Showing posts with label Monthly Updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monthly Updates. Show all posts

Sunday, December 12, 2010

December 2010 Update

Participatory Design Conference Feedback

  • I, as a designer, would like to know what I'd do differently according to Agency Sensitive Design.
    • I'd try to apply it.
  • At this stage, only one lens for the designer seem to be sufficient.
    • In future, you may work on the ways in which every actor can create their own lenses of ASD.
  • You might imagine it like a toolkit for designers for taking into consideration different forms of agency.
  • Claudia Ciborra's work, how can we invite technology as guests, how can we host it as a guest?
    • inviting the artefacts to the dance.
  • Now, this is a different definition of participation, artefacts and humans together.
    • participating artefacts with material agency
  • Jonas Lowgren's work and Don Svanaes's works.
  • What skills do I, as a designer, need to do ASD?
  • Every innovation builds on existing practices by Suchman
  • Agency's role in shaping design and design's role in shaping agency
  • We can not do everything bottom up!
  • Doing or comparing both user centered and activity centered design might not be doable in the current time frame.
  • Role of grounding activities in shaping design and agency?
  • Can the forms of agency be defined as the type of actions humans engaged in?
    • agency-> capacity to act
    • form of agency -> capacity to understand
    • form of agency -> capacity to move
    • form of agency -> capacity to perceive/sense
    • ...
    • different forms of agency -> capacity to ????
  • Two main sensitivities can be related to relationality and participating/influencing non-humans/artefacts
  • Concept of temporary assemblies is a good one!
  • Assemblies and matters of concerns are/can be emergent!!
    • mutual isolated spaces and matters of concern >> read paper by Latour and Asa
  • >>> Some general Participatory Design Concernsd and Inspirations
    • who to involve?
    • how to involve?
    • involving users as not passive service demanders or info containers but active co-creators of service
    • seeing anything as a resource for design,
    • challenging the taken-for-granted conceptions of agency/norms/values and seeing them as generative tools/activities
      • for instance, previous habits and experiences and generally motives of differences as not something to avoid or overcome but things to support and embrace again more genrally as resources!
    • enjoyment or relaxation might not be necessarily the targets for my participatory activities
      • painful participation can be a gain for the participants as well??
      • and then can inform the design
    • looking at or approaching the results of workshops from different points of views/ values is very useful!h

PDC2010 Doctoral Consortium Presentation


INTERACT PAPER - Agency Sensitive Design

Due date: Jan 24

Long paper: 14 pages

First draft- outline: pdf file

DESIGN and AGENCY RELATIONS

1. Agency’s role in design:

    • How do different agencies involved in technology production phase shape design problem and process?
      • In technology production phase, there may be designers, potential users and any other human actors and material artefacts participating in this process. An assemblage of humans and artefacts and their various connections or couplings may result in agencies in different forms and degrees. These different forms of agencies may shape the design process and design problem itself.
      • How much are we aware of the fact that the different configurations of human and artefact assemblages may bring about different forms of agencies?
      • How much are we aware of the impact of different agencies on definition and transformation of the design problem?
    • How do different conceptions of agency shape design?
      • Humans involved in production phase might have different conceptions and perceptions of agency. These different conceptions of agency may affect the design decision implicitly or may cause misattribution of agency and hence unintended outcomes.
      • We design according to whose conception of agency?
      • How much are we aware of our and others’ conceptions of agencies during design?
    • How does the extent of consideration of agency shape design?
      • Some designers may include agency-related qualities in design problem at a great extent, whereas some others may not consider any of them. While lack of consideration may result in problems related to accountability, responsibility, and ethics, an excess amount of consideration may lead to problems related to over-amplification of differences, unceasing value conflicts, privacy and surveillance. Moreover, a careful consideration of agency-related qualities may result in responsible and ethical design practices, new more harmonious integrations and couplings between humans and artefacts and may expand our potential for action.
      • How much are we aware of benefits and costs of addressing or not addressing agency-related qualities in design problem?

2. Design’s role in agency:

    • How do different design approaches shape agencies involved in production and use of technologies?
      • Design process can be organized in such a way that it can facilitate formation of some particular configurations (assemblages) of humans and artefacts, while preventing some other ones to be formed. Design process can invite particular kinds of actions, while inhibiting some others. The artefacts can be designed in such a way that they can privilege values of some actors while ignoring the values of some other ones.
      • How much are we aware of the impact of design process we follow on formation of agencies involved in technology production and formation of agencies involved in technology use?



Planned Research Process and expected Outcomes

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Work Plan Diagram

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ASD lenses for the designer

Monday, October 11, 2010

October 2010 Update

The research plan till the end of Jan:

  • first 4 weeks on workshop 3 design specifications
  • the rest on primarily (subject to advances in workshop design) 14page long paper to be submitted to Interact conference.

- Workshop 3 design specificatations will be done as to following tentative decisions:

    • The aims of the workshop
      • to experiment the remaining 5 configurations
      • to develop and test strategies of sensitivities for agency sensitive design
    • Workshop 3 will deal with sensitivities in production and use of technologies/interfaces
      • in production phase, researcher will be involved only (the previous decision on this item changed, because of limited benefits in terms of research contributions)
      • in use phase, participants will also be involved (they will have more freedom and authority on how to interact)
      • workshop 1, workshop 2, workshop 3 and workshop 4 are all considered as a big production phase for the final wearable environment system, which will host a use phase involving a performance. However, there are sub production and use phases in each workshop, where production was done by researcher and use was done by participants. The participants' contribution and in a sense production are realized through negotiations, ongoing reconfigurations and design-in-use activities.
    • Decision of focusing of only one aspect of sensitivity, which is awareness.
    • General assumption of the research at his stage is that: (this is also the result of focusing )
      • An increase in awareness of participants towards themselves, other participants, other artefacts and finally processes between them is useful to accomodate different forms of agency (to be exemplified) and can facilitate the emergence of new capacities to act.
      • Increasing Awareness -> Accomodate (different forms of agency) + Facilitate (new forms of agency)
        • Need to consider the counter examples where higher levels of agency and awareness are not desirable or useful.
        • Some critical questions to be answered soon!
        1. How do we understand if awareness is increased or not? (may be only by asking as we did previously)
        2. How do we know or observe whether the agency exhibited is different or new?
        3. Do we need to define prior(existing) agencies and then seperate them from after(emerging) agencies?
        4. How can we develop sensitivities for agency without knowing/defining what those agencies are? (through awareness?)
    • Research to be done on
      • social network analysis
      • quantifying agency, (ways to decompose it contextually and then assess..)
      • awareness models
        • infrastructure awareness
        • context-awareness

- the long paper might cover

  • brutalism (in art, architecture and design)
  • making the invisible visible
  • awareness models
  • relational agency and design (answer to why we need an explicit consideration of agency in design)
  • agency sensitivity and its resonances in other critical design approaches
  • when do we need lesser and higher agency, (high performance systems vs creativity & complexity involved systems, ) increased agency -> lost of control..
  • when don't we need higher levels of awarenes? and also awareness vs privacy
  • Brutalism and Design working sheet..
  • Annotated bibliography of Agency

- List of Conferences

Friday, September 10, 2010

September 2010 Update

Feedback from the conferences

Direct Feedback

  • Bringing all those fields/approaches (Post-phenomenology, seamful design, reflective design, ANT, value sensitive design, participatory design and feminist STS) together is ambitious. The contributions and relevancy of all those fields should be clear.
  • What do you look at specifically when you watch/analyse the video clips of workshop sessions?
  • Rationale behind dealing with the notion of agency. Why should we take agency into consideration? Clarification of the relation between design and agency?
  • AI’s conceptions and use of agency can be relevant and useful.
  • It is really very nice to have this type of sensitivity to our relations with artefacts.
  • It could be interesting to experiment these devices with real blind people. Their interactions and relations can be quite different than the blindfolded people.
  • Do you really let people negotiate with each other? You do not allow them to speak, see etc. allow people to negotiate in more ways. Do people need to know the agency of devices in order to interact with other people?
  • Use another modality, different sensors and effects in the next workshops. Lights can be very useful, easy and effective.
  • Need for clarification of the concepts of agents, humans, non-humans etc… Can the extensions of body be considered as agents?
  • Use more constraints, narrow down design questions and context.

Indirect Feedback

  • Tendencies of the research community
    • Switching of design research’s focus from product to processes and from designing of the product itself to relations and situations.
    • Use of ethnography and Participatory design
    • Situating the research problem (work) in a real life context/situation. An artful integration of existing with new/novel!
    • Need to make the study more concrete (or less abstract)! By again balancing familiar with the new. Need for an already existing understanding to build on.
  • Tuning metaphors (and the book called Tuning of the Place) by Richard Coyne looks very relevant.
    • In addition to tuning, operations of adjustment and calibration can also be investigated.
    • “Tuning of world” – another useful book
  • The idea of designing in the wild!

Long Term Time Plan (18 months)

Short term to do list

- Workshop #3’s design

  • Type of the activity?
  • Type of sensors and effectors?
  • Type of approach – bottom up vs top down?
  • The context of the activity?
  • New Ethics application?

- Draft thesis outline (with contents, requirements, literature, to-dos)

- Brutalism in HCI paper

  • Transparency
  • Awareness
  • Structural expressionism
  • Brutalism in architecture
    • Philosophy
    • Acceptance
    • Critics
    • Relevancy
  • Accounts, seams, self-disclosure and more to search in the literature
  • The workshop 3 design specifications

- Update literature sheet by names

- Discussions and ideas on Designing for Agency paper submitted to OZCHI

The notes from last meeting

The meeting notes pdf file.


Designing for Agency Paper submitted to OZCHI2010

Designing for Agency pdf file.