Designing with living organisms

<p>Recent advances in biology and intersecting areas of research have brought a renewed interest in engaging with living materials. BioDesign is becoming increasingly popular, and has included diverse proposals, ranging from products that incorporate microorganisms as new, often considered more sustainable materials, to speculations on future impact of synthetic biology. In this paper we present three objects that incorporate living organisms as a way to reflect on the design process. We discuss how engaging with living materials could be considered a shift in traditional design practices, and the challenges of integrating design in current biotechnology development. <br></p

Malentangled: Function Redacting Tape

The neologism entanglement proposes that all things are connected through super-complex meshworks of mutable interdependencies. This entanglement of interdependencies is often obscured through forgetness, a radically reductive process by which things are taken to be isolated and interdependencies are forgotten. In some instances – for example when objects break – people are again reminded of the interdependentness of things. Malentanglement theory proposes that forgetness may also encounter a remindness through humour, and not only through catastrophe (depunctualisation). The ‘Function Redacting Tape’ project takes redaction as a method for doctoring documents, but it deploys this method in the material context of design. Project Participants are provided with black PVC adhesive tape and invited to consider the functions of designed objects. They are then asked to redact these functions (using the tape) and in doing so to make documented interventions that draw back the metaphorical veil of forgetness for reasons of design enquiry. The project functions as a sort of rudimentary cultural probe that might shed some light on entanglement, humour, and design, whilst simultaneously testing the employment of humour to aid participation in design research

Thinking through robotic imaginaries

<p>Lichtsuchende is a society of static robots: autonomous to some degree, exhibiting social behaviour and interacting with humans. Responsive and communicative, they perform creature-hood. We use this as a vehicle to question the relationship with their designers, and the reconfiguration of design methodologies around the bringing forth of situated, responsive things, that possess a sense of being in the world. Their quasi-creaturehood situates them between made objects and living beings. We are interested in how we design for the lifeworld of creatures who do not yet exist, how much we can support their being rather than imposing our will on their matter. We argue for a sense of stewardship not ownership – a responsibility to the artefacts, made clear by their creaturehood. We look after them, hold robot surgeries, recognise personality in their defects, and support their life course from installation to installation, as their society grows and changes. We are interested in the pivotal moments in this journey, where design feels as if it is led by their needs rather than our desires: designing with and for the things. In particular, we are interested in beginning to understand the unplanned imaginaries latent in their socialisation, while acknowledging unavoidable design biases.</p

Domestic Widgets: Leveraging Household Creativity in Co-Creating Data Physicalisations

The home environment is a complex design space, especially when it has multiple inhabitants. As such, the home presents challenges for the design of smart products. Householders may be different ages and have differing interests, needs, and attitudes towards technology. We pursued a research-through-design study with family households to envision and ‘co-create’ the future of data-enabled artifacts for their homes. We have iteratively developed domestic research artefacts for these households that are open, data-enabled, physical visualizations. These artefacts - called Domestic Widgets - are customisable in their design and functionality throughout their lifespan. The development process highlights design challenges for sustained co-creation and the leveraging of household creativity in (co-creation) research toolkits. These include the need to allow and inspire iterative customization, the need to accommodate changing roles within the home ecology, and the aim that such design should be inclusive for all family members (irrespective of age and technical proficiency), whilst maintaining a role and purpose in the home. We invite the RTD community to critically discuss our, and other, open and iterative end-user designs for sustained co-creation. By presenting unbuilt and interactive pre-built Domestic Widgets, we interactively foster engagement with practises of sustained co-creation

Electric Corset:an approach to wearables innovation

<p>One criticism of electronic textiles and wearable technology is that instead of being integrated into the modern wardrobe, the electronic garment is perceived as the ‘other’, as an ‘unusual’ item within the wardrobe. Contemporary fashion is a field of play in which individuals constantly manage personal expressions of social belonging and transgression, at the same time as it closes down the potential for new forms as a result of increasingly fast fashion supply chains. The Electric Corset project proposes that the uptake of wearables is compromised when development is based on modern categories of dress/dressing, and proposes that designers look to obsolete and ‘in-between’ items of dress to rethink the foundations of wearables development. In collaboration with Nottingham Museums and Galleries Costume and Textiles Collection, we have reproduced a small selection of such items, and recast them as ‘sacrificial’ toiles to provide a non-precious basis for embodied experimentation. The paper describes some of the barriers to innovation in wearable technologies, and frames our approach through the twin concepts of deconstruction and reconstruction in fashion theory. It reports on our experiences of embodied responses to the toiles within the making process, and presents early findings from a pilot study using improvisation.</p

Emerging Territories of Digital Material Practice

<p>This paper explores the emerging future field of fabric form work for concrete structures in combination with 3D printing. The showcased material experimentations represent studies which focus on the simultaneous use of fabric formwork and textile 3D printing in order to create a new type of material process for forming and fabricating non standard geometries applied to architectural elements. Textiles in combination with 3D printed patterning are seen in this context as tools for form generation and to a certain extent also for form control.  </p><p>This practice-based research offers a new alternative to predominant fabrication methods for complex geometries, showcasing the benefits of hybrid digital crafting techniques. The developed manufacturing strategy will be explained through a series of material experimentations and resulting prototypes. The following studies investigate fabrication processes and surface texturing methods for the manufacturing of small and large-scale prototypes such as tiles or concrete columns. The studies represent material investigations with a hybrid material system —textile, concrete and 3D printed silicone— and are process driven, concentrating more on process experimentation —seen as a digital crafting methodology — rather than focussing on a predefined design output.<br></p

Design with neotribes

The neotribe is a sociological concept which postulates the return of tribes in a contemporary form. French sociologist Michel Maffesoli sees them as an emotional community, sometimes ephemeral, changeable in composition and which often lacks organisation and routinisation, in contrast to the original form of a tribe. This paper reflects on three interactive design projects made to test this theory, undertaken in 2017 and 2018. The projects were developed around three tribes: the People’s Fridge, the Freegans in Brixton (London) and the Tuskers on the EVE Online game. These groups are of interest because of their strong purpose and shared values. The notion of emergence is of particular interest in their development as it unites ethnographic and design approaches. This paper explores the research (divergence) and the making process (convergence). The research engages with theory and object analysis as catalysers. Finally, the process allows us to explore concepts such as DIY citizenship, the gift economy, values in an online game community and critique the notion of ‘smart’ in the Internet of Things. Hence, we hope this methodology allows more designers to contribute to a subject that goes beyond practice

Collaborative craft through digital fabrication and virtual reality

This paper examines the collaborative practice between an analogue and a digital craft practitioner. It aims to illuminate ways in which digital tools can be used to translate handcrafted objects in collaborative craft practice and to address the following questions: 1) What forms of knowing and meaning making evolve in collaborative research through design practice? 2) What does it mean to explore material in Computer Aided Design (CAD) through Virtual Reality (VR)? Originating with a hand-knotted artifact, the study begins with the transformation of an analogue form into digital format using a range of techniques. These activities act as both a review of digital fabrication capabilities and an exploration of new thinking mechanisms offered by this emerging hybrid practice. The study broadens our understanding of the maker’s role within the capabilities and limitations of digital tools. Each iteration of digitally-fabricated objects was documented and reflected upon. This collaborative practice acts as a catalyst for established disciplines within art and design to collide and interact. Outcomes include mapping workflows within digital and analogue material practice, and reflection on how the materials and methods used in digital fabrication have the potential to expand the meanings connected to the things that are produced

Empowering young adults on the autistic spectrum:Reframing assistive technology through design

Increasingly, assistive technologies are designed to ‘empower’ people with cognitive and social challenges. But what does it mean to say technology empowers? In a four-year participatory Research-through-Design project we addressed this question. Eleven autistic young adults participated in designing MyDayLight: an IoT system supporting self-management of domestic activities. Contextual inquiry, co-design, design reflection, prototype deployment and embodied interaction theory were woven together in an iterative reflective process. This allowed us to critically address certain background assumptions that typically underly common understanding of assistive technologies. We present three reframings of our evolving concept of ‘empowering technology’: 1) From ‘planned reminder’ to ‘situated attention grabber’ 2) From ‘supporting action’ to ‘scaffolding developing your own supportive environment’ 4) From ‘assistive product’, to ‘co-design tool in a larger transformational process’. Instead of supporting ‘self-sufficiency’, MyDayLight expresses a developmental-experiential interpretation of empowerment. It helps users experiment with reconfiguring their own environment, reflect on their experiences and gradually develop more grip on life. The design artifacts enabled young adults on the spectrum and their care-givers to share, question- and reframe implicitly held understandings and to imagine and explore new ways for assistive technology to play an empowering role in a person’s life-world

Blueprints physical to digital: curation of media to support ongoingness

Through describing ‘Blueprints’, a series of fabric collages, we detail a method for translating physical properties of objects into digital materialities of media compilations. This method has emerged within a piece of design research seeking to develop new ways to curate digital media to support ongoingness. The project context centres on working firstly with people who have a life limiting illness, secondly people living with an early stage of dementia and thirdly people who are bereaved. Ongoingness is a theoretical construct denoting an active dialogical component of ‘continued bonds’, which is an approach within bereavement care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. ‘Blueprints’ are fabric collages made from scraps of fabric symbolising digital media (in this case photographs) from 2 people – one bereaved and one now deceased. The physical qualities that result from making the fabric collages (variation in layerings, thicknesses, stitching, fraying) each map onto directions for how the corresponding digital media will be composed in a compilation, and serves as a collaborative method of curating media in new ways. The ‘Blueprints’ method enables us to research if and how physical making of things can serve as a gentle way to engage with the complexities of media curation. It considers the potential value of indirect ways of curating digital media to enable ongoing connections between people through the unexpected compilations that the method creates