this Thesis (and a partner document coupled with it), I have explored how to reincorporate subjective empiricism into my systemic intervention practice. This has brought forth many unanticipated contributions. These take the form of new frameworks, concepts and approaches for systems and complexity practice, emerging from my engagements with myself and others, as well as from reflections upon those engagements.However, the content of my reflections and ‘becomings’ are not all that represent my doctoral contribution; there is also the form of my representation(s), as well as the emergent nature of the process through which they have come to be. I have drawn from Gregory Bateson’s use of metalogues: where the nature of a conversation mirrors its content – e.g. getting into a muddle whilst talking about muddles! Intuitively, I grasped the importance of metalogue in what I was attempting, and found myself coining the term metalogic coherence. Without fully appreciating what this might mean in practice, I groped my way into undertaking and documenting my research in ways that I believed would be metalogically coherent with the complexity-attuned principles to which I was committing. In sum, and key to appreciating what unfolds in the narrative, is recognising this Thesis and its partner document as metalogically coherent artefacts of naturally inclusional, complexity-attuned, evolutionary research.To fully acknowledge the different ways of knowing that have flowed into my inquiry, I have written in multiple voices (called statewaves, for reasons to be explained in the thesis). I found myself shifting from one voice to another as I explored and expressed different dimensions of what I was experiencing and discovering.In addition, I have made liberal use of hyperlinks, so both documents are far from linear. They are more akin to a mycorrhizal network, interlinking flows of ideas and sensemaking, all of which can be accessed and experienced differently, depending on each reader’s engagement with and through it.The thesis and its partner document are part of a composite submission that contains both poetry and artwork (visual depictions and animations of the ideas). These elements, along with the more conventional academic text, are augmented by penetrating reflections on my personal motivations, guided by a narrator signposting the streams as they flow into and between each other. All of my being has been implicated and impacted by this endeavour. When insights and new ‘becomings’ emerged flowfully during my practice, my joy was reflected in my narrative; as indeed were my pain, doubts and reinterpretations associated with ideas that were difficult to birth. I present all this in my submission, without retrospective sanitisation or simplification. In so doing, I am keeping faith with the principle that I remain at the heart of my research, and cannot be extracted from it without doing violence to the metalogical coherence that gives it meaning

Post-Truth Imaginations

This book engages with post-truth as a problem of societal order and for scholarly analysis. It claims that post-truth discourse is more deeply entangled with main Western imaginations of knowledge societies than commonly recognised. Scholarly responses to post-truth have not fully addressed these entanglements, treating them either as something to be morally condemned or as accusations against which scholars have to defend themselves (for having somehow contributed to it). Aiming for wider problematisations, the authors of this book use post-truth to open scholarly and societal assumptions to critical scrutiny. Contributions are both conceptual and empirical, dealing with topics such as: the role of truth in public; deep penetrations of ICTs into main societal institutions; the politics of time in neoliberalism; shifting boundaries between fact – value, politics – science, nature – culture; and the importance of critique for public truth-telling. Case studies range from the politics of nuclear power and election meddling in the UK, over smart technologies and techno-regulation in Europe, to renewables in Australia. The book ends where the Corona story begins: as intensifications of Modernity’s complex dynamics, requiring new starting points for critique