Category: Design comment
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The Many Hidden Aspects of Mending
According to WRAP (2012), around 166 million items of clothing could be worn again if they were repaired yet nearly 350,000 tonnes of clothing were discarded as residual waste in 2021. If more clothing were to be repaired around 13.9 kg of carbon emissions per garment would be saved (Bevilacqua et al., 2011) which could […]
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Food, shelter and re-designing home
As a new resident in Milton Keynes, I’ve brought along my decades-long curiosity about how people live day to day and how they organise themselves in different places and cultures to meet needs for food and shelter. Since neither can be guaranteed for all people anywhere in a world of deepening inequality, designers committed to […]
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Lessons from a Santaless Sleigh
Having been asked to provide a Design Blog just ahead of Christmas, I wondered how I might combine this yuletide timing with my design research. I have been working on both research and teaching pieces that explore the product, service and system design impacts of emerging electric and autonomous vehicle technologies. That’s not very Christmassy. […]
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Presenting Futures Literacy to the Scottish Government
One of the things we get to do now and again as academics is to speak to governments and politicians in policy areas we are interested in. This year, the OU in Scotland contributed to the Royal Society of Chemistry event Science and the Parliament event. This brings together scientists, business, politicians, and government to […]
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Anxiety and Optimism: Designs on Barbenheimer.
As an 11 year old in the early 70s, I was fascinated by the idea that the tiniest components of everything in the world, (including ourselves), had within them the power to obliterate the planet. I read avidly about the structure of atoms, and what they had the potential to unleash. The Cold War fuelled […]
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Excavating smart city knowledge politics
Since its inception over a decade ago, the smart discourse and its promoters have been incredibly successful to the extent that now many cities identify themselves as smart cities. While there is no single definition of a smart city, in broad terms such developments are based on digital infrastructures comprising sensors and data hubs which […]
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Making and Design: two perspectives
Hand and Eye A couple of recent events both link making and design. First a conference on Mathematics and Architecture rather at the edge of this blog and second an exhibition of Lucie Rie pots, perhaps closer to its centre. The Nexus Conference on Mathematics and Architecture takes place 12-14 June, 2023 in Turin. This […]
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Where is the user choice in automated re-booking systems?
In our Design modules, we often ask our students to take a user trip, to experience the issues a user may face. Over the weekend, I took an involuntary user trip. I focused my anger and frustrations into an opportunity to reflect how automated flight rebooking systems make the user feel and what design oportunities […]
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Hexagonal Living
A small group of houses always intrigued me as I hiked past them with my children on the way to birthday parties on the north side of Leamington Spa. Set back from the road, and almost hidden by numerous trees, they still managed to stand out; an experiment from another era. I was thus rather […]
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Governing cities of multiple intelligences
No longer artefacts of science fiction, artificially intelligences (AIs) are becoming increasingly embedded in our towns and cities. Urban AI can now be found in transport systems such as in robots for grocery delivery and connected autonomous vehicles more generally, as well as in city governance, planning and design practices in the form of so-called […]