The Disruptive Office: Mechanised Furniture to Promote Useful Conflicts

This exploratory project investigated the counter-utopian view that conflict can be used as a tool for innovation within collaborative groups. A series of proposals for disruptive office furniture embodied emerging ideas about innovation through conflict. The proposals for Disruptive Office Furniture offer an exaggerated viewpoint on solutions that actively promote innovation and collaboration. They are devised to be brash, outspoken, and confrontational whilst initiating discussion on what tools for innovative work environments may be

Form and Movement in Domestic Networked Systems

It is increasingly desirable for electronic artefacts in the home to be grouped as sets, sharing data and properties across a network. A range of strategies can be used by a designer to explore the value and use of the systems for users, in particular through the properties of form and dynamic behaviours, including visual output and movement. This paper focuses on a range recent work which exploits rich behaviour and novel forms to highlight opportunities for user engagement in the home

Evaluating the Double-Deck Desk

The Double Deck Desk (Dddesk) was a two-storied work station with accompanying software that we installed in the foyer of a large office building over a two-week period. Evolved from several iterations of speculative design proposals, it addressed the need for contemplation within the workplace by literally lifting people from everyday commotion and by providing software that encouraged people to reflect on their activities and aspirations. Assessing the contribution of such a project is not simple. We suggest that traditional HCI criteria are inappropriate, and instead the Dddesk and the proposals that preceded it should be seen as embodied narratives. They serve as ‘projective objects,’ eliciting stories from people that highlight issues relevant for design

The Form Design of the Datacatcher: A Research Prototype

This pictorial exposes aspects of the decision-making process during the form design of a research prototype called the Datacatcher: a mobile electronic device that receives a continuous stream of location-based sociopolitical messages. Manifesting a physical device generated a myriad of demands on top of our research agenda that included issues with both technology and manufacturing. This pictorial will demonstrate how research through design has to tackle issues beyond core research questions in creating research devices, and suggest that because such seemingly irrelevant concerns are crucial for how research questions are embodied, those concerns themselves become integral to the research

Climate impacts of geoengineering marine stratocumulus clouds

Copyright © 2000 American Geophysical Union[1] Theoretical potential geoengineering solutions to the global warming problem have recently been proposed. Here, we present an idealized study of the climate response to deliberately seeding large-scale stratocumulus cloud decks in the North Pacific, South Pacific, and South Atlantic, thereby inducing cooling via aerosol indirect effects. Atmosphere-only, atmosphere/mixed-layer ocean, and fully coupled atmosphere/ocean versions of the Met Office Hadley Centre model are used to investigate the radiative forcing, climate efficacy, and regional response of temperature, precipitation, and net primary productivity to such geoengineering. The radiative forcing simulations indicate that, for our parameterization of aerosol indirect effects, up to 35% of the radiative forcing due to current levels of greenhouse gases could be offset by stratocumulus modification. Equilibrium simulations with the atmosphere/mixed-layer ocean model, wherein each of the three stratocumulus sheets is modified in turn, reveal that the most efficient cooling per unit radiative forcing occurs when the South Pacific stratocumulus sheet is modified. Transient coupled model simulations suggest that geoengineering all three stratocumulus areas delays the simulated global warming by about 25 years. These simulations also indicate that, while some areas experience increases in precipitation and net primary productivity, sharp decreases are simulated in South America, with particularly detrimental impacts on the Amazon rain forest. These results show that, while some areas benefit from geoengineering, there are significant areas where the response could be very detrimental with implications for the practical applicability of such a scheme

The Video Window (Overview)

The Video Window is an interactive device developed by the Interaction Research Studio as part of the Equator project, a six-year Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). During the project, the piece was loaned to various households for field study

The History Tablecloth: Illuminating Domestic Activity

The History Tablecloth is a flexible substrate screen-printed with electroluminescent material forming a grid of lace-like elements. When objects are left on the table, cells beneath them light to form a halo that grows over a period of hours, highlighting the flow of objects in the home. The Tablecloth explores an approach to design that emphasizes engaging, open-ended situations over defined utilitarian purposes. Long-term deployment of the History Tablecloth in a volunteer household revealed complex ways that people experienced and interacted with the Tablecloth. Beyond evoking reflection on the flow of objects over a particular table, the Tablecloth served as a ground for interpretative reflection about technology, an asset for social interaction, and an aesthetic object. Even behaviours we saw as system errors were interpreted by the users as interactively rich. Their experience highlights the subtlety of domestic ubiquitous computing, illustrating alternatives to traditional views of technology’s domestic role