This research project explores how we can apply Emerging Design Landscapes such as Critical Design and Collective Creativity, in combination with traditional fields of visual communication to address societal challenges in cooperation with society. In particular, this paper aims to question the visual representation of nuclear warfare, and how we could utilize Peircean Semiotics to better understand set representation. The design outcome is a critical board game that at its core aims to create a discussion around the visual representation of nuclear warfare today and act as a learning platform that would help its user better understand the practice of semiosis.

Denna rapport redogör för det examensarbete som genomförts på uppdrag av designbyrån Spektra Design. Arbetet gick ut på att skapa en hemsida till den latinamerikanska filmfestivalen Panoramica, som anordnas för första gången i Stockholm i september 2015. Jag har skapat designen till hemsidan samt utvecklat sidan från grunden i Wordpress. Panoramica har en vision om att bilda ett underlag för ett distributions- och marknadsföringsnätverk som sprider latinamerikansk film i Sverige. De vill att festivalen ska bli ett ansikte utåt för latinamerikansk film i Sverige och arbetar för att ”stimulera utbyte och dialog mellan olika etniska grupper i Sverige genom att uppdatera utbudet av berättelser från Latinamerika.” En stor del av en webbsida är dess design. Designen bidrar till det övergripande intrycket av hemsidan, men också om den uppfattas som lättförståelig eller komplicerad. Denna uppsats undersöker hur man kan tillämpa normkritisk teori i en praktisk designprocess. Jag har även undersökt principer kring användarvänlighet och Användarupplevelse. Resultatet av arbetet är en färdig hemsida där fokus ligger på festivalens fokus: film. Det är enkelt att läsa om varje film, se trailers och skapa sitt eget program. Färgerna och typografin är kraftig och karaktäristisk och tillåts ta plats, i ett försök att bryta mot den västerländska minimalistiska formgivningstrenden och lyfta det latinamerikanska. Under arbetet har jag kommit fram till att det inte är ett måste att bryta normer eller konventioner för hur en sida bör se ut. Det viktiga är att ha med sig frågor om vem som får synas, vad som är normen i ett sammanhang och vem designen är till för. Det är viktiga frågor att ha med sig i en designprocess även om de är svårbesvarade. / This report describes the work commissioned by design bureau Spektra Design. The task was to create a website for the Latin American Film Festival Panoramica, organized for the first time in Stockholm in September 2015. I have created the design for the website and developed the site from scratch in Wordpress. Panoramica has a vision to form a basis for a distribution and marketing network spreading Latin American film in Sweden. They want the festival to become a public face for Latin American film in Sweden and works to "promote exchanges and dialogue between different ethnic groups in Sweden by updating the range of stories from Latin America." A large portion of the website is its design. The design contributes to the overall impression of the site, but also if it is perceived as easy to understand or complicated. This paper examines how one can apply critical theory in a practical design process. The outcome of the work is a complete website where the focus is on film. It's easy to read about each movie, watch trailers, and create your own program. The colors and the typography is strong and distinctive and is allowed to take place, in an effort to break the Western minimalist design trend and highlight the Latin American aspects of the design. During the work I have come to the conclusion that breaking norms or conventions of how a web page should look like is not necessarily a must. The key is to keep asking yourself: Who is represented, who is the norm and who is the design for? These are important issues to bring into a design process even if they are difficult to answer.

“Comfort Food – Comfortable for Who?” – Questions the true comfort of our eating habits, critically addressing our prevalent unsustainable animal-based food cultures by exploring genuine comfort food through design. In my process I have researched why our eating habits are so hard to change, from our psychological attachment to meat to the patriarchal foundation of our food cultures. By exploring the medium of food and cooking as design practice, I have encountered how essential the element of comfort is to human’s eating experience. Resulting in an approach to plant-based eating where the essential comfort factors of our food cultures meet the beyond-human comfort needs.

Våra hem fylls med produkter baserade på behov och önskemål och användningenav produkterna avtar efter en kortare tid då behovet att ersätta produkterna mednya känns lockande. Samhället är byggt för att avfallssystemet skall kunna ta övervåra produkter som vi inte längre använder.Den här studien undersöker hur man genom design kan uppmuntra till attanvända befintliga produkter i hemmet som man tröttnat på genom att omformadem. Studien stödjs av teoretiska grunder såsom hållbar utveckling, cirkulärekonomi, emotionell design, redesign och kritisk design. Empirin bestod avpilotstudie och semistrukturerade intervjuer med studiens målgrupp, som ärmiljömedvetna med en strävan efter en mer hållbar livsstil och som inte är direkttrendsökare.En omformning av en befintlig produkt studeras genom redesign sommålsättning för ett mer hållbart designförslag. Kritisk design som ett perspektivdiskuterar hur samhällets linjära ekonomi bör utvecklas och yrkesrollens kontextskulle kunna se ut i ett fiktivt, holistiskt system. Syftet är att förebygga ersättandetav nya produkter när man tröttnat på dem genom omformning av en befintligprodukt eller att produkter hamnar i avfallstrappan.Studiens slutsats visar ett alternativt designförslag genom prototyp i skala 1:1av en omformning av en befintlig klädställning, som respondent tröttnat på i sitthem. Designförslaget med en strävan mot ett mer hållbart alternativ som kan genytt liv till produkten och med hopp om återanvändning. Detta sker främst genompersonlig design som designinriktning, som är baserat på användarens uppfattningoch tycke. Ett fiktivt system presenteras i studiens diskussions del genom kritiskdesign och som även framför för hur studiens designförslag kan appliceras i ettstörre system. / Our homes are filled with products based on needs and desires and the useof the products decreases after a shorter period of time, when the need to replacethe products with new ones feels attractive. Society is built to allow the wastesystem to take over our products that we no longer use.This study examines how, through design, you can encourage the use ofexisting products in the home that you are tired of by reshaping them. The study issupported on theoretical grounds such as sustainable development, circulareconomics, emotional design, redesign and critical design. The empirical studyconsisted of a pilot study and semi-structured interviews with the study's targetgroup, who are environmentally conscious with a desire for a more sustainablelifestyle and who are not directly trendsetters.A redesign of an existing product is studied through redesign as the goalof a more sustainable design proposal. Critical design as a perspective discusseshow the linear economy of society should develop and the context of theprofessional role could look like in a fictional, holistic system. The purpose is toprevent the replacement of new products when they are tired of them by reshapingan existing product or that products fall into the waste staircase.The study's conclusion shows an alternative design proposal through a 1: 1scale prototype of a reshaping of an existing clothing rack, which the respondenttired of in his home. The design proposal with a quest for a more sustainablealternative that can give new life to the product and with the hope of reuse. This ismainly done through personal design as a design orientation, which is based onthe user's perception and liking. A holistic, fictitious system is presented throughcritical design that is part of the study discussion that also forms the basis for howthe study's design proposals can be applied in a circular system.

This project is a journey of finding sustainable well-being through re-creating beauty stan-dards and generating changes that support a sustainable lifestyle. The starting point of the project is to support women’s well-being while patriarchal capitalist society diminishes their self-worth to make them consume. However, not only women but everyone is affected by beauty standards from society. By applying different design methods, the aim is to sustain an individual’s mental and physical well-being by reducing the pressure while navigating the demands of society through investigating the problems and finding ways to stay with the problem.

This project is about creating for/with humans and the rest of nature. The design is composed of five holistically sustainable beehotels with mental strengthealing journaling tools engraved into them. These beehotels have shifted away from anthropocentrism and are instead geared towards the needs of the pollinators, they are fully created from the forest they are made for. And the journaling exercises have been created to encourage self-exploration to recognize our own strength and build emotional intelligence. The entire design is a way to reflect on our actions.

In his speech during the 2016 Speculative Design Symposium, held at the University of California, San Diego, Benjamin Bratton1 rightly argued that the job of 21st century design is to undo (much of) the design of the 20th.A number of recent controversial designs and practices in the business and public sphere have suddenly made ethical design (design ethics2) a hot topic in the design community.This master thesis is a highly critical and fairly philosophical examination of the design profession in the context of the current socio-technical landscape. It analyses the convergence between the fields of design, ethics and disruptive technology. Autonomous transportation is taken as an example to illustrate what circumstances (should) drive designers’ social engagement. Hopefully, it also accommodates for a productive reflection on the place of ethics in a broader social context. By utilising speculative and critical design approaches, the thesis aims to stimulate, provoke and ideally maintain a public discourse on the direction of development of technology and modern societies, and inspire designers to be more critical to the vocational portrayal of their profession. / <p><strong>The degree project is carried out at the Department of Science and Technology (ITN) at Faculty of Science and Engineering, Linköping University</strong></p>

This thesis project presents a research through design process, that has aimed to investigate and challenge internet users’ perception and awareness around the theme of online privacy and third-party trackers. This has been done by designing a critical design artifact called PrivacyLamp which takes form as a classic lamp, that through a secondary (dis)functionality is designed to work as an mediation of potential third-par- ty-trackers activity on the user’s local network. PrivacyLamp has been developed through an iterative design process, guid- ed by relevant literature and works within the eld of critical design, physical data visualization, and design for re ection, which all have worked as a foundation for the design of such an artefact. The prototype has been evaluated together with six participants, who all adopted the prototype into their domestic settings to experience it as a part of their everyday life for a few days. The aim of this qualitative study has been to investigate how a defamiliarized domestic object can work as an ambient display to question the invisible ow of connec- tivity and its complication within online privacy, as well as the narratives and experiences users develops in relation to this.

This critical design project showcases obstacles that the Qatari culture and society impose on their female youth, hindering them from becoming independent individuals. It critiques the society and its social pressures. The project stimulates people to think by challenging their assumptions and perceptions, specifically social perception and judgment, family authority, and gender favoritism. This is achieved through hybridized accessories that are embedded with a meta-meaning that arouses curiosity, invites questions, and stimulates thoughts. Through the design of these appealing, high quality, and functionally viable everyday accessories, the project aims to communicate the social and cultural forces which impede Qatari female youths’ becoming individuals who dream, achieve, and thrive.

Unseen, unheard and unconsidered, Qatar’s migrant worker population is building one of the richest countries in the world. They labor in Qatar’s high heat index1 climate, which is coincidentally comparable to an Oriental sauna, wearing the most rudimentary of clothes. Working up to 60 hours a week, migrant workers fall victim to heat stress and dozens are hospitalized daily, starting as early as March and increasing in numbers during the peak months of June to August. Since clothes are essentially a “second skin,” affecting the rate and efficiency with which heat is exchanged between the body and its surroundings, a concept garment was designed to improve thermal comfort. Low-tech, indigenous heat-management systems are combined with new technologies and knowledge of human physiology to design a two-layer suit that aims to optimize heat exchange mechanisms. The suit enhances radiation, convection and evaporation by having a snug-fitting inner wicking layer and a loose-cut outer shell, and by using strategically placed vents, perforations, and Phase Change Material (PCM) packs. Using fiction as a medium of social commentary and critical design, the concept suit borrows from the superhero aesthetic to present the migrant worker in a new light. The suit denotes power, symbolizing the superhuman feat these workers perform and their true worth to the economy. Its aesthetic and function aim to improve worker morale and performance. Mapping, scoping and primary and secondary qualitative and quantitative research have been used throughout the design process. This is in addition to an ethnographic study, field observations, material explorations, body storming and experimentation.