This is a blog documenting all my activities. This includes research activities such as publications, conferences, workshops etc; design work; and anything else exciting that happened! If you have comments, questions, or would like a friendly chat on a shared topic of interest, please contact me via LinkedIn or email.
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DECEMBER 2024
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Webinar on Creative Evaluation
11/12/2024
Today we ran a webinar for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations about how to design and conduct evaluations that promote engagement, participation, inclusivity and creativity. It was a lovely event to join, we had lots of participants and some great conversations in our breakout rooms.
Join us in this session to explore how creativity plays a role in Evaluative Practice. In this session we (Elisavet Christou, Violet Owen and Pinar Ceyhan from Lancaster University) will talk about our research on Creative Evaluation approaches and the role creativity plays in designing evaluations that are engaging, collaborative and inclusive! We will share key principles of Creative Evaluation described in our Little Book of Creative Evaluation, present relevant real-world examples and tools like our Evaluation Visualisation Design Tool (EViD), and share relevant free online resources for those interested in learning more about how to bring creativity in their own evaluative practice.
See the webinar recording here >>> https://www.tavinstitute.org/whats-on/the-role-of-creativity-in-evaluative-practice
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New Journal Article Alert! "Smarter Repair 2053"
06/12/2024
It’s a lovely start to a Monday to see a publication you co-authored go live! I really enjoyed writing with Paul Coulton and Michael Stead about unrepairable aesthetics, AI rights and visions of a more than human right to repair.
In 2023 the European Union enacted the right-to-repair for European citizens, which was undoubtedly a step forward in tackling planned obsolescence and the deluge of electronic product waste being produced at that time. An expansion of the right-to-repair to include smart devices occurred in 2035 acknowledging their increased proliferation as everyday products and services. However, these rights-to-repair did not result in creating a capacity for repair such that consumers were both willing and able to avail themselves of this right. To address this challenge, technologists extended the infusion of datafication and Artificial Intelligence within smart products – resulting in the Right-to-Repair being granted to the devices themselves in 2045. This paper reviews this transition which resulted in both decreasing electronic product waste, increased device longevity, and extending the development of an aesthetic of repair into more products and services.
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NOVEMBER 2024
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Fourth Portal Innovation Showcase
20/11/2024
Myself and Mike Stead joined the Fourth Portal's Innovation Showcase today in Gravesend, London. We brought along our Serious Games, RepairLand and Energy Master.
The Innovation Showcase is a one-day event in Gravesend, Kent, bringing together local communities, academics, and businesses to explore emerging technologies and new economic opportunities.
Despite some major travel issues throughout London, it was a fantastic event to be part of, and we had a great time sharing our serious games with the community of Gravesend. There were also some fantastic talks and presentations, and some amazing displays of vintage computer games, robots and more. The venue was also so beautiful, its not often you get to set up a display next to a pipe organ!
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A Presentation by Beatriz Bonilla Berrocal
11/11/2024
Today I went to a presentation by Beatriz Bonilla, a PhD candidate in Design at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano. Beatriz contacted me last year via LinkedIn, as our PhD topics are so very similar. It was fantastic to meet someone with such close interests to mine, and fascinating to shareour findings and ideas, comparing the UK and Italian evaluation contexts. Beatriz is currently a travelling researcher residing for the next few months at Lancaster University.
She led a fantastic presentation today!
"Design for social innovation impact: An exploration on design-led evaluation practice inside SMEs"
This seminar will explore the role of design in evaluating and enhancing social innovation within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Participants will discuss how design-driven approaches can be applied to measure social impact, promote sustainable practices, and support business transformation. The seminar will focus on participatory and creative evaluation methods that align with the needs of modern enterprises, and in gathering insights to build a practical framework to assess both qualitative and quantitative outcomes.
Find Beatriz on linked in here>>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/beabonillab/
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ESCR Festival of Social Science 2024
09/11/2024
Today myself, Mike Stead and Paul Coulton brought Energy Master to Lancaster city centre! We braved the freezing temperatures, and Mike towed the Future Mundane Caravan into Lancaster city centre (which if you know Lancaster is an impressive feat in itself!). It was a great day with lots of interested folk trying out Energy Master's debut appearance.
As we integrate more ‘smart’ digital products and services into our everyday lives, they are using AI to make more decisions for us. Our AI-driven digital products and services are becoming ‘moral agents’ in which we often unconsciously place our trust. Our society needs to transition to new forms of sustainable energy production and consumption to fight climate change. However, the growing autonomy of ‘smart’ technologies raises critical ethical considerations. This is because these technologies themselves are extremely energy hungry and create huge amounts of carbon emissions.
Given these hidden energy-related environmental impacts… How Much Do You Trust an AI to Look After Your Energy for You?
Given these hidden energy-related environmental impacts… How Much Do You Trust an AI to Look After Your Energy for You?
This work is produced as part of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub and EPSRC's InterNETZERO project.
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Testing... Testing!
05/11/2024
Today we did the final testing of Energy Master in the Future Mundane caravan before it's debut at the ESRC Festival of Social Science. It's so exciting to see it working in action, after a rather short and intense development phase! Energy Master is an interactive experience designed to help members of the public consider their relationships with AI, and contemplate how much trust they can place in AI systems.
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Contemporary Issues in Design: The Internet of Things
01/11/2024
Today I covered a seminar for the BA(Hons)Design students at Lancaster University. Really what happened is I got to sit back and enjoy the students leading their own session (whilst providing a little support on timings from me). The students have been tasked to design a seminar, structured around thought-provoking questions, based on that week's lecture and learning. It was a great format, and really pushed students from a passive role into an active one. It was a pleasure to be asked by Naomi Jacobs to join.
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OCTOBER 2024
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Creative Evaluation with Blackpool Council
31/10/2024
Today, myself and Jess Shaw led a session on Evaluation and Creative Evaluation for Blackpool Council. We introduced an overview of what evaluation is, evaluative processes and addressed some common misconceptions about evaluation. Then we led some hands on Creative Evaluation activities, to demonstrate different methods for evaluation that can be more engaging, more equitable and more participatory.
They were such an attentive, vibrant, and participative group to work with, we had such fun!
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SEPTEMBER 2024
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V&A Digital Design Weekend
20/09/2024 - 22/09/2024
We were invited to be part of the Victoria & Albert Museum's Digital Design Weekend 2024, part of the London Design Festival. What an event! Each day was so busy, we had so many great opportunities to interact with the public and talk about digital repair. Myself and Mike Stead were joined by The Making Rooms' Tom MacPherson-Pope, Uzair Patel and Nishad Joshi.
We ran a series of interactive activities, freely available to the public, including: an introduction to Re:Play - a handheld console that is broken, and as players learn to repair it, they gain more functionality and access to games; RepairLand, a choose-your-own adventure online game that helps players to explore the end of life management and barriers to repair of a broken IoT device; and Robot badges, an activity to get the public to learn basic repair techniques such as soldering and understanding circuitry.
Despite managing to get Covid, it was a fantastic weekend. I really hope to be invited back in the future!
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AUGUST 2024
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Festival of Making
06/07/2024 - 07/07/2024
This weekend I joined the Making Rooms for the Festival of making in Blackburn.
The National Festival of Making is a unique celebration of UK making, from the kitchen table to the factory floor. Presenting a programme of work that combines Art, Manufacturing, Making and Communities, we commission international and national artists to create world class works, a year round programme and a participatory FREE FAMILY festival for all to enjoy.
Myself and Mike Stead brought RepairLand V2 to do some user testing, as well as PetTap V1. We also ran a soldering activity that was so popular there was a queue! On Saturday we joined Tom MacPherson-Pope facilitating a beta workshop about Re:Play, our handheld console that helps young people to develop a love for repair. We had some young volunteers participate in the workshop, telling us what we need to develop next to make Re:Play usable, functional and fun!
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DIS Conference 2024
01/07/2024 - 05/07/2024
I've been at the DIS conference all this week in Copenhagen, and what a week its been! I've met some amazing researchers, heard some inspiring talks, karaoked!!!, and
DIS Workshop
Today, members of the Fixing the Future Team led a workshop “Creating sustainable IoTs future. Aligning legal and research agendas.” We had some amazing participants who presented their research, we played games, we talked, and we post-it-noted (and despite my inability to count when preparing resources) we had a blast!
Zine Library
Also being featured at DIS is our zine, part of the informal zine Library. I love the addition of the zine corner at the conference, especially one thats unmoderated, so it simply is about sharing ideas/perspectives/cool things, providing a different kind of conference contribution. Our zine “What might a more sustainable Internet of Things look like?” provides insights into the interdisciplinary research that Fixing the Future explores.
I was presented a plaque today for best paper in the PWiP track at the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Copenhagen for our paper “Fostering IoT Repair Through Care: Learning from Emotional Durable Gaming Practices and Communities”. You can now download the full paper here>>> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656156.3663702
I got to make a cool poster too to summarise the paper. Any excuse to illustrate a Gameboy Color!
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JULY 2024
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DIS Best PWiP Award!
21/06/204
I got notified today that our PWiP paper was awarded best paper in its category!
Fostering IoT Repair Through Care: Learning from Emotional Durable Gaming Practices and Communities
Electronic waste (e-waste) has become the fastest growing waste stream in the world. So called ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices, now ubiquitous in our homes, are increasingly contributing to this waste stream, due to their lack of repairability and consumer cycles driven by planned obsolescence. However, other electronic household products, such as gaming devices, are often used and cared for by their owners for far longer than other IoT devices, whose protean lifecycles are driven by fast moving, profit-focussed consumer markets. This paper argues that by developing a deeper understanding of the relationship between gamers and their devices, and the communities they inhabit, design practitioners and researchers can learn to engender the design of IoT products that foster emotional durability and care, and support the development of more sustainable repair practices, to tangibly improve the lifespans of next generation IoT products.
The full paper will be published soon! Watch this space.
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JUNE 2024
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MAY 2024
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APRIL 2024
MARCH 2024
FEBRUARY 2024
JANUARY 2024
