Category: Research

PostDoc Research: Design Philosophy for Things that Change – Umeå Inst. of Design

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date October 23, 2019

I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Umeå Institute of Design (UID) in Umea, Sweden. I work collaboratively with Heather Wiltse and Johan Redström on the project “Design Philosophy for Things that Change” funded by the Wallenberg Foundation.

The purpose of this design research project is to develop a design philosophy for things that change: a philosophical and aesthetical foundation that forms and informs a design practice capable of conceptually handling the complexity of the evolving, globally connected and locally manifested socio-technical landscapes now created using networked computational technologies and digital media. It seeks to investigate what happens when computational processes, dynamic networks, and contextual customization emerge as factors as important as form, function and material were for designing, using, and understanding objects in the industrial age.

The project leaders have already completed promising pilot studies in this area, beginning to identify a shift from stable things to fluid assemblages and articulate what that means for design and for human-technology relations (Redström and Wiltse 2015a, 2015b; Wiltse, Stolterman and Redström 2015). Both have interdisciplinary backgrounds and are experienced in bringing different perspectives together in productive ways. They also have a track record of scientific contributions to different fields, both individually and in previous collaborations. They will take the lead on philosophical development—with the primary intended output being a book published by a leading academic press—while also coordinating and working with the other project activities.

There are lots of different outputs planned. These will be shared soon.

Follow this project on ResearchGate!

Research Uncategorized

PostDoc Research: Investigating the Design & Deployment of Calmer – UBC

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date August 23, 2019

While I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia I also had the pleasure to work with Liisa Holsti and Karon MacLean as well as other project collaborators on the project Calmer.

Calmer is a technology that simulates key aspects of maternal skin-to-skin holding for prematurely born infants. Developing Calmer has been a 10-year project by several researchers and clinicians; and it is an ongoing project. While I came in late, my work was about objectively discovering and describing what this 10-year design process and the deployment studies entailed including its inspiration, approach, physical design, and introduction into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I lead this discovery research exercise (through several interviews, conversations, and reviewing all materials) and as a result also lead the writing of an article for a top-tier publication aimed for the design research community. This was a greatly valuable exercise for me. The submission is currently under review.

There is a project website and a news video about Calmer.

The publication received a Best Paper award.

Hauser, S., Suto, M.J., Holsti, L., Ranger, M., & MacLean, K.E., (2020). Designing and Evaluating Calmer, a Device for Simulating Maternal Skin-to-Skin Holding for Premature Infants. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 201, 13 pages.

PORTFOLIO Research

PhD RESEARCH: Human-Computer Interaction Research through Postphenomenology

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date August 22, 2018

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PhD thesis research.

Supervised by: Prof. Ron Wakkary (SFU and Technical University Eindhoven), Prof. Peter-Paul Verbeek (University of Twente, The Netherlands), and Prof. Carman Neustaedter (SFU).

Design-oriented HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) through Postphenomenology

A design research inquiry informed by philosophical perspectives on technology

This research explores intersections between philosophy of technology, especially the postphenomenological approach and its frameworks, and Design-oriented HCI research. In particular, this doctoral thesis project aims to show how postphenomenology can be utilized in design research and help guide efforts of exploring to better attend to human-centeredness in HCI.

I successfully defended my PhD on July 19th, 2018. Kristina Höök (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) was my external examiner. Gabriela Aceves-Sepulveda was my internal examiner at SFU.

ABSTRACT

This doctoral dissertation presents a reflexive account of a design researcher exploring a way to complement human-centered approaches in design-oriented Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) through postphenomenology. This endeavour is based on the possibility that human-centeredness in HCI may obscure aspects of the understanding of humans, technology, and the relations that come about between them. Postphenomenology, a contemporary strand of the philosophy of technology, seems to offer conceptualizations and a more holistic view that can deepen an understanding of the human and the many different kinds of relations that can emerge with technology in the context of HCI.

Motivated by this, the objective of this dissertation is to explore how postphenomenology can contribute a holistic perspective on human relations with technology that can help complement and expand human-centered approaches to design research and practice. To address this, postphenomenology is introduced as a novel analytical framing. Then, three cases of reflective design research practice are presented that illustrate how postphenomenology can be of value as a productive analytical lens by using it: (i) to retrospectively analyze an empirical design ethnography study of guide dog teams, (ii) to analyze a Research through Design (RtD) deployment study of the table-non-table, and (iii) to create a synthesized analysis of a range of contemporary prior RtD projects in an annotated portfolio to generatively open up new ways of looking at them and provide a scaffolding for future research opportunities.

What is revealed in design-oriented HCI through postphenomenology, as demonstrated in this dissertation, is a holistic perspective on the matters concerning the field of HCI that can be complementary to previous ways of understanding. Postphenomenology opens up a view of the human that in one way decenters the human and puts technology and the mediating effect of technology at the center. In this, the human, still a central concern, is understood as technologically mediated. This perspective overcomes a narrow view of the human present in human-centered approaches and it can help HCI researchers get a more holistic view of the human while taking into account the relations that in fact ‘make’ the human.

Keywords: human-technology relations; postphenomenology; reflective design research practice; field work; human-animal relations; posthumanism

Publications from my doctoral work include (and there is more to come):

My Dissertation [PDF].

Hauser, S., Oogjes, D., Wakkary, R., Verbeek, P. (2018). An Annotated Portfolio on Doing Postphenomenology Through Research Products. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 459-471. *Best paper award! [PDF]

Hauser, S. 2018. Doing Postphenomenology through Things: Interdisciplinary Overlap Between Design Research and Philosophy of Technology. 2018 Conference on Human-Technology Relations: Postphenomenology and Philosophy of Technology (PHTR 2018). (Paper Abstract and Talk). University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Verbeek, P., Desjardins, A., Lin, H., Dalton, M., Schilling, M., & de Boer, G. (2018). Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design Research. In Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (13pgs). [PDF]

Wakkary, R., Oogjes, D., Lin, H., & Hauser, S. (2018). Philosophers Living with the Tilting Bowl. In Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (12pgs). *Best paper honorable mention award! [PDF]

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., & Hauser, S. (2016) Unselfconscious Interaction. Interacting with Computers. 2016; 28 (4): 501-520. doi: 10.1093/iwc/iwv018. (19pgs). [PDF]

Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Hauser, S., Hertz, G., & Lin, H. (2015). Material Speculation: Actual Artifacts for Critical Inquiry. In Proceedings of The Fifth Decennial Aarhus Conference on Critical Alternatives (AA ’15). Aarhus University Press 97-108. (11pgs). [PDF]

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., & Neustaedter, C., (2014). Understanding guide dog team interactions: design opportunities to support work and play. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS 14). ACM, NY, USA, pp. 295-304. (10pgs). [PDF]

Design PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH ARTEFACT & STUDY: table-non-table, crafting & deployments – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date September 1, 2017

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio.

In 2013, collaboratively with my research group at the Everyday Design Studio we designed a research artefact: the table-non-table (TNT).

I have lead multiple series of deployment studies with the table-non-table between 2013-2017. The table-non-table is a main part of my doctoral work and thesis in which I explore how non-utilitarian design artefacts mediate human-world relations through the lens of postphenomenology.

The table-non-table is a moving table-like heavy structure made of about 1000 sheets of stacked paper on an aluminum chassis. It challenges assumptions around use-centric, utilitarian ideas of technologies and technology design. The table-non-table, informed by the notion of everyday design, manifests an approach that sees interactive artifacts as resources for creative use and reuse. It is our approach to design for everyday competences (for instance competences around using paper as a material is well-known). In previous studies, we looked at practices of everyday design and their composition of material, competences, and meaning (see our TOCHI 2013 paper).

The TNT and its study findings have been mentioned and described in several publications:

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., & Hauser, S. (2015) Unselfconscious Interaction. Interacting with Computers. iwv018. (pp.1-20).

Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Hauser, S., Hertz, G., & Lin, H. (2015). Material Speculation: Actual Artifacts for Critical Inquiry. In Proceedings of the 5th decennial conference on Critical computing: Critical Alternatives. (CC ’05). ACM Press. (accepted, in press).

OdomW., & Wakkary, R. (2015). Intersecting with Unaware Objects. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition (C&C ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 33-42.

Design PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH ARTEFACT & STUDY: Tilting Bowl, crafting & deployments – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date August 6, 2017

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio.

The tilting bowl is a glazed porcelain bowl that periodically tilts. Similar to the table-non-table, the tilting bowl tilts in short durations (3-8 seconds) at random intervals 3-6 times a day. It is approximately 35 centimeters in diameter, 16 centimeters in height and weighs approximately 3 kilograms. The tilting bowl is a fully functional bowl. The form of the bowl was produced through a type of parametric design and we utilized digital processes in the making of its mold for slip-casting. The aim of the bowl is to find the simplest and most common design form (bowls have been made for millennia) that could be integrated with an equally simple approach to computational and digital technologies. The tilting bowl is a multiple of six bowls.

The bowls are currently being deployed in households for longer periods of time. Initially for four to six months in households of philosophersand in a second deployment study for twelve months. Participants will be asked to maintain a micro-blog, keep a photo diary, and take part in a semi-structured interview.

The bowls were made in collaboration with Material Matters (ECUAD) with funding support by NSERC and SSHRC.

We have published a paper about the initial study of the tilting bowl. The postphenomenological framing of the tilting bowl is based on my doctoral work.

Design PORTFOLIO Research Uncategorized

RESEARCH ARTEFACT & STUDY: Morse Things, crafting & deployments – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date January 2, 2017

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio.

The Morse Things project investigates the nature of relations between people and computational things in the making of everyday life. Specifically, Morse Things explores the notion of the Internet of Things, in addition to connectivity, sensing and data, the project aims to understand the materiality, temporality and human relationships that constitute and potentially undermine the current concept of the Internet of Things.

At the center of the Morse Things project are multiple sets of three networked ceramic cups and bowls. The cups and bowls digitally communicate between themselves as they progress over time toward an “awareness” of their potential group and networked existence. The data communication between the Morse Things is expressed through sound by each cup or bowl in Morse code; and over the Internet on Twitter.

The Morse Things are continuously being deployed in several long-term (several months) studies in peoples’ homes and apartments. The aim of the project is to make material and visible the non-human to non-human communication among digital things. Our goal is to understand the long-term and lived with experiences these create and unexpected opportunities that are constructed through our daily lives with such artifacts.

The Morse Things were made with the assistance of Material Matters (ECUAD) with funding support by 4TU.Federation – Design United, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), NSERC and SSHRC.

Design PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH AND DESIGN: Design Fiction and Speculative Design – SFU, AGO

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date January 26, 2015

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio

I’ve been interested in Design Fiction for a while and worked on several projects around the topic.

A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices

In 2012 we began writing a journal article called “A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices” in which we propose opportunities for designers to co-design with DIY enthusiasts, targeted as practitioners in their own right, designing toward or within a design fiction. We see design fiction as a possible means to bridge sustainable practices, interaction design, and practice-oriented design and as a source for interpretation and adaptation. Designers can take on an intermediary (or what we call hybrid) role between design fictions and sustainable DIY practices. For example, Malthus is a DIY home version of aquaponic farming (see images). It was designed by the firm Conceptual Devices. The project aims to show how to build an aquaponic farm with accessible and easy to assemble materials. In this case, the designer is not presenting a design fiction in itself, but a plausible prototype of a proximate future. Below see the published journal article and the project page about the Green DIY study. This project was done in collaboration with Ron Wakkary, Audrey Desjardins, and Leah Maestri.

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., Hauser, S. & Maestri, L. (2013) A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). 20, 4, Article 23 (2013). (34pgs)

SFUture – A Sustainable SFU in 2065

In the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 terms I took a class called ChangeLab and the final project of my project team was to envision and share what SFU (our University) could look like in the future, considering sustainability issues. We created a design fiction of SFU in 2065 in form of documentary-style videos from the future. There is a Youtube Channel, a tumblr blog, and a publication about this project. We had several probes that were things in our design fiction like the unscissors and the nogfobber (see images). My project partners were Audrey Desjardins, Kashif Pasta, and Mike Funergy.

See the four other fun SFUture videos HERE.

Material Speculations

The latest work around design fiction and speculative design has been an article that I wrote together with Ron Wakkary, Will Odom, Garnet Hertz, and Henry Lin. It is called ‘Material Speculations’ and we submitted a paper to the fifth decennial Aarhus Conference. More on how this submission turns out will be coming soon.

Speculative Design for the AGO

See also our project for the AGO that involves design fiction.
The featured image of this article from HERE.

PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH STUDY: DIY Tutorials & the role of designers – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date June 28, 2014

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio, Summer 2013 – Summer 2014

Aiming to examine the quality of DIY tutorials, we put ourselves in the position of DIY enthusiasts, attempting to build ten DIY projects by following their tutorials. We documented this process and analyzed our experiences and observations. In the context of our study, we believe that the process of following the tutorials ourselves is a straightforward way to investigate the challenges and opportunities of DIY instructions.

We will be presenting a paper using findings from this study at CHI 2015:

Wakkary, R., Schlling, M., Dalton, M., Hauser, S., Desjardins, A., Zhang, X., & Lin, H. (2015). Tutorial Authorship and Hybrid Designers: The Joy (and Frustration) of DIY Tutorials. In Proceedings of the conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, (forthcoming, April 2015). (10pgs).

Here is the abstract:

Tutorials are critical to the success and vitality of DIY practices. In this paper, we elevate the importance of tutorial authorship as one way to maintain and improve the quality of tutorials in DIY. We discuss the role interaction designers can play as hybrid designers, mediating between author and audience to contribute to the improvement of practices of tutorial authorship in DIY. We examine the quality of tutorials through the building and analysis of ten DIY projects and tutorials. We analyze key issues across three categories: 1) competences, components and tools, 2) sequencing, 3) and communication. We offer findings that are both practical guidelines for detailed improvements of tutorials and structural themes for improving tutorial authorship including the themes of accurate information, competences and tools, and tutorial format. In conclusion, we discuss the potential for interaction designers to simultaneously mediate and shape tutorials and tools in a form of hybrid design

Design PORTFOLIO Research

DESIGN RESEARCH: Interactions of Guide Dog Teams – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date June 26, 2014

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PhD Studies, Spring 2012 – Fall 2013

The visually impaired have been a longstanding well recognized user group addressed in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Recently, the study of sighted dog owners and their pets has gained interest in HCI. Despite this, there is a noticeable gap in the field of HCI with regards to research on and for visually impaired owners and their dogs (guide dog teams).

This research specifically focuses on guide dog teams, presenting an ethnographic study that explores the interactions of guide dog teams revealing differences between their work and off-work relationship. Some of our findings promote design interventions that address issues of awareness, pride, confidence, and trust present in guide dog teams at work but absent in off-work scenarios. We uncover potential for the design of new computer-mediated technologies that can better support the needs of guide dog owners; specifically, enhanced play-interaction through accessible dog toys utilizing smart sensor technologies and mobile apps.

The study has been an incredible experience and taught me a lot about Guide Dogs and their handlers and ethnographic fieldwork. BC Guide Dogs has been a very helpful partner in this work.

We published several works on this project:

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., & Neustaedter, C., (2014). Understanding guide dog team interactions: design opportunities to support work and play. In Proc. of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS 14). ACM, NY, USA, pp. 295-304.

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., & Neustaedter, C. (2014). Improving guide dog team play with accessible dog toys. In Proc. of CHI EA‘14. ACM, NY, USA, pp. 1537-1542.

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., and Neustaedter, C., (2013) Work vs. Play: A Study of Guide Dog Team Interactions, GRAND NCE Conference, Research Notes, Grand’13.

I have picked up this work in my doctoral dissertation work and taken it a step further by using the lens of postphenomenology to complement human-centered ways of studying these human-non-human teams.

Design PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH AND DESIGN: Speculative Design, AGO, Toronto – SFU

Post author By diesoadmin
Post date May 1, 2014

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio, Spring 2013 – present

We began working on a project in collaboration with Art Gallery Ontario (AGO) in 2013. The overall longterm goal will be to design futuristic prototypes (design fictions, speculative designs) for the AGO. So far, we have visited the AGO 4 times and conducted a participants workshop at the AGO, analyzed parts of the workshop data and have engaged in a first part of an rather unconventional design process.

The workshop was conducted to gather data that can stimulate and inspire the design of future prototypes known in this case as design fictions that will be presented in the AGO as a reflective installation that encourages visitors to construct their own interpretation of the Canadian collection.

Design Workshop

The core goal of this workshop (which we named Eclipse) is to shift the focus of workshop participants to the edges of their experience of a known public place. For example, our workshop aims to elicit memories of smell and qualities of light. How mundane objects like furniture, electrical outlets, motion sensors or ceiling textures influence our participants’ experiences of place. How these qualities shape the memories, perceptual experiences, and public and personal stories that people bring to or create within a public place. Our workshop guides the participants to sequentially explore their memories, sensations, sense of place, and stories.

We published a pictorial, in which we explain this workshop we held at the AGO in its Canadian Art Collection with 13 participants.

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., Odom, W., Hauser, S., & Aflatoony, L., (2014). Eclipse: eliciting the subjective qualities of public places. In Proc. of DIS 14. ACM, NY, pp. 151-160. (10pgs, Pictorial)

Next Phase in the Design Process

For our last visit, I and another team member prepared Non-human storyboards telling the story of something non-human living at the AGO. With those storyboards we began filming footage for short films about those things. A rather unconventional but very interesting and fun process.