Bridging STS & Design Research – Designing Interactions, designing the Socio-Technical

Abstracts

Informing Living Materials and Making Futures

by Delgado, Ana and Rakesh, Paul; TIK- Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo 

Microbial-based clothing, shoes and walls… How would it be to live in a world where the things surrounding us are living? In the Fungateria project we, STS sholars, collaborate with architects and biologists in the design of engineered living materials. Drawing from public engagement with science approaches in combination with speculative and critical design, our aim is not to manufacture public acceptance of those materials, nor to anticipate future uses. Rather we want to explore citizen’s sense and sensing of living with living things in desirable futures. This will include both domesticated materials such as fermented foods, as well as engineered materials. We contrast these two practical domains in order to explore how people may engage in making futures in relations with living things. We ask: How would it be to live with living materials? What do people need in order to keep them living and evolving over time? What expectations are built into them?  What kind of new socio-technical ecologies are triggered into being? We propose to use the concept of “informed materials” (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, 1996) to explore those interventions in living things by which they are projected into the future. The presentation draws on our collaborative work in the Fungateria project. In which we will develop a citizen science methodology that combines mapping of public issues, participatory modeling and design. Bensaude-Vincent, B and Stengers, I. (1996). A History of Chemistry. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.)  

How to design "What if?“ – A mobility experiment 

by Kellhammer, Marco, Technical University of Munich

Mobility is part of citizens' everyday life and forms daily routines (Freudendal-Pedersen, 2009). Mobility innovations often focus on autonomous driving and more efficient modes of transport (Janasz, 2017). Engineers tend to look at individual mobility modalities and infrastructures, rather than an overall mobility experience. Various studies show mobility systems reaching their limits in metropolitan regions. The problem is far from being solved with the much-vaunted turn to e-mobility. The design of new systems, organizations and cultures is becoming increasingly important in addressing global social and environmental challenges. Mobility Design constitutes one emergent sector bridging human centered design and planetary boundaries (Eckart and Vöckler, 2022). 

What does 'being mobile' mean in the future? What future mobility cultures do we long for and what change is necessary in the face of global challenges? Joore and Brezet (2015) clearly pointed out the need of a supportive model for designers acting in change and transition scenarios and proposed the multilevel design model (MDM). Current research on the future of mobility in the Munich area, Germany reveals a lack of transition pathways. This contribution seeks to explore the aforementioned questions by discussing design frames for co-designing future scenarios for urban mobility cultures within two chosen city districts in Munich. What is the role of designers regarding the facilitation of a socio-technical shift in mobility? Specifically, it presents strategies to uncover drivers and barriers in citizens’ mind shift. The author aims to open up room for discussion in interdisciplinary research teams regarding futuring methodology in transformation design and cultural change. 

Making urban design more sensitive to the more-than-human through alternative tools 

by Mazaud, Léone-Alix; Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation – Mines Paris – PSL

This communication draws on Arturo Escobar (2018, 2022) call for a renewed living praxis and developing “multispecies urbanism” through ontological design. It aims at exploring alternative tools guiding urban designers for dealing with biodiversity in the perspective of a greater sensibility to the more-than-human (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). 

I present the first phases of two experiments on alternative methods to compose with the more-than-human in urban practices conducted as part of my thesis project, at the crossroads of STS and design research, in an attempt to break with the indicator-based tools that flourish in the urban field. Both take as fieldwork an urban study on the future of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées and its gardens, in Paris. The first one explores applications of a modelling tool developed by a French startup in ecological engineering and data science. By using individual-based modelling for simulating natural life across an urban design project, the method highlights the circulation of animal entities. The second one aims at extending eco-acoustic approaches for urban design so as to deal with sound biodiversity and equip designers with a sensory approach. 

According to the analytical framework stated above, I address the following questions: To what extent can such tools, based on an ontological design approach, concretely work towards a speculated alternative urban reality? How can they make more-than-human entities count and allow for multispecies worldings (Van Dooren et Al., 2016) where humans and non-humans were led to develop more interdependent relationships? 

Bridging Science, Technology & Society (STS), electronic waste and research through design: the case of the Agbogbloshie landfill, Ghana 

by Khalatbari, Cyrus, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL, Lausanne) | HEAD – Genève, HES-SO 

This contribution situates the potential of combining Science, Technology & Society (STS) with critical and sustainable design methodologies in order to enhance media literacy in contexts of technological inequalities and electronic waste in Ghana. Gravitating moreover around the iconic commercial district and dumping site of Agbogbloshie, Accra, our article expands from two case studies in order to inquire how socio-technological literacies, awareness and critique are developed through design (Schön, 1992) by Ghanaian arts and design communities in reaction to the production of electronic-waste. These case studies are 1) the Agbogbloshie Maker Space Platform (AMP), a critical making (Ratto, 2011) space and project empowering and positively impacting the landfil’s local community - and tacit practices -  of scrap recyclers and dealers through participatory design methods; and 2) Akwasi Bediako Afrane’s “TRONS”(2022): assemblage-shaped robots acting as “platforms and media for reflection, engagement and interactions”.  In dialogue with research through design, we will further contextualise these initiatives with Hertz and Parikka “zombie-media” (2012), a (hardware) circuit bending methodology placing here the emphasis on planned obsolescence and on the critical re-appropriation of “trashed” (Sterne, 2006) electronics. This will enable us,  inside our STS academic debates, to shed light on materially situated design practices tackling e-waste and technological pollution in Ghana (and Africa); as foundational forms of ecological activism, literacy and awareness helping us to broaden our perspective on our planetary socio-technical narratives, condition and impact.  

Caring through and for in design for play 

Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen and Harun Kaygan, Unviersity of Southern Denmark  

Widespread engagement of design practice with societal challenges have meant that care appears more and more often as a design objective in diverse contexts such as design for healthcare, design for sustainability and social design. This paper explores the role of design process in directing designers’ affective interest and efforts at different aspects of the body, asking how specific methods and tools mediate care, including what is being cared for and through what means. We use research through and into design process, based on data from a two-week design workshop on body-centered methods for design for play. Drawing on our analysis, we present a theoretical model that identifies two orders of care in design process: First-order care – “care-through” – indexes the immediate objects that designers attend to while implementing procedures, practices and tools provided by diverse design methods. Second-order care – “care-for” – indicates the beneficiaries of designed things, who are typically, though not necessarily, the projected users of design. Objects of the first order – specific body parts and bodily capabilities, sensations, or specific relations between bodies, etc. – act as the basis for designers’ attunement to their users for instituting second-order care. The model expands the notion of care in design research, emphasizing that care is present in the practical knowledge work carried out by designers, thus bridging considerations of designing with care and designing for care. The paper aims to create greater dialogue between design research and the now-established empirical and theoretical interest in care within STS. 

Organizers

Stefanie Egger and Christian Lepenik