Design fiction:anticipating adoption

When we submitted our work in progress (WiP) paper, “Game of Drones,”1 to the ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY) in 2015, we had no idea whether we’d be derided or praised. The paper presented a fictional account of the Game of Drones research project, which never actually happened. While it might be surprising to some that such a paper passed review and was accepted, it’s important to understand that the intent behind the paper wasn’t subversive; rather, we wanted to produce new knowledge. The purpose of the Game of Drones project was dual to explore a potential future use of drones for civic enforcement activities and advance a program for developing design fiction as a research method. Here, we highlight the enormous potential of design fiction by covering both how drones helped us develop a design fiction, and how design fiction helped us highlight wider issues related to the design of a drone-based system

Vapourworlds and design fiction:the role of intentionality

There is a long tradition of designers creating visions of technological futures. We contrast the properties of two related types of future envisionment, whose commonality is using ‘world building’ to showcase or prototype technological concepts. We consider commercial visions that depict potential future products within possible future worlds, and by extending the concept of Vapourware we term these ‘Vapourworlds’. We contrast Vapourworlds with Design Fictions, a class of envisionment that inherits qualities of criticality and exploration from its familial antecedents’ radical design and critical design. By comparing these two approaches we intend to shed light on both. Superficially these world building endeavours appear similar, yet under the surface an underlying difference in intentionality permeates the substance of both practices. We conclude with a position that by highlighting the contrasts between these practices, mutually beneficial insights become apparent

On the Internet Everybody Knows You’re a Whatchamacallit (or a Thing)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is fed by, and feeds into, flowing data streams. Through these flows, servers, sensors, humans and alike are networked together, data and networks mediating between physical and digital realms. ‘Things’ of all types, toys, lights and kettles, are tangible. On-view-but-unheard, they do their jobs. All the while, in the unseen digital domain, data flow, gush, and bubble, for the most part imperceptible to the human contingent of the allencompassing menagerie of stuff. Here in the kingdom of TCP/IP, the atmosphere is thick, packets of intermachine chatter commute back and forth around the network stacks, a tidal race of datagrams pulsate, whilst somewhere - far away? - a 2D image is painted on a 3D screen. ‘Connected!’ Chirps the dialog box. The poetic tension betwixt an apparent calm in the physical world, and an obscured complexity in the digital otherworld, sets the scene for the argument we present in this paper: The IoT’s objects, entities, or stuff makes up constellations; Human Centered Design methods are constrained by IoT constellations’ complexity and multiplicity; by building from Object Orientated Ontology, IoT designers may cast multiple data, devices, corporations, and humans as equally significant ‘actants’ in a flat ontology. Here we pose this argument and propose ways to explore it

Not On Demand:Internet of Things Enabled Energy Temporality

Over a century ago alternating current (AC) triumphed over direct current (DC) in the ‘war of the currents’ and ever since AC has been ubiquitous. Increasingly devices operating internally use DC power, hence inefficient conversions from AC to DC are necessarily common. Conversely, domestic photovoltaic (PV) panels produce DC current which must be inverted to AC to integrate with existing wiring, appliances, and/or be exported the power grid. By using batteries, specifically designed DC devices, and the Internet of Things, our infrastructure may be redesigned to improve efficiency. In this provocation, we use design fiction to describe how such a system could be implemented and to open a discussion about the broader implications of such a technological shift on user experience design and interaction design

Why the internet of things needs object orientated ontology

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of connected devices with inputs and outputs operating in, and on, the physical world. The network is simultaneously fed by, and feeds into, data streams flowing across digital-physical boundaries, connecting sensors, servers, actuators, devices, and people. ‘Things’ of all types, lightbulbs, doorbells, kettles and cars, discretely-but-visibly do their jobs. Meanwhile in the unseen digital domain, where data swirls imperceptible to humans, the atmosphere is thick with the rapidly-moving data packets and content that constitute inter-machine chatter. Contrasting the visible calm in the physical world with obscured bedlam in the digital otherworld sets the scene for the argument we present in this paper. Applying Object Orientated Ontology, IoT designers may reimagine data, devices, and users, as equally significant actants in a flat ontology. In this paper, we exemplify our arguments by creating a Design Fiction around a reimagined ‘smart kettle’

Screen-printed flexible MRI receive coils.

Magnetic resonance imaging is an inherently signal-to-noise-starved technique that limits the spatial resolution, diagnostic image quality and results in typically long acquisition times that are prone to motion artefacts. This limitation is exacerbated when receive coils have poor fit due to lack of flexibility or need for padding for patient comfort. Here, we report a new approach that uses printing for fabricating receive coils. Our approach enables highly flexible, extremely lightweight conforming devices. We show that these devices exhibit similar to higher signal-to-noise ratio than conventional ones, in clinical scenarios when coils could be displaced more than 18 mm away from the body. In addition, we provide detailed material properties and components performance analysis. Prototype arrays are incorporated within infant blankets for in vivo studies. This work presents the first fully functional, printed coils for 1.5- and 3-T clinical scanners

Structure, function, evolution and inhibition studies of the organophosphate detoxifying enzyme αE7

Insecticide resistance is a global concern that threatens human health and agricultural productivity. Understanding the molecular basis of resistance will help to manage future insecticide use to ensure that effective, safe and inexpensive pest control is available. In the Australian sheep blowfly Lucilia cuprina, a single mutation (Gly137Asp) in the αE7 carboxylesterase gives rise to resistance by converting the enzyme into an organophosphate (OP) hydrolase. This emergence of new activity provides a unique opportunity to investigate the molecular basis for enzyme evolution. In this thesis, I investigated the structure, function, evolution and inhibition of αE7. Chapter two describes the role of structural diversity in the function of wild type αE7. I applied new methods for extracting information about structural diversity from X-ray diffraction data to explore the changes in structure that accompany high affinity OP binding in αE7. In chapter three, I investigated the molecular basis for the evolution of catalytic OP detoxification in the blowfly. I determined the structure of the Gly137Asp variant by X-ray crystallography, which, along with molecular dynamics simulations and enzyme activity assays, revealed the role of Asp137 in the new catalytic mechanism. The new sidechain is disordered, and potentially only displays a fraction of its catalytic potential. Chapter four explores this catalytic potential through the laboratory-directed evolution of αE7 for increased OP hydrolase activity. I performed detailed kinetic and structural analysis of the evolutionary trajectory and characterized the structural changes responsible for the 8000-fold increase in OP hydrolase activity. The analysis unmasked a hidden, catalytically relevant, conformation of the active site. Furthermore, the results revealed the role of conformational diversity in the evolutionary optimization of αE7 and highlight the challenges to satisfying the competing demands of substrate binding and catalysis in the tightly packed environment of an enzyme’s active site. This work establishes that only a fraction of the evolutionary potential of αE7 has been explored in nature. In chapter five, I combined structural knowledge of αE7 with a computational screen to discover new potent and selective inhibitors of αE7. These compounds, based on a boronic acid scaffold, act as synergists to reduce the amount of OP required to kill L. cuprina by up to 16-fold, and abolish resistance. The broad-spectrum potential for the compounds as a new class of synergist was demonstrated by their low toxicity to animals and their ability to potentiate OP insecticides against another common insect pest, the peach-potato aphid Myzus persicae. These compounds represent a solution to OP resistance as well as to environmental concerns regarding overuse of OPs, allowing significant reduction of use without compromising efficacy. More broadly, this thesis makes contributions to characterizing structural protein heterogeneity using X-ray diffraction, to understanding the molecular basis of enzyme evolution and to the use of in silico screens for the discovery of enzyme inhibitors. The results from this thesis will assist the of control insect pests and the management of insecticide resistance

A thesis about design fiction

This research began as something else. Originally, I sought to research the possible futures of cryptographic currencies, and I encountered Design Fiction for the first time when assembling a methodology for that project. I was enticed by the rhetoric around Design Fiction and the aesthetic of works describing themselves as Design Fiction. However, as I researched the concept more thoroughly it quickly became apparent that grounding an entire doctoral thesis on Design Fiction alone may be problematic due to a lack of consensus around what Design Fiction really is and how it works. Hence, my doctorate pivoted, and rather than using Design Fiction to research another topic, I elected to research Design Fiction itself. Through desk-based research into Design Fiction the thesis establishes that while there are some central notions which seem common to Design Fictions (e.g. a concern with ‘the future’, the use of ‘design’, and a flavour of unreality invoked by the term ‘fiction’) there is little consensus around how these notions should be defined, how they interact with each other, and what—in concrete terms—the nature of the practice that emerges in the space between them really is. Responding to the apparent lack of consensus the thesis explores the following questions: • What is Design Fiction? • What can Design Fiction do? • What are the best ways to achieve that? In order to explore such fundamental conundrums—and guided by Bruce Sterling’s succinct assertion that ‘the best way to understand the many difficulties of design fiction is to attempt to create one’—my responses to these questions were developed using a Research through Design methodology to inform a series of ‘material engagements’ with Design Fiction. These are articulated through a series of ‘case studies’. Each case study uses Design Fiction to explore a different technology or context. These include cryptographic currency, robotic carers, drones, and artificial intelligence. Together the studies create a portfolio of material engagements with Design Fiction that, collectively, underpin contingent responses to the research questions. The thesis concludes that Design Fiction is a type of ‘World Building’ that may be utilised in many different ways, for example as a communication tool, as an ideation aid, or as a research method. Furthermore, the underlying intentionality of any given Design Fiction must be expressed through appropriate media in order to support World Building that is sensitive to both the given domain’s attributes and the factors motivating the use of Design Fiction in the first place. While the Research through Design approach applied in this research aspires only to produce contingent and temporary answers to the research questions, those answers come together as a set of usable and accessible insights useful for unravelling, understanding, utilising Design Fiction, while fostering the practice’s ongoing maturation and adoption into its own near future

Design fiction as world building

Design Fiction has garnered considerable attention during recent years yet still remains pre-paradigmatic. Put differently there are concurrent,but incongruent, perspectives on what Design Fiction is and how to use it. Acknowledging this immaturity, we assert that the best way to contribute to the establishment of an evidence-based first paradigm, is by adopting a research through design approach. Thus, in this paper we describe ‘research into design fiction, done through design fiction’. This paper describes the creation of two Design Fictions through which we consider the relationship between narrative and Design Fiction and argue that links between the two are often drawn erroneously. We posit that Design Fiction is in fact a ‘world building’ activity, with no inherent link to ‘narrative’ or ‘storytelling’. The first Design Fiction explores a near future world containing a system for gamified drone-based civic enforcement and the second is based on a distant future in which hardware and algorithms capable of detecting empathy are used as part of everyday communications. By arguing it is world building, we aim to contribute towards the disambiguation of current Design Fiction discourse and the promotion of genre conventions, and, in doing so to reinforce the foundations upon which a first stable paradigm can be constructed