Analyzing a.o. the state of the art in digital technology design, as well as synthesizing alternative scenarios, i.e. proto-practices, it seeks to develop a sense of 1) desirable futures, 2) responsibly innovating designeers and of 3) affordances, regulatory power, and design as "politics by other means.
Here is how the project developed over the years.
2018
Premature obsolescence of ICT artefacts (most prominently the mobile phone, see SMART project | Mobile Phones); Conference paper at IFIP This Changes Everything, Poznan/Poland 2018.
A review of historical design cases as to how sustainability related or similar values and principles have been applied in products or design concepts (poster: The Long Tail in the ICT Design Space, 2018)
2019
'Modularity' as one emphasized principle of those above mentioned principles, and its downside when it comes to modularization; Conference paper at PLATE 2019 (Product Lifetimes and the Environment), Berlin/Germany.
See the slides here (new tab).
Proposals for alternative IC technology, so proto-practices (Transition Design): poster, 2019: Borrowed(4)Use Mobile, with product-service-systems (PSS) applied, and both hard and soft matter (operating systems, service design) considered.
See the poster here (new tab).
2020
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Plastics in electronics, 'precious plastics' small-scale collection and recycling to a research prototype; initiated (future) cooperation with Wecycle and Norwegian Trash.
Every March 18th: HAPPY Global Recycling Day!
(Sadly not to be celebrated at IFI that year...)
Work-in-progress: "Single Use goes Circular" manuscript
2021
"Single Use goes Circular"-Journal paper published at JSR
Foldable electronics? An instructable on a 'Double Star Flexicube Paper Phone'.
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Business/entrepreneurship-side case study of sustainable technology (futuring sustainable business models); featuring the Fairphone, Shiftphone, Puzzlephone (3 existing start-ups), and the envisioned Ec(h)oFon or the Ec(h)o firm in comparison (= work in progress)
Autumn 2021: Workshops around proto-practices and desirable futures, incorporating desirable-future technologies and interaction; due to the pandemic first planned as individual/small-team brainstorm game with prototyping material packages provided; in November then alltogether-workshop at IFI.
2022
Writing up the dissertation thesis, the so-called 'kappa' around the published articles, since it is an article-based dissertation.
2023
The results from the participatory work with design researcher colleagues and electronics experts up to the colour e-ink display got featured in this short paper:
Envisioning sustainable smartphone alternatives: a plurishop approach
Ines Petra Junge, University of Oslo, Norway
Alma Leora Culén, University of Oslo, Norway
Kim Øyhus (a collaborating maker from Bitraf, Oslo's biggest Hacker-/Makerspace) has furthered (his) image dithering technique to work with such 7-colour e-ink screens, see the website: Photo-epaper.
The method went ways not imagined before, so here is what emerged: plurishops.
Alma L. Culén; Ines Junge; Nicholas Sebastian Stevens; William Gaver (2023). Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD12)
2024
PhD defense! Held on 04.04.2024.