Criticality meets sustainability: Constructing critical practices in design research for sustainability

Sustainability requires a wider awareness of the changing conditions for design today – rather than focused solely on preserving nature or conserving energy, per se, this opens up for challenging assumptions about relations between design and society and for constructing new forms of critical practice. Tracing tendencies in conceptual and (post)critical design, this paper argues for further developing the critical discourse within design today and design research as an important arena for extending the ideological and artifactual production of such discourse to users and stakeholders. In relation to my own experiences within the Static! and Switch! design research programs, these perspective are anchored in conceptual, operational, and practical examples of critical practices applied in the area of energy awareness

Sonic City: Prototyping a wearable experience

Sonic City is a project exploring mobile interaction and wearable technology for everyday music creation. A wearable system has been developed that creates electronic music in real-time based on sensing bodily and environmental factors - thus, a personal soundscape is co-produced by physical movement, local activity, and urban ambiance simply by walking through the city. Applying multi-disciplinary methods, we have developed the wearable from a scenario-driven, aesthetic and lifestyle perspective. A garment has been crafted for 'trying on' interaction and wearabilty options with users on-site in the city. With this prototype, we have been able to expore and rapidly iterate context and content, social and human factors of the wearable application

Mixers: A participatory approach to design prototyping

In this design exhibit, we describe methods we have used to design a noticeboard interface for an older community in London. Three low-fidelity methods of prototyping interaction provided shared and accessible means for us and our end users to communicate design ideas, explore qualities of the user experience, and evaluate them within situations of use. This approach facilitated the development of an appropriate, innovative and feasible solution for a unique context

Underdogs and superheroes: Designing for new players in public space

We are exploring methods for participatory and public involvement of new 'players' in the design space. Underdogs & Superheroes involves a game-based methodology – a series of creative activities or games – in order to engage people experientially, creatively, and personally throughout the design process. We have found that games help engage users’ imaginations by representing reality without limiting expectations to what's possible here and now; engaging experiential and personal perspectives (the 'whole' person); and opening the creative process to hands-on user participation through low/no-tech materials and a widely-understood approach. The methods are currently being applied in the project Underdogs & Superheroes, which aims to evolve technological interventions for personal and community presence in local public spaces

Difficult forms: critical practices of design and research

As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series of issues related to the operational and intellectual basis for 'critical practice', and how these might open up for a new kind of development of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of design. Rather than prescribing a practice on the basis of theoretical considerations, these critical practices seem to build an intellectual basis for design on the basis of its own modes of operation, a kind of theoretical development that happens through, and from within, design practice and not by means of external descriptions or analyses of its practices and products

Who Cares? Proceedings of the 8th Biannual Nordic Design Research Society

NORDES 2019 is the 8th biannual conference of the Nordic Design Research Society co-hosted by two Finnish institutions: Aalto University and University of Lapland. Convened in 2005, the society is an informal network of people inter- ested in design research. NORDES convenes biannual conferences and, on opposite years, biannual summer schools. Who Cares? This question is a provocation for design research. What do, or should, we care about in design and design research today? Underpinning the question are issues of culture and agency – who cares, for whom, and how Taking care, or being cared for, evokes the choice of roles, and processes of interaction, co-creation and even decision-making. Caring, as a verb, emphasizes care as intention, action and labor in relation to others. Care can be understood as concern for that beyond oneself, for others and, thus, human, societal and even material and ecological rela- tions are at stake. The question of care is also a call for questioning relationships, participation and responsibility, democratic and sustainable ways of co-existing. From this expansive societal standpoint, we could even ask who cares about design? And what should we do about it? The 8th biennial NORDES conference poses the question, “who cares?”, exploring related questions, issues and propositions concerning responsibilities, relationships, ways of doing and directing design today. Ramia Mazé edited the published proceedings of this conference

Who is sustainable? Querying the politics of sustainable design practices

Design, formulated as a discipline concerned with form and problem-solving, may seem preoccupied with matters other than those of politics and the political. Traced through a history of the fine arts, for example, the concerns of design include aesthetic expression and material form. As a liberal art, design is arguably a discipline that synthesizes knowledge from across the natural and social sciences and applies it to solving complex technical and social problems. These dimensions of design are apparent in its expanding roles in sustainable development―for example, in expressing lifecycle information about products, changing energy consumption behavior, rethinking transportation or food services, and steering decision-making processes in communities or companies. Amended as 'sustainable', design is repositioned from being part of the problem of unsustainable development. However, preoccupied with forms or solutions, design is not always attentive to its political dimensions. How, by, and for whom sustainability is formulated are political questions to be discussed within discourses and practices of sustainable development―and sustainable design. Such questions are at stake in critical studies and critical practices of design. Reflecting here on design examples from my own work and that of others, I articulate a series of such questions inspired by critical theory and political philosophy. These open a discussion of the roles of design in sustainable consumption and sustainable communities, in which it is profoundly implicated in the reorganization of everyday life. Combining reflections and examples, the graphic form of this article reflects an interweaving of theory and practice, the materiality of academia and the criticality of design

Cultures of Sustainability: ‘Ways of doing’ cooking

In our research, we have been expanding our conceptual and methodological frames of reference as designers, in order to explore the complexity of factors involved in environmental sustainability and the consequent challenges posed for design research. In this paper, we discuss some of these issues in user-centered and sustainable design, drawing out and developing relations to concepts from other fields of study, such as the sociology of consumption and material culture. In order to better understand the role that (sustainable) design products might play within people’s everyday lives and lifestyles, we interpret and discuss notions of ‘socio-cultural practices’ of consumption and frame an approach to studying people’s ‘ways of doing’ with artifacts. We point to two examples from our previous research on designing for energy awareness and for sustainable bathing practices. A current study is presented in depth, in which families and singles, resident in The Netherlands but originating from different countries, have been observed and interviewed during preparation of a meal, eating and clearing up afterwards. Through studying and reflecting on the different ‘ways of doing’ cooking, we gained insights into how cooking and a range of associated practices and artifacts are deeply embedded in traditions, meanings and aspirations. Issues of environmental consumption, such as water, energy and waste, are at stake in such design research but, as we argue, so is attention and sensitivity to how these are interwoven in meaningful socio-cultural practices. The setup and findings are presented, as a point of departure for raising conceptual and methodological questions to be developed in future work

Social Sustainability: A design research approach to sustainable development

While issues such as clean production and energy efficiency are still central in sustainable development discourse, attention is increasingly on patterns of consumption at multiple levels in society. This opens new opportunities and responsibilities for design research, as we shift from a focus on product lifecycles to people’s lifestyles. It also requires further understanding the ‘social sustainability’ aspects of the environment and development, including the complexity of problematics characterized by uncertainties, contradictions and controversies. In response, we propose a programmatic approach, in which a tentative assemblage of theoretical and experimental strategies frame a common ground for a collaborative and practice-led inquiry. We present a design research program based on two propositions: socio-cultural practices are the basic unit for design, and; transitions, and transition management, are the basic points of design intervention. Rather than affirming the status quo or the prevailing discourse, we argue for design research as a ‘critical practice’, in which cultural diversity, non-humans and multiple futures are considered

Introductions

This is the introduction to the book with the overall description: This is a critical time in design. Concepts and practices of design are changing in response to historical developments in the modes of industrial design production and consumption. Indeed, the imperative of more sustainable development requires profound reconsideration of design today. Theoretical foundations and professional definitions are at stake, with consequences for institutions such as museums and universities as well as for future practitioners. This is ‘critical’ on many levels, from the urgent need to address societal and environmental issues to the reflexivity required to think and do design differently