Coffee maker patterns and the design of energy feedback artefacts

Smart electricity meters and home displays are being installed in people’s homes with the assumption that households will make the necessary efforts to reduce their electricity consumption. However, present solutions do not sufficiently account for the social implications of design. There is a potential for greater savings if we can better understand how such designs affect behaviour. In this paper, we describe our design of an energy awareness artefact – the Energy AWARE Clock – and discuss it in relation to behavioural processes in the home. A user study is carried out to study the deployment of the prototype in real domestic contexts for three months. Results indicate that the Energy AWARE Clock played a significant role in drawing households’ attention to their electricity use. It became a natural part of the household and conceptions of electricity became naturalized into informants’ everyday language

Design och genus : hur vi formger produkter och hur de formar oss

Jag har valt att som examensarbete kritiskt studera arkitektur och industridesign ur ett genusperspektiv för att därigenom hitta frågeställningar som skapar nya tolkningsprocesser och tankesätt i skapandet av byggnader och produkter

Design och genus : hur vi formger produkter och hur de formar oss

Jag har valt att som examensarbete kritiskt studera arkitektur och industridesign ur ett genusperspektiv för att därigenom hitta frågeställningar som skapar nya tolkningsprocesser och tankesätt i skapandet av byggnader och produkter

Materializing “Ruling Relations”

This paper reflects upon our critical (feminist) design research approach developed in response to the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA)’s innovation program on equality. As a pilot of the program, the subject of our research is equality within elder care work, a female-dominated employment sector with particular gender and power dynamics. We have responded to this program and sector by rethinking our research methodologies and critical design research method. Inspired by institutional ethnography and the concept of ‘ruling relations’, our research approach involves critical design to materialize structural inequalities manifested within the everyday micro-practices of care work. Stories and sketches (as ‘material theses’) were generated through qualitative fieldwork involving ‘research through design’ processes to observe, document, explore, interpret, discuss and communicate gendered practices of elder care. Three themes emerged along the way, which articulate ruling relations revealed within elder care work. This research case is reported here along with reflections about the potentials of critical design as a (feminist) research approach capable of more critically interrogating power and positionality within design and innovation. From our perspective, equality as a policy and subject of research – including design research – calls for critical (and feminist) theoretical and methodological development.Peer reviewe