Exploring consumer experiences as rites of passage

Conceptualising consumer experience as a rite of passage holds the potential for designing products entailing stronger attachment. We integrate theoretical perspectives from three disparate research areas: sociological theories of rituals, models of consumer’s rituals and those on the value of objects for the sense of self, to explore the ritual types and objects which consumers engage in throughout they key life transitions. We report on secondary data analysis of six qualitative studies on consumer’s rites of passage. Our contributions include an initial framework integrating the lifecycle perspective with the typology of consumer’s rituals and objects, and implications to better support consumer’s experience in rites of passage

A hybrid intervention for challenging the stigma of mental illness

The stigma of mental illness has significant negative impact on people experiencing it, to an extent that it may lead to the avoidance of mental health services. Various strategies have been developed to change people’s negative and ill-founded attitudes towards the mental illness. This paper presents a novel strategy which builds innovatively on a robust model of attitude, while supporting both educational aims and access to the emotional world of people experiencing mental illness

Craft-based Exploration of Sense of Self

Self-defining memories are crucial for the sense of self, yet we know little of how to cue their recall in old age. This paper reports on interviews with 3 participants in a 10 week craft project. Findings indicate the challenges of introspection, of recalling negative self-defining memories, and of inaccessible cues, and we conclude with three design implications for addressing them

Designing personal grief rituals:an analysis of symbolic objects and actions

Personal grief rituals are beneficial in dealing with complicated grief, but challenging to design, as they require symbolic objects and actions meeting clients’ emotional needs. We report interviews with ten therapists with expertise in both grief therapy and grief rituals. Findings indicate three types of rituals supporting honoring, letting go, and self transformation, with the latter being particularly complex. Outcome also point to a taxonomy of ritual objects for framing and remembering ritual experience, and for capturing and processing grief. Besides symbolic possessions, we identified other types of ritual objects including transformational and future-oriented ones. Symbolic actions include creative craft of ritual objects, respectful handling, disposal and symbolic play. We conclude with theoretical implications of these findings, and a reflection on their value for tailored, creative co-design of grief rituals. In particular, we identified several implications for designing grief rituals which include accounting for the client’s need, selecting (or creating) the most appropriate objects and actions from the identified types, integrating principles of both grief and art/drama therapy, exploring clients’ affinity for the ancient elements as medium of disposal in letting go rituals, and the value of technology for recording and reflecting on ritual experience

The impact of public education spending on economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe. An ARDL approach with structural break

The former communist states experienced a period of turbulence in the transition to the market economy and then the accession to the EU, turbulences that also influenced the education sector. This article aims to analyze the impact of public spending on education on economic growth in 11 former communist Eastern European states, current EU members. The methodology used is ARDL with structural break. The results are consistent with those previously obtained The public education expenditure-economic growth relationship is mixed on long term; for five countries, there is no such thing; for six countries, there is one on a long term. On a short term, also, mixed results manifest for four countries are positive, and for two negative

Mental Wellbeing:Future Agenda Drawing from Design, HCI and Big Data

Most HCI work on the exploration and support of mental wellbeing involves mobiles, sensors, and various on-line systems which focus on tracking users. However, adoption of, and adherence to such systems is not ideal. Are there innovative ways to better design for mental wellbeing? A promising novel approach is to encourage changes to behavior through the use of tailored feedback informed by machine learning algorithms applied to large sets of use data. This one day workshop aims to explore novel ways to actively engage participants through interactive systems, with an overall aim to shape the research agenda of future HCI work on mental wellbeing. The workshop is designed in an innovative format offering a mixture of traditional presentation, hands-on design and future-thinking activities. The workshop brings together both practitioners and HCI researchers from across a range areas addressing mental wellbeing

Futures of Digital Death:Past, Present and Charting Emerging Research Agenda

This special issue entitled “Futures of Digital Death: Mobilities of Loss and Commemoration“ explores the topic of digital death and how technologies are reconfigured by and reconfiguring social relationships with the deceased and dying loved ones as well as the larger ecosystem supporting such relationships. This Introduction article starts with an overview of the past research on digital death intended to provide a relevant context for the five papers included in this issue. Then, we reflect on how the current papers or the present research, build on the past and can be used to address existing gaps and to inform future new research directions in order to move the field forward