Connecting the dots: understanding professional development needs of Istanbul’s makers for circular economy

With the dissemination and increased accessibility of makerspaces (e.g. fab labs, creative hubs, learning platforms), cities now present an opportunity for loosely managed, distributed fabrication opportunities to recapture embedded value in products and resources and re-distribute them for the benefit of the city. Istanbul Metropolitan City, with its rather large population and land, as well as 24 active makerspaces focusing on different industries and fabrication opportunities (e.g. education, entrepreneurship, sustainability), presents potential for initiating a robust network of makers (e.g. designers, engineers, craftsmen, investors, students, entrepreneurs) to explore and exploit novel ways of value recapture and to transition towards a local, Circular Economy. However, these stakeholders initially require an understanding of potential opportunities and barriers for collaboration, as well as equip themselves with skills and knowledge beyond the act of making (including alternative ways to conduct business, value recapture, Circular Design, collaboration, etc.) in order to sustain their operations from an economic perspective. This paper presents the initial results of (1) a survey revealing Istanbul’s maker communities’ goals, priorities, target groups, and skills related to the Circular Economy, and (2) their collaborative attempt of a future, circular economy vision for Istanbul developed as part of a generative workshop. The maker community representatives explored existing infrastructure, resources and stakeholders of Istanbul to connect the dots amongst them and reveal untapped, concealed local opportunities for collaboration and co-creation. This paper presents the analysis of these studies to reveal the professional development needs of these maker communities for transitioning towards a local, circular economy. As a result, the authors propose strategies for training, capacity building and skills development both relevant to the local context of Istanbul and in line with the global concerns around sustainability and the Circular Economy

Children in 2077: Designing Children’s Technologies in the Age of Transhumanism

What for and how will we design children’s technologies in the transhumanism age, and what stance will we take as designers? This paper aims to answer this question with 13 fictional abstracts from sixteen authors of different countries, institutions and disciplines. Transhumanist thinking envisions enhancing human body and mind by blending human biology with technological augmentations. Fundamentally, it seeks to improve the human species, yet the impacts of such movement are unknown and the implications on children’s lives and technologies were not explored deeply. In an age, where technologies can clearly be defined as transhumanist, such as under-skin chips or brain-machine interfaces, our aim is to reveal probable pitfalls and benefits of those technologies on children’s’ lives by using the power of design fiction

The frequency of Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy and Pompe disease in children with isolated transaminase elevation: results from the observational VICTORIA study

IntroductionElevated transaminases and/or creatine phosphokinase can indicate underlying muscle disease. Therefore, this study aims to determine the frequency of Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) in male children and Pompe disease (PD) in male and female children with isolated hypertransaminasemia.MethodsThis multi-center, prospective study enrolled patients aged 3–216 months with serum alanine transaminase (ALT) and/or aspartate transaminase (AST) levels >2× the upper limit of normal (ULN) for ≥3 months. Patients with a known history of liver or muscle disease or physical examination findings suggestive of liver disease were excluded. Patients were screened for creatinine phosphokinase (CPK) levels, and molecular genetic tests for DMD/BMD in male patients and enzyme analysis for PD in male and female patients with elevated CPK levels were performed. Genetic analyses confirmed PD. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of the patients were analyzed.ResultsOverall, 589 patients [66.8% male, mean age of 63.4 months (standard deviation: 60.5)] were included. In total, 251 patients (188 male and 63 female) had CPK levels above the ULN. Of the patients assessed, 47% (85/182) of male patients were diagnosed with DMD/BMD and 1% (3/228) of male and female patients were diagnosed with PD. The median ALT, AST, and CPK levels were statistically significantly higher, and the questioned neurological symptoms and previously unnoticed examination findings were more common in DMD/BMD patients than those without DMD/BMD or PD (p < 0.001).DiscussionQuestioning neurological symptoms, conducting a complete physical examination, and testing for CPK levels in patients with isolated hypertransaminasemia will prevent costly and time-consuming investigations for liver diseases and will lead to the diagnosis of occult neuromuscular diseases. Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT04120168

Çevreci davranışları teşvik eden ürünlerin tasarımını bilgilendirmek için kullanıcı çeşitliğinin irdelenmesi ve tasarımcılara aktarılması.

Promoting sustainable behavior through design has become an important and a relevant research area for the design community. As very few designers really know and very few design schools teach how to do this, any research in this field would provide guidance. Aimed at such guidance, this thesis proposes a method for exploring and communicating the diversity in users’ orientations towards sustainable behaviors, an important but ignored topic for behavior change and sustainability. This method involves determining the dimensions of user diversity by using the theory of planned behavior as a theoretical framework, grouping users based on these dimensions through cluster analysis and constructing a diagram which visualizes identified groups in terms of their distribution in a sample, their relations to each other as well as recommendations for influencing their behavior. This process is illustrated with a user study on eco-friendly driving, which revealed that the proposed method can help design researchers systematically explore user diversity for promoting sustainable behaviors and communicate this diversity to designers in an inspirational way. By combining the results of this study (user orientations) with a set of strategies achieved through synthesizing behavior change strategies from the literature, this thesis also offers a design tool to help design practitioners, researchers and students in generating solutions promoting sustainable behaviors. It investigates this tool's potential impact on idea generation through series of design workshops conducted with Middle East Technical University (METU) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) students. This idea generation study showed that the proposed design tool is promising for helping designers in developing solutions promoting sustainable behaviors.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra

Ürün tasarım süreci ve sürdürülebilirlik için kullanım sonrası tasarım düşüncesi cam ambalaj alanında yapılan bir eğitim projesi üzerine bir çalışma.

The rapid disposal of products has detrimental effects on environment which is increasing resource consumption for the production of new products, along with the waste production. Therefore, designing long lasting products has great importance for achieving sustainable consumption and production. The present study analyzes the implications of an approach called post-use design thinking for achieving sustainable consumption and production through product longevity. To explore that approach, two educational industrial design projects are analyzed throughout the study. The results suggest that post-use design thinking should be considered at the early stages of the design process. The idea generation exercises developed specifically for this design thinking seem to be helpful in generating design solutions for post-use phase. The results also indicate that the post-use design thinking is feasible in terms of design and production for glass packaging products, which is the specific case analyzed throughout the research.M.S. - Master of Scienc

Space analyzing for temporary buildings produced using planar panel elements by geometric modeling

Bu tezde, düzlemsel panel elemanlarla üretilen geçici yapılarda geometrik modellemelere göre mekân çözümlemelerinin araştırılması yapılmıştır. Kullanıma ait uygun mekânları oluşturabilmek, ön üretime dayalı panel elemanlarla üretilecek geçici yapıların önemli bir özelliğidir. Standart yapıdaki panellerle, değişik kullanımlara ait uygun mekânsal çözümlenmelerin elde edilebilmesi, yapının kullanım aşamasında değişik geometrik modellemelere ait gerekli performansı göstermesi bakımından önemlidir. Tez kapsamında farklı işlevsel özelliklerdeki yapı tiplerinde, farklı kullanımlara göre mekânların modellemeleri yapılacaktır. Aynı tip panel elemanlarla ve optimum ölçüler göz önünde tutularak bu değişik mekânların nasıl üretilebileceği, tezden hedeflenen amacı oluşturmaktadır.In this thesis, space analyzing for temporary buildings produced using planar panel elements according by geometric modeling will be explored. Being able to produce spaces appropriate for use is an important feature of temporary structures to be produced using panel elements based on pre-production. Producing spatial solutions for various uses through panels in standard structures is significant for the structure, when in use, to be able to reflect the necessary performance for various use geometric modeling. In this thesis, spatial modelling will be carried out by structure types with various functional properties and by various uses. How these various spaces can be produced considering the same type of panel elements and the optimum dimensions is the final objective of the thesis

FEN BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ/LİSANSÜSTÜ TEZ PROJESİ

DAVRANIŞ DEĞİŞİKLİĞİNİ TEŞVİK ETMEK İÇİN TASARIM MÜDAHALELER