DIS 2020 - Designing for the End of IoT Objects
“More than Human-Centred Design”
The aim of DIS 2020 workshop was to rethink the research and contributions we make in UI/UX and Industrial Design, by investigating post-humanist alternatives.
These approaches displace the human-at-the-center-of-thought-and-action with humans and non-humans bound together materially, ethically, and existentially.
The theme is intended to encourage contributions toward new methodological or theoretical approaches that build on, and extend, existing research in order to go beyond human-centered design towards more complex understandings of our future coexistence with other kinds of materials and intelligence that blur the boundaries between humans, non-humans, and technology.
Abstract
The growing issues of 1) electronic waste recycling, 2) right to repair legislation, and 3) rampant consumer culture present opportunities to hack these entities for the benefit of DIYers and their communities, and provide a positive shift in consumer culture that would benefit the user. The goals of hacking these issues are to bring transparency in the relationship between the user and the producer, empower the end-user, critique mindless consumer culture, promote mindful consumption, and create a more authentic connection between end user and product. By getting more invested in the world of our products, it is hoped that end-users will be more inclined to hack, modify, repair, resell, upgrade, disassemble, repurpose, and properly recycle their products in the future. I plan to design a hardware hacking approach that will encapsulate these ideals through heuristic case studies using locally gathered electronic waste. These methodologies will be open source and promoted through social media.
