Peering into the Discourse of Industrial Design Training through a Sustainability Lens

Now well established in HCI, the lens of sustainability may be applied to educational practices in industrial design and interaction design. By sustainability, we mean to include notions of mitigation of the environmental effects of climate change. In this paper, we present an analysis of student projects in a junior and senior industrial design class dataset. Drawing from discourse analysis, we examine how the industrial design classroom serves as a space to socially construct the philosophies and goals inherent in “good” design. We then examine how the lens of sustainability is implicated into the industrial design “way” as espoused by the discipline’s pedagogy

Designing for the Infrastructure of the Supply Chain of Malay Handwoven Songket in Terengganu

The growing HCI interest in developing contexts and cultural craft practices is ripe to focus on their under-explored homegrown sociotechnical infrastructures. This paper explores the creative infrastructural actions embedded within the practices of songket's supply chain in Terengganu, Malaysia. We report on contextual interviews with 92 participants including preparation workers, weavers, designers, merchants, and customers. Findings indicate that increased creative infrastructural actions are reflected in these actors' resourcefulness for mobilizing information, materials, and equipment, and for making creative artifacts through new technologies weaved within traditional practices. We propose two novel approaches to design in this craft-based infrastructure. First, we explore designing for the social layer of infrastructure and its mutually advantageous exploitative relationships rooted in culture and traditions. Second, we suggest designing for roaming value-creation artifacts, which blend physical and digital materializations of songket textile design. Developed through a collaborative and asynchronous process, we argue that these artifacts represent less-explored vehicles for value co-creation, and that sociotechnical infrastructures as emerging sites of innovation could benefit from HCI research

Subjective and neurophysiological perspectives on emotion perception from dance

Emotional engagement and aesthetic appreciation can be prime motivations for engaging with dance. Dance can therefore offer a valuable tool for the neuroscientific study of emotion processing. This idea underpinned the project Watching Dance, which investigated the neural correlates of subjective emotional response. Participants watched a four-minute video of contemporary dance involving two dancers and three music segments. Subjective emotional response was measured by continuous rating with a slider on an analogue scale, and structured interviews prompted participants to reflect on their ratings. The neural correlates were measured using functional brain imaging complemented by a brain interference study to investigate a causal link between regional brain activity and the subjective emotional response. A pattern of emotional rating emerged that was strongly influenced by both music and movement, as confirmed by the qualitative investigation. A direct link was established between posterior parietal cortex activity and emotional reaction to dance