Presenter
Ron Wakkary, Professor, Simon Fraser University and Eindhoven University of Technology
Abstract
I will discuss the design research we do at the Everyday Design Studio at Simon Fraser University. In particular, I focus on two studies, Philosophers Living with the Tilting Bowl and Morse Things: A Design Inquiry into the Gap Between Things and Us, to articulate relations with technology that go beyond interaction. We call the research approach of these projects, material speculations. In material speculations, artifacts are designed to be lived with over long periods and are crafted to embody research questions or propositions through what we call counterfactual artifacts. A counterfactual artifact is a fully realized functioning product or system that intentionally contradicts what would be considered logical to create given the norms of design and design products. This countering of norms opens the possibilities to empirically investigate multiple alternative existences (or what-ifs) as lived-with realities of the counterfactual artifacts.
Biography
Ron Wakkary is a Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University in Canada where he is the founder of the Everyday Design Studio (eds.siat.sfu.ca). In addition, he is a Professor in Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Future Everyday cluster. He is interested in design-oriented human-computer interaction (HCI), tangible computing and the philosophies of technologies through design. His research investigates the changing nature of interaction design and HCI in response to new understandings of human-technology relations. He aims to reflectively create new interaction design exemplars, concepts, and emergent practices of design that help to shape both design and its relations to technologies. He is currently a member of the Tangible Embedded/Embodied Interaction (TEI) and Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) steering committees. He is also a member of various editorial boards including International Journal of Design (IJD). He was co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM interactions from 2010 to 2016.