Diversifying Approaches to Co-Designing the Smart Everyday

Abstract

In this workshop, we will venture into the current state of co-design for imagining and creating smart objects and services within the context of “the home”. Together with a diverse group of workshop participants, we will conduct two rounds of co-designing which gives each of the participants the opportunity to explore two of the following three toolkits and methods. The Idiosyncratic Ideation Workshop is a combination of Loaded Dice, a pair of 3d-printed, cubical IoT devices with diverse sensors on the sides of one, and diverse actuators on the sides of the other cube and different card sets. The IoT Design Kit is a set of design and strategy workshop tools which provides various elements that can be completed as individual exercises and from different starting points and user journeys in workshops. Tiles IoT Inventor Toolkit consists of the Tiles IoT Cards, a canvas and a playbook for instructions on the use of the cards. The Tiles IoT Inventor Toolkit focuses on basic understanding of possibilities of the IoT.

Collectively, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the implicit assumptions, goals, and values backed into the co-design methods and toolkits. This helps us to articulate desiderata beyond standard solutions for the self-contained habitat of cost-efficient consumers, and instead appreciate the contingent and idiosyncratic needs and expectations enveloping “the home”.

In particular, we will critically inquire about the western perspective of the available co-design methods and toolkits. In response, we will collectively explore and interrogate goals and values of co- design for “the home” from a non-Western perspective. Furthermore, the workshop enables the participants to select the most fitting design method and toolkit for their own creative practice beyond the workshop.

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