Course Syllabus & Schedule

CMU Seminar III Advanced Interaction & Service Design Concepts + PhD Seminar Design Theory & Practice, Fall 2019

MDes and PhD students speculating interactions from different futures (Fall 2019)

Welcome to the course, which goes by various names. If you’re an MDes student, this is 51–825 Seminar III, Advanced Interaction & Service Design Concepts — the last set of compulsory classes in your MDes. If you’re a first-year PhD student, this is 51–903, the Design Theory & Practice seminar. You’ll have slightly different assignments and expectations depending on whether you’re MDes or PhD, but we hope that by working together as a class, we’ll all benefit from a wider range of experiences and insights.

Overview

Tuesdays, 8:30–11:20pm — MM 215. We will meet once a week, on Tuesday mornings. For the PhDs, we will also have a series of separate discussions every other Tuesday (Sep 17; Oct 1; Oct 15; Oct 29...) at 3.00pm.

Contact: Dan Lockton danlockton@cmu.edu & Marysol Ortega mortegap@andrew.cmu.edu, TA: Hannah Koenig hkoenig@andrew.cmu.edu
We hold office hours by appointment on Tuesdays in MM 108/207B

*** This is a living document, dates & content may be subject to change over the course of the semester. For instance, we may have to adjust the schedule depending on the availability of particular guest speakers. ***

Course Description

The course will expand the classic seminar format incorporating —in addition to group discussions— writing, various group exercises, practical workshops and mini-projects. This is a ‘topics’ course — we will cover topics both within design research, interaction, and service design, and in relevant other areas, some of which link together smoothly, and others which provide different and alternative perspectives on the subject.

It’s worth noting that this course is 12 units for MDes and 18 units for PhD students. This means that in total, including the 3-hour class, you ought to be spending either 12 or 18 hours per week on this course. There’ll be peaks and troughs, but bear this in mind.

Course Goals

• For MDes students, build on what you have learned in Seminars I and II and throughout your MDes so far, to give you more depth on some topics, and new perspectives on others.
• For PhD students, build on your prior knowledge and experience, to provide a foundation for your doctoral studies which covers both historical and contemporary issues in design research
• For everyone, to engage in critical discourses in design and explore and reflect about the implications of designing in the world, the agency of designed artifacts and their effects not only in humans systems but also in environmental ones.

Course Objectives

• Introduce you to — and give you an informed, rounded and reflective stance on — theory, models, themes, and new and old approaches in interaction and service design, and design research, which will give you strategic strength and confidence in your professional practice or in further academic contexts.
• Give you an appreciation of the characteristics of your power, as designers — its scope to influence the ways people live, but also the constraints of the sociotechnical systems within which you work — and the wisdom to deal with this responsibly.
• Support your work on your MDes thesis project, or the initial phases of your PhD, through giving you a set of theories and approaches which you can use practically to structure and communicate your thinking and research.
• Build up your confidence and ability in communicating and explaining your process: what you’ve done, and why, justified through reference to theory and research (your own, and others’). This can be an issue for designers, but our aim is that you will be better equipped to do this in both professional and academic contexts.

Course structure

We will explore five main topics and their ramifications:

1. Politics, Ethics and Inclusivity (Week 1–4)
2. Sustainability (Week 5–6)
3. Research + Design (Week 7–8)
4. Future of Design (Week 9–11)
5. Industry, academia, public and non-profit (Week 12–14)

About the readings: Links to a Box folder with specific readings for each topic are provided below in the schedule section. There are three categories for the readings: required, optional, and further reading. Required readings apply to everyone; Optional readings are mandatory for PhD students and highly recommended for Master students; and Further readings are recommended to everyone if you want to further explore a particular topic.

Expected Schedule

Week 1 — Aug 27: Introductions + Affordances & Mediation

• Required Reading:
  - Victor Kaptelinin, “Affordances” entry at The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
• Optional Reading:
  - Peter Paul Verbeek, “What Things Do”, Pgs. 99–145
• Further Reading:
  - Peter Paul Verbeek, “What Things Do”, Pgs. 47–95
  - Tony Fry, “The Origin of the Work of Design…”
  - Tao Ruspoli, “Being in the World” (Video)

Week 2— Sept 3: Artifacts, Technology and Politics

• Required Reading:
  - Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts have Politics?”
  - Peter Paul Verbeek, “Moralizing Technology”, Pgs 23–27
• Optional Reading:
  - Decolonising Design Manifesto (Website)
• Further Reading:
  - L.M. Sacasas, “Do Artifacts have Ethics?”
  - Viktor Papanek (1984), “Design for the Real World”, Pgs. 54–85

Additionally, we will do an Analysis of Artifacts in class. To prepare for it make sure to review a few of the following references:

• Doteveryone (2019), “Consequence Scanning Cards”
• EthicalOs Toolkit
• Erica Hall (2019), “Hazard Mapping”
• Extracts from Ge Wang (2018), “Artful Design” (especially p406)

Week 3— Sept 10: Power Dynamics & Inclusive Design

Guest: Roxanne Leitaõ, PhD researcher, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

• Required Reading:
  - Roxanne Leitaõ (2019), “Anticipating Smart Home Security and Privacy Threats with Survivors of Intimate Partner Abuse”
  - Chancey Fleet (2019), “Dark Patterns in Accessibility Tech” (Podcast)
  - Swapna Krishna (2018). “How fitness- and health-tracking apps failed me during my pregnancy”
  - Sara Hendren (2014), “All Technology Is Assistive”
• Optional Reading:
  - Bruno Latour (1992), “Where are the Missing Masses? Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts”
  - Aimi Hamraie (2017). “Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability.” Chapter 4 Sloped Technoscience
  - Cynthia Bennett, Erin Brady, and Stacy Branham (2018). “Interdependence as a Frame for Assistive Technology Research and Design.”
• Further Reading
  - Bruno Latour (2002) “Morality and Technology The End of the Means”
  - Rachel Adams (2017) “Michel Foucault: Biopolitics and Biopower”

Week 4— Sept 17: Diversity, Ideology, and Design

• A selection of readings / videos / podcasts from:
  - Lisa Nakamura’s presentation at the 2019 Digital Democracies Conference (Video)
  - Safiya Umoja Noble (2018), Algorithms of Oppression, Chapter 1 (“A Society, Searching”), p26–71
  - Ruha Benjamin (2019), Race After Technology, Chapter 2
  - Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher (2016), Design for Real Life (p1–54 and p55–104)
  - Erin White (2019), Trans-Inclusive Design, A List Apart
  - Alice Feng and Shuyan Wu (2019). “The Myth of the Impartial Machine.”
  - Radiolab (2018). “Post No Evil” (Podcast)
  - Virginia Eubanks (2018), Automating Inequality (Chapter 4: The Allegheny Algorithm, p103–139)
  - Slavoj Žižek on “They Live” (The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology) (Video)
  - Slavoj Žižek (2010),“First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” (Video)
  - Mike Davidson (2019). “Superhuman is spying on you.”
  - Kevin Roose (2019). The Making of a YouTube Radical.
  - Jessie Daniels, Mutale Nkonde, Darakhshan Mir (Data & Society) (2019), “Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech.”
  - Critical Axis
  - Patrick McKenzie (2010), Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names and followups including Alon Altman’s Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Gender and Terence Eden’s Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Families

Week 5— Sept 24: Sustainability I

• A selection of readings from:
  - Victor Papanek, “Design for the Real World.” Chapter 5, “Our Kleenex Culture: Obsolescence and Value”
  - Fabrizio Ceschin, İdil Gaziulusoy (2019). “Design for Sustainability.” Chapter 7 “Product– service system design for sustainability”, Ch 10 “Systemic design”, Ch 12 “Reflections on the past, present and future of design for sustainability”
  - Joanna Boehnert (2018), Design, Ecology, Politics : Towards the Ecocene (Chapter 6, Chapter 7 and Conclusion)
  - Lenneke Kuijer (2014). “Implications of Social Practice Theory for Sustainable Design”, Chapter 6
  - Nazlı Terzioğlu Özkan, Clare Brass, Dan Lockton (2016). ‘3D Printing for Repair: A Paradigm Shift in Fixing Our Relationships with Things’
  - Kakee Scott, Conny Bakker, and Jaco Quist (2012). “Designing Change by Living Change.”
  - Dan Lockton and Veronica Ranner (2017). Plans and speculated actions: Design, behaviour and complexity in sustainable futures
  - Donella Meadows “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” and Chapter 7 “Living in a World of Systems” of Thinking in Systems
  - Peter Paul Verbeek, “What Things Do”, Pgs. 173–199
  - Albert Borgmann, “Technology & The Character of Contemporary Life.” Chapter 14, “Technology & Democracy”
  - Elizabeth Shove (2012). “The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes.” Chapter 1 “The Dynamics of Social Practice” and Chapter 8 “Promoting Transitions in Practice”
  - Nynke Tromp, Paul Hekkert and Peter-Paul Verbeek (2016). “Design for Socially Responsible Behavior: A Classification of Influence Based on Intended User Experience”
  - Ritual Design Lab

Week 6— Oct 1: Sustainability II

This week is facilitated by the first year PhD cohort comprised by Silvana Juri, Erica Dorn, Hillary Carey and Donna Maione. They have planned a set of activities taking as a ‘north star’ Ezio Manzini’s concept of the qualities of resilient, sustainable systems: SLOC (Small, Local, Open and Connected). Readings this week are organized according to these four qualities.

Please come prepared with a 60 second description of your thesis topic/focus/project — whatever state you are at with it, so you can talk about it during the activities.

• Small
  - Manzini, Ezio, Design, “Part 3; Make Things Happen, Chapter 9: Making Things Replicable and Connected.” (p. 177–187) When Everybody Designs : An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press. 2015 (Pgs 177–187)
  - Hawken, Paul. Drawdown.org Project Drawdown, Women and Girls: Smallholders. (website)
  - Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion: Our Manifesto.
  - Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Circular Economy. This site has some great examples of circularity in different sectors. Have a look at the different sectors or drill into an area of particular interest. (small + connected).
  Here is one possible example about GOOGLE.
  ***** Optional: *****
  - Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry in Action; TED talk (Video 18 mins)
  - Ask Nature. Innovation inspired by Nature (Website)
• Local
  - Tiago Forte (2018). “Emergent Strategy. Organizing for Social Justice”
  - Susan Witt and Judy Wicks (2006). “Exuberant Episodes of Import Replacing: Two Tributes to Jane Jacobs”
  - Winona LaDuke: Restoring Indigenous Communities and the Ecological Balance (Local Futures 2013)
  ***** Optional: *****
  - Michael Jones (2014). “Soul of Place” Part Two, “Thinking as Nature Thinks”
  - Lucy Lippard (1997).”The Lure of the Local”, Introduction and Chapter 2 “Being in Place”
  - Wendell Berry (2012). Jefferson Lecture, “It All Turns on Affection”
• Open
  -Medicine Stories: essays for radicals Bigger is Better (p. 13–17) + The Power of Story (p. 32–34) + Historian as Curandera (p. 47–58)
  -White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement — (3 pages) What could open postures look like?
  -Deconstructing White Privilege with Dr. Robin Di Angelo (video) https://vimeo.com/147760743
  ***** Optional: *****
  -Read more of Medicine Stories: essays for radicals
  - Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Chaing Worlds — connects Open + Local. Principles and Elements of Emergent Strategy (p. 32–48)
• Connected
  - Folke, Carl, Reinette Biggs, Albert V. Norström, Belinda Reyers, and Johan Rockström. “Social-Ecological Resilience and Biosphere-Based Sustainability Science.” (2016).
  - Vivero-Pol, Jose Luis, Tomaso Ferrando, Olivier De Schutter, and Ugo Mattei. “Introduction. The Food Commons Are Coming…” (2019)
  ***** Optional: Review the development of Sustainability and Green/ Eco-design *****
  - Madge, Pauline. “Ecological Design: A New Critique.” Design Issues 13, no. 2 (1997): 44–54. doi:10.2307/1511730.
  - Dresner, Simon. The principles of sustainability. Routledge, 2012.

Week 7— Oct 8: Research + Design 1

• Everyone: please pick two articles from the Research Through Design 2019 conference proceedings here which pique your interest. They’re not long articles, and are very visual. Click through to Figshare and then there’s a Download button to get to the PDF.

Then a selection of readings from:

• Luke Feast & Gavin Melles (2009) — Epistemological Positions in Design Research
• Anne-Marie Willis (2006) Ontological Designing
• Deborah Lupton (2017) — Towards Design Sociology
• Bill Gaver (2012) What should we expect from research through design?
• John Zimmerman and Jodi Forlizzi (2008) “The Role of Design Artifacts in Design Theory Construction”
• Li Jönsson (2014) Design Events (PhD thesis) — Chapter 2 and Chapter 4
• Eva Brandt, Thomas Binder and Elizabeth Sanders (2012) “Tools and techniques: Ways to engage telling, making and enacting” from Routledge international handbook of participatory design
• Froukje Sleeswijk Visser (2018) Structuring roles in Research through Design collaboration
• Sabrina Hauser, Ron Wakkary, William Odom, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Audrey Desjardins, Henry Lin, Matthew Dalton, Markus Schilling, and Gijs de Boer (2018). Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design Research
• Marta Sinclair (2010), “Misconceptions About Intuition”
• Harry Collins “Tacit & Explicit Knowledge,” Chapter 5 Somatic Tacit Knowledge (Pgs. 99–117)
• Gabriela Goldschmidt (1991) The Dialectics of Sketching
• Bryan Lawson (1996) Schemata, Gambits, and Precedent
• Xaviera Sánchez de la Barquera Estrada and Nicholas Baroncelli Torretta (2018) “Journeys of displacement between South and North: decolonizing a designer imaginary”
• Cameron Tonkinwise “Thingly Cosmopolitanism: Caring for the Other by Design”
• Elaine Scarry (1985) “The Body in Pain” Chapter 5
• Clive Dilnot (1993) “The Gift”

Week 8— Oct 15: Research + Design II

• Everyone presents their pilot study plan and receive written feedback from their peers.

Week 9— Oct 22: Futures of Design
We are looking at Futures of Design — partially future(s)-focused design, but also what the futures of design and the ‘designer’ profession might entail.

• Required Reading
  - James Bridle (2018), New Dark Age, Chapter 1 and Chapter 10, and then choose another chapter from the book to read
  - Anab Jain’s 2019 “Imagining what the future looks like” (video)
  - AIGA’s Designer 2025 summary. Consider what makes sense, what doesn’t, and how you might change this if you were putting together a vision for “the future designer” yourself.
• Optional Reading
  - Malka Older, Narrative Disorder, plus accompanying essay The Narrative Spectrum
  - Woodrow W Winchester, 2018, Afrofuturism, inclusion, and the design imagination
  - Matt Ward, 2019, Critical About Speculative and Critical Design.
  - James Auger (2013), Speculative Design: Crafting the Speculation.

Week 10— Oct 29: Futures of Design

Guests: Muireann McMahon and Niall Deloughtry, in the Design Factors research group at the University of Limerick’s School of Design in Ireland

This session is about exploring the possibilities for developing a design curriculum. What would we put into design courses for designers of the future?

Week 11 — Nov 5: Futures of Design

Guest: Anne Spaa, PhD Researcher at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

• Anne’s suggested that you read an article from the Design Council:
  - https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/using-design-improve-policy
• Optional Reading
  We’d also suggest following the links in the article, to Policy Lab, Design for Policy and Design for Europe, to explore some of the other dimensions of this kind of work

Week 12— Nov 12: Policy + Design

Guests: Sofía Bosch Gómez & Diego Cuesy / Hannah Koenig & Meghan Lazier

We are having a panel discussion about the intersection of Policy and Design and its manifestation so far in different settings —municipal and federal— and different contexts—Mexican and American.

• Reading: Sofía suggested to read this chapter from the book “Leading Public Sector Innovation” which provides a good overview of the topic:
  - Christian Bason (2018), Chapter 8: Design Thinking In Government

Week 13— Nov 19: Design for Demographic Change

Guests: Helen Fisher, Research Associate at lab4living

Helen will talk about how design changes with changing demographics by sharing the 100-year life project as well as the development of new models of palliative and end of life care with the Life Café initiative.

• Required Reading
  - Claire Craig, Helen Fisher, Paul Chamberlain (2018) “What do ‘Life Cafes’ tell us about dying and end of life care?”
  - Life Café’s website
  - A brief introduction to The 100-Year Life project
  - A series of workshops in Australia regarding the 100-year life project documented in ‘Think-book’ by ThinkPlace

Week 14 — Nov 26: Industry, academia, public and non-profit

• Required Reading
  - Mike Monteiro (2019) “ Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It” ***Each student will receive a copy of the Econo Zine version***

Week 15 — Dec 3: Final Presentations and Synthesis