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

TILLBLIVELSER : En trasslig berättelse om design som normkritisk praktik

The increasing awareness of norm-critical perspectives (in society, academia and industry) brings with it the need to develop methods to ensure they can be implemented in practice. This thesis discusses how the role of design contributes to and maintains norms, and shows how design as a norm critical practice has great potential to bridge the gap between theory and practice in norm-critical work. This potential lies in using design as a peda-gogic tool that can concretize and make understandable what would otherwise be perceived as complex, unclear or remote. The thesis pays special attention to the role of artefacts in the creation of the stories of the world. The discursive design thing is introduced as a tool to visualize norms and to create discussion. The three-dimensional, physical thing exposes us to a more diverse experience of norms than when we just address them in words or pictures.The empirical work in this thesis stems from five research projects that differ from each other and were carried out under varied conditions. The projects have tackled a range of problems and power relationships. However, together they draw a complex picture of how norms arise, overlap and constantly change over time, place and space – and how design can be used to support or disrupt this process.By revisiting the projects, it becomes clear how the researcher’s position and actions (or non-actions) shape the norm development process. This results in an insight that meaning can not be construc-ted from an outside perspective, but is a constant ”becoming” that occurs in an entanglement of relationships arising between different bodies, both human and non-human. As a norm critical perspective implies paying attention to power relationships, it also assumes a power critical approach to the production of meaning extracted from the norm-critical work, and that we – as researchers and designers – take responsibility for our prevail by highlighting our own bodies and gaze.The thesis therefore proposes the concept of diffraction as an approach to the production of meaning in norm critical design practices. A diffractive approach enables an understanding of how the production of meaning occurs in various coincidences, but also how our own interventions shape the story. It opens up to the realization that parallel narratives are possible and thus becomes a tool to break away from the linear understanding framework and offer an exploration of alternative thought patterns. A diffractive approach to the production of meaning is thus also a tool to pro-mote increased creativity.QC 20170222</p

Ab|Norm

'Ab|Norm' inquires into the presence and use of energy in public. Many functions and forms of electricity have long been 'naturalized' into our habitual actions and cultural norms. Consider how the lighting in our streets and parks conditions what activities we can do and when, what a neighborhood identity is like or even how safe we feel. We may not always take notice of the electricity present — much less accompanying values and consequences. Ab|Norm sketches urban interventions in order to discuss such issues with stakeholders. A series of concept designs has been produced in the form of cards, which have already been the basis for a participatory workshop with architects, artists and engineers

Becoming The Energy Aware Clock - Revisiting The Design Process Through A Feminist Gaze

This paper explores the border between technology and design (form giving) from a feminist perspective. Looking at the energy system and how it has been integrated in the household, we want to address the underlying structures that have been built into the ecology of electrical appliances used in daily life, preserving certain norms that could be questioned from both a gender and a sustainability perspective. We have created an alternative electricity meter, the Energy AWARE Clock, addressing design issues uncovered in an initial field study. In this paper, we will make parallels to these issues. We also use feminist technoscience studies scholar Donna Haraway’s theory of the cyborg in order to clarify useful concepts that can be derived from feminist theory and that can act as important tools for designers engaged in creative processes. From our own experience with the Energy AWARE Clock this approach has great potential for questioning and rethinking present norms within sustainability and gender, from the viewpoints of design research and design practice.clockwis

Att synliggöra det osynliga : Design som aktör i jämställdhetsarbete

Research points to the need for developing methods to change established gender orders and converting gender perspectives into practical action. Based on a gender equality project at the Centre for Health Technology Halland (HCH), this article discusses the potential of critical design as an agent within the framework of gender equality work and work for change. The project worked with critical design as a tool for making visible what a gender perspec- tive can mean in the context of one’s work, in this case health technology. It resulted in a conceptual prototype called the Androchair – a medical chair designed for men but based on women’s experiences of the gynaecological chair. The aim of the article is to study and discuss the significance of including a prototype, that is an object, in the gender equality work of an organisation. Special focus is placed on whether, and in that case how, a prototype can influence notions of gender and gender equality in relation to one’s own area of work. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with staff at the HCH. Actor-net- work theory is used to interpret the data. The analysis shows how the Androchair raises questions of power, needs and interpretative prerogative in relation to what one does in one’s work. Furthermore, it does this to a greater extent than more conventional ways of conveying knowledge about gender equality (such as academic texts, statistics and PowerPoint presentations). Physical objects are perceived of as making gender and gender equality issues more tangible. QC 20170224ORIG

Materializing “Ruling Relations” : A Case of Gender, Power and Elder Care in Sweden

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.

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