This paper investigates humor as a resource and strategy for design with discourse as an intended outcome. While humor can incite empathy and understanding, it can also lead to alienation and disengagement. Through the detailing of the pre-narrative and narrative processes of a design fiction, we describe why and how elements of humor, in particular puns, parody, and pastiche, were employed. Following the presentation of the fiction and its use in the design of an exhibition of diegetic prototypes, the paper presents responses from participants and audience members to reflect upon how the humor was received. Following a discussion on these reflections, as the near-future scenario was written four years prior and is now situated within the present-day, it then concludes with a post-mortem reflection on the floating nature of humor. 

Hardware decays, software obsolesces, infrastructures sediment, devices patinate. While recent scholarship has examined longevity and sustainability, we have little empirical understanding of how things age, decay, and obsolesce and how we might approach impermanence as a resource for practice and reflection. This one-day NordiCHI'16 workshop will bring together researchers from the fields of design, HCI, and anthropology, in order to unpack the temporalities of these forms of impermanence from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The workshop aims to build a rich lexicon for the material and temporal qualities of aging, decay, degradation, and obsolescence by drawing together participants from a broad range of domains working to develop, maintain, or study systems as they age. Drawing together these different perspectives we will consider the various ways that impermanence might serve as a resource for design, use, and maintenance of long-lived technological artifacts.

With this paper we propose bricolage as an interaction design practice. We make the case that bricolage promotes design qualities that are specifically tuned to tangible and material computing practices in that it is highly sensible towards the unstable physical world and proposes a non-hierarchical negotiation of forms. We further show how bricolage can aid design results with strong and rich cultural and material grounding. Finally, we argue how bricolage and mythical thinking can be proponents for new ways of thinking and using technology.

This paper elaborates on how design judgement can be practiced in design education, as explored in several iterations of an advanced course in interaction design. The students were probed to address four separate design tasks based on distinct high-level intentions, i.e. to 1) take societal responsibility, 2) to generate profit, 3) to explore a new concept, and 4) to trigger reflection and debate. This structure, we found, served as a valuable tool in our context for bringing important topics to discussion in class and for actively practicing design judgement. We discuss what we see as the main qualities of this approach in relation to more conventional course structures in this area, with a focus directed more towards aspects of methodology, specific interaction techniques, and design principles more generally.

In this paper we present a series of design explorations on the theme of wearable and mobile technology through the lens of jewellery design. This is done by looking at properties of traditional fine jewellery in terms of material considerations and crafting processes, as well as considerations related to patterns of wear and interaction. By using jewellery as a point of departure, both theoretically and practically, we discuss four topics: a) the gestalt of electronic artefacts versus jewellery design, b) material preciousness, c) interactive properties of physical materials, and d) jewellery usage as an inspiration for new interactive designs.

Ajna is a musical cabinet made from a rich composition of acoustic materials and designed to perform digitally composed music. In this paper, we aim to unpack the design as well as key aspects of the design process that lead up to this unique artwork. We base our analysis on interviews with its two creators as well as on observations of Ajna performing in different contexts. From the perspective of interaction design, we first analyse the process of its making through the negotiations between physical form, temporal from, and the interactive gestalts. Lastly, we place these negotiations in a larger picture of bricolage as a design approach. Based on this we then discuss the qualities of bricolage in interaction design.

In this studio we explore the design of interactive electronic accessories made from natural materials such as wood, copper, silver, wool and leather. A set of handcrafted sensor components along with easy to use sensor boards that connect with example smartphone software, will be utilized as a toolkit for the studio activities. Participants will, through hands-on activity, create with, learn about and discuss the role of natural materials in the design of wearable interactive designs.

Design work can be driven from a variety of intentions, e.g. to serve users, to generate profit, to explore a new concept, or to trigger reflection and debate. However, it is not always clear how such intentions can be addressed concretely in education, and in specific design domains, such as interaction design, they might easily get lost among course content related to specific methods and technologies. In this paper, we discuss how we have addressed design intentions in our advanced course in interaction design, and also what we see as its main qualities in relation to more conventional course structure in this area.