Medea Publications
Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation
Emilson, Anders; Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna. (2011): “Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation”, Swedish Design Research Journal no 1, 2011:23-29.
Abstract
In recent years, design for social innovation has emerged as a new research field. Design has been acknowledged by public agencies and NGOs as one of the tools to tackle the complexity of social issues. However, critical voices have also been raised about the limits and gaps of design applied in this field, emphasizing the need for connections with other disciplines involved in social innovation.
Democratizing production: challenges in co-designing enabling platforms for social innovation
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Seravalli, Anna. (2011). “Democratizing production: challenges in co-designing enabling platforms for social innovation”, The Tao of Sustainability, International Conference on Sustainable Design Strategies in a Globalization Context, Bejing China 27-29 October 2011.
Abstract
In the social innovation field it has been recognized the need for infrastructures to support the flourishing of social innovation: intermediaries that should facilitate the connections between diverse stakeholders and resources. Design research has contributed to the idea of intermediaries by developing the concept of enabling platforms. These are situated systems of human and non-human actors, which should support bottom-up initiatives and cross-sector networks by responding to the meta-technological demands of social innovation activities. In order to fulfil this scope they should be deeply rooted in the specific context where they are operating, valuing local stakeholders and resources. Furthermore they should be characterized by a certain degree of indeterminacy, which leaves to the involved stakeholders the possibility to initiate their own activities by performing design actions after the design of the platform is concluded, the so called design-after-design.
Design Things – an Innovative View of Design Thinking and Design Practice
Thomas Binder, Giorgio De Michelis, Pelle Ehn, Giulio Jacucci, Per Linde and Ina Wagner. (2011): “Design Things”. MIT Press. Series: Design Thinking, Design Theory.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Design Things offers an innovative view of design thinking and design practice, envisioning ways to combine creative design with a participatory approach encompassing aesthetic and democratic practices and values. The authors of Design Things look at design practice as a mode of inquiry that involves people, space, artifacts, materials, and aesthetic experience, following the process of transformation from a design concept to a thing.
Design Things: Drawing Things Together and Making Things Public
Ehn, Pelle. (2011). “Design Things: Drawing Things Together and Making Things Public”, TECNOSCIENZA Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies Volume 2(1) pp. 31-52.
This assemblage is based on a talk Pelle Ehn gave at the EASST010 conference in Trento, Italy, September 3, 2010. It is composed of several kinds of materials. The ground structure is formed by the slides Ehn showed at that occasion. These slides are commented in three different ways. Firstly by excerpts from the talk, secondly by comments added now when this assemblage is put together, and finally quotes from “Design Things”, the book manuscript around which the talk circulated.
Designing for Collaborative Crossmedia Creation
Löwgren, J. (2010). Designing for collaborative crossmedia creation. In Drotner, K., Schrøder, K. (eds.) Digital content creation: Perceptions, practices & perspectives, pp. 15–35. New York: Peter Lang.
INTRODUCTION
In the Fall of 2004, Swedish producer and dj Eric Prydz released the song Call On Me featuring Steve Winwood re-recording a sample from his 1982 hit Valerie. The song made it to the top of the charts throughout Europe, partly thanks to the video that Huse Monfaradi directed to go with the song.
Interaction Criticism: Three Readings of an Interaction Design, and What They Get Us
Bardzell, Jeffrey; Bolter, Jay; Löwgren, Jonas. (2010): “Interaction Criticism: Three Readings of an Interaction Design, and What They Get Us”, Interactions xvii(2):32-37.
EXCERPT
Criticism is an integral part of the ongoing knowledge construction that is embraced in the more mature design disciplines — architecture, industrial design — and in the arts. Critics interpret, contextualize, interrelate, abstract, and question the artifacts of design to clarify opportunities for designs to improve everyday life and to explore the ways in which designs deliver on this promise.
Intuitive Improvisation: A Phenomenological Method for Dance Experimentation with Mobile Digital Media
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Kozel, Susan. (2010): “Intuitive Improvisation: A Phenomenological Method for Dance Experimentation with Mobile Digital Media”, Studia UBB Philosophia issue 3, 2010:71-80.
ABSTRACT
This paper is located at the juncture of philosophical and artistic research, offering the second in a series of phenomenologically informed methods relevant to the design and creative use of mobile digital devices called the Intuitive Improvisation method. It is also part of a larger philosophical and artistic project in Social Choreographies which contributes to the ever developing field of social aesthetics by providing a perspective uniquely coloured by dance and phenomenology. Philosophical reflections upon relational aesthetics (Rancière, Bourriaud), method and intuition (Deleuze, Bergson) are contextualized by discussing the IntuiTweet project in dance and networked social media.
Kartläggning av design för social innovation
Emilson, Anders. (2010). Design för social innovation: ett nytt designforskningsområde. Kartläggning för Designfakulteten, KTH.
INTRODUCTION
Design för social innovation är ett nytt designforskningsområde som håller på att växa fram internationellt. Design förknippas mest med teknisk innovation och utveckling av nya produkter. När det talas om innovation syftas det oftast också på teknisk eller medicinsk innovation vilka ansetts vara viktiga för samhällsutveckling och ekonomisk tillväxt. Men idag anser dock allt fler att det även behövs social innovation för att lösa många av samtidens komplexa problem med till exempel kroniska sjukdomar, klimat- och finanskris.
Media Places – Digital Flows in Urban Modernity
Linde, Per; Messeter, Jörn. (2010). Media Places – Digital Flows in Urban Modernity. Culture of Ubiquitous Information, research seminar Interweaving Technologies, Copenhagen, October 2010.
INTRODUCTION
Even if we have seen an increasing interest in development of location-based services, traditionally research within mobile ICT has been dominated by a focus on global nets of information and media channels. We believe it is necessary to go beyond the anywhere-anytime ideal of mobile and digital media, in order to produce new knowledge on practices of mediated communication in public and semi-public spaces and on ways to transform it through place-specific media services. This is what we are trying to do in the Media Places project.
NEW PUBLICATION! Touching a Stranger: Designing for Engaging Experience in Embodied Interaction
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Høbye, M., & Löwgren, J. (2011). Touching a stranger: Designing for engaging experience in embodied interaction. International Journal of Design, 5(3), 31-48.
Abstract
We present Mediated Body, an exploration into designing for engaging experience in embodied interaction. Mediated Body entails a Suit worn by a Performer engaging in social play with a Participant. The Performer and the Participant each wear a pair of headphones, and when they touch each other’s bare skin, they both hear a complex sound pattern. Our approach, which we call research-through-explorative-design, is a combination of experimental design in the lab and explorative design in the field, where qualitative assessments are used to elicit transferable knowledge contributions. This paper represents a case study of this somewhat innovative research approach in action. On the topical level, our results include three artifact-level elements that contribute to engaging experience: connecting touch and audio with the right balance between direct and emergent responsivity, justifying bare-skin touch between strangers, and providing open-ended action props with non-trivial internal complexity. Moreover, we suggest three experiential qualities as analytical tools pertaining to engaging experience in embodied interaction: the duality of performative immersion, the “magic circle” of transformative social play, and the explorative nature of emergent meaning-making.
Nonlinear News Production and Consumption: A Collaborative Approach
Lindstedt, Inger; Löwgren, Jonas; Reimer, Bo and Topgaard, Richard (2009). Nonlinear News Production and Consumption: A Collaborative Approach, ACM Computers in Entertainment 7(3).
ABSTRACT
People depend on news to make sense of happenings in the world, but current digital news products do not live up to their potential in this regard. Interactivity in relation to news is often seen as a way to give the consumer control over when to consume something and on which platform. Less attention has been placed on what should be consumed and how.
Participation in Design Things
Ehn, Pelle. (2008). Participation in design things. Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference (PDC), Bloomington, Indiana, USA, 2008.
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the design of things. This is done in an attempt to conceptually explore some of the political and practical challenges to participatory design today. Which things, and which participants? The perspective is strategic and conceptual. Two approaches are in focus, participatory design (designing for use before use) and meta-design (designing for design after design). With this framing the challenge for professional design to participate in public controversial things is considered.
Participatory Design and ‘Democratizing Innovation’
Björgvinsson, Erling; Ehn, Pelle; Hillgren, Per-Anders. (2010). Participatory Design and ‘Democratizing Innovation’. Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference (PDC), Sydney, Australia, December 2010.
ABSTRACT
Participatory design has become increasingly engaged in public spheres and everyday life and is no longer solely concerned with the workplace. This is not only a shift from work oriented productive activities to leisure and pleasurable engagements, but also a new milieu for production and innovation and entails a reorientation from “democracy at work” to “democratic innovation”.
Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation
This is a pre-print version. Do not cite without permission from the authors. More details below. Download this article in ePub or PDF.
Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna & Emilson, Anders. (2011). “Prototyping and Infrastructuring in design for social innovation. Co-Design Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, 169–183.
Abstract
During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different initiatives have demonstrated how design can be a powerful approach in social innovation, especially when it comes to systemic thinking, prototyping and visualising, some concerns have been raised regarding the limitations of applying design in this field. Through a specific case, this paper will discuss and suggest some approaches and concepts related to design for social innovation. Coming from a participatory design tradition, we focus on the idea of infrastructuring as a way to approach social innovation that differs from project-based design. The activities that are carried out are aimed at building long-term relationships with stakeholders in order to create networks from which design opportunities can emerge. We also discuss the role of prototyping as a way to explore opportunities but we also highlight dilemmas.
Re-searching the Digital Bauhaus
Binder, Thomas; Löwgren, Jonas; Malmborg, Lone (ed.) (2009): (Re)searching the Digital Bauhaus. London: Springer.
SUMMARY
Interaction design entered the scene of design as computer scientists and engineers realized that technology is a design material rather than a neutral set of tools and machinery supporting life at work or at home. Since then, interaction designers have been actively involved in exploring new design concepts for anything from interactive websites to intelligent everyday spaces.
The Need for Video in Scientific Communication
Löwgren, Jonas. (2011): “The Need for Video in Scientific Communication”, Interactions xviii(1):22-25.
INTRODUCTION
In our academic field of inquiry – whether we call it interaction design, experience design, or new media – much of what we talk about is centered on experience. We design artifacts to catalyze new use experiences or to improve upon existing ones. We study existing artifacts and practices, again, increasingly with an eye toward use experiences. We do all this to construct and communicate knowledge, the signature task of an academic. But when we communicate the knowledge we have constructed, we do so almost exclusively in the medium of text, with a few images.
Towards an articulation of interaction aesthetics
Löwgren, Jonas. (2009). Towards an articulation of interaction aesthetics. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 15(2).
INTRODUCTION
Aesthetics in interaction design are too often equated with static appearance, i.e., how the screens and devices look. This article is an attempt to develop concepts more appropriate for talking about how the interaction feels over time. I use interaction criticism as a “method” to formulate pliability, rhythm, dramaturgical structure and fluency as four aesthetic interaction qualities.
