The central purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether users have distinct preferences for specific navigational patterns in multimedia: that is preferences for moving through multimedia. Subsidiary questions are whether users have preferences for working strategies, (the mental approach to investigating software) whether these preferences are similar for specific groups and whether these preferences are affected by the software's system and navigational design. Four groups were investigated within two ranges: children to adults, and novices to experts. The literature review revealed four different perspectives of investigating navigation: user, designer, pedagogy and human computer interaction and although this research concentrates on the first two perspectives the other two are integral and of equal importance. Two empirical studies elicited the navigational information. The first studied pairs of children undertaking set tasks in multimedia, and demonstrated that although each pair had definite preferences, each group did not utilise the full pattern range discerned from the observations, literature review and multimedia package analysis. The second study was redesigned using individual adults to ascertain the full range of preferred patterns in use. The essential element from the investigations was the wide range of variation between individuals and within groups. There was a gradual progression in their range and speed using these patterns, related to their skills, abilities and experience, and each individual could be placed along a continuum. Topologies of the multimedia packages and diagrams of the fit of the navigation patterns were included. Finally an expert panel was convened to verify the pattern range and their comments supported the new classification. The research outcomes included navigational patterns and working strategies classifications, future techniques for designers, and user methods. These will create more successful and informed multimedia, and forward developments and improvements in the design of high quality user preference software.

The societal transformation from an agricultural to an urbanised 24/7 society, reflected in a move from natural time to the mechanical clock to the contemporary digital age, has significantly influenced our daily biological and social rhythms. Modern technology has fostered an increasing temporal fragmentation, heralding an era of flexible time with ever more complex processes of synchronisation. These inhumane rhythms conflict with the natural rhythmicity of the human biological clock. This thesis investigates the potential of new perceptions of time through the application of uchronia - a term derived from the Greek word ou-chronos meaning ‘ no time ’ or ‘ non-time’, and from utopia, from the Greek ou-topos. This research is situated within contemporary debates on the nature of temporality, often denoted as time crisis or dyschronia. It investigates uchronia as temporal utopia and in the way it generates insights about our knowledge of contemporary temporality. The research develops an original uchronian methodology and applications of uchronian thinking in practice-led design research, intertwining design, chronobiological and chronosociological research to propose a new area of chronodesign. Through design practice, I explore how scientific research can be translated into lived, aesthetic experience. The methods range from critical and speculative design ( thought experiments ), artistic research ( unlearning methods ), to methods drawn from chronobiological research ( zeitgeber method ). I investigate practical work which challenges thought patterns regarding the temporal structure of contemporary life, in which participants explore alternative time-givers or synchronisers, in order to think outside the boundaries of clocks and calendars. By providing a broadened definition of uchronianism, I aim to establish uchronia as a platform for critical thought and debate on the contemporary time crisis, with chronodesign as a practical design initiative.

Between 1880 and 1920 displays in leading department stores reached an unprecedented level of artistic and commercial ambition that required professional skill, engaged with technology, earned consumer attention, and provided distinction between stores. Merchandise arrangements conveyed technical proficiency and innovation specific to the retail setting while their form and content were also in conversation with current events, art, urban life, and popular culture. This thesis explores the making, viewing, and meanings of display. Discussion will be framed around the following questions: What role did display design play in the development of department stores in Chicago, New York and London at the turn of the twentieth century and how can the impact and significance of display be identified in the stores’ material and visual cultures? Drawing from a diverse range of unexplored primary resources and archives, this thesis reveals a set of previously underrepresented design roles, tools, and techniques of display production in the practice of architects, window dressers, shopfitters, and interior decorators who employed manual and mechanical methods to create displays that were on constant view and in continual flux. In this newly changeable retail environment, display’s alignment with fin-de-siècle modernity is explored through the themes of speed, variation, fragmentation, rationalization, and theatricality. Overall this thesis analyzes how display achieved an agency to transform everyday objects into commodities and to make consumers out of passersby.

The London Postal Map was introduced in 1856. It drew a boundary around London, and then divided the city into ten districts: EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW. It was a technological innovation that greatly increased the speed and efficiency of the movement of post around London, in a period when the postal service was the primary form of communication. Service became incredibly quick, frequent, and accessible; almost as instantaneous as the internet today. Deliveries began at 7.22am, with deliveries on the hour, every hour throughout the day. Letters posted at 7.30pm in central London would reach outer London suburbs that same evening. This thesis considers a period from 1830 until 1918, corresponding to the period of the beginnings of the Map’s story, to a major change in the Map during the First World War. It describes the origins of the Postal Map, and then explores its effects in the context of a rapidly developing city. It speculates on meanings of mapping the city where new names and boundaries are introduced and visualized. It investigates the development of the city, understanding the post as an essential part of London’s infrastructure. It considers how people experienced a city in which millions of letters, thousands of postmen, and hundreds of mail carts were moving each week. The Postal Map is argued to be one of the causal factors of modernity within London; it meant urban space was linked to a particular temporality – modern, fast-paced, connected. It changed how Londoner’s conceived their city through providing a new framework for labelling places in relation to each other, stating what was east, what was west.   The project uses the extensive archives held by the Postal Museum, which include hundreds of maps, to tell the story of the Postal Map. It combines methodologies from social history, technological and administrative histories, mapping theory, urban planning history, and design history to gain a rich understanding of the full spatial implications of this designed object: the London Postal Map.

Designers have recently become increasingly involved with small-scale producer communities around the world, mostly in the southern hemisphere, and this increase has highlighted the significance of these encounters in the creation of economic and social opportunities for those peoples. This study identifies that, however, these encounters present challenges and imply ethical responsibilities that current design methodologies fail to embrace in their long-term goals. This research investigates the interaction between designers visiting local producers whose livelihood is deeply dependent not just on the natural environment and their local culture but also on the process of fabrication. This thesis proposes a new methodology to guide designers and producers through a reflective process of social change in producer communities. This methodology derives from a combination of activity theory and the capability approach to wellbeing applied within design and producer community practices. The aim is to support a dialogical and holistic design approach to this kind of cooperation, as well as to endorse research and professional practice in the field of design for social change. This research seeks to break new ground by generating perspectives that support both designers and local producers in tackling and resolving issues of individual and collective wellbeing. The research draws on interviews with designers working with local producers in different countries. In addition, the author presents her own experiences of researching and working with Amazon rainforest rubber-tapping communities which have adopted new production methods in order to acquire new capabilities and help conserve their environment. Two case studies illustrate the reflective methodology applied to the designer and producer interactions within social innovation and entrepreneurship. But it is fundamentally the materiality of the rubber, and the revelation of the interdependences within and without the locality, that form the framework of this thesis.

This thesis discusses nineteenth- and early twentieth-century representations of Brazil, with em-phasis on Brazilian national identity and the country’s engagement with modernity. It addresses these broad themes by focusing on the national participation in key international exhibitions, from Brazil’s first official appearance at the International Exhibition of 1862 in London to the Brazilian Centennial Exposition held in Rio de Janeiro in 1922. Using a multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework, this thesis examines ‘national objects’ – exhibits, exhibition displays, publications and pavilions – shown at home and abroad. It questions what sort of national identity these objects materialised and how they propelled Brazilian experience of modernity. Despite being a multicultural and diverse country, from 1862 to 1922 Brazil was frequently repre-sented by its exhibition commissioners as a homogeneous and cohesive nation. In less than a hun-dred years, Brazil turned from being a liberal but slavery-bound Empire to become an oligarchic Republic. Alongside manumission, urban expansion, and industrialisation, the nation underwent unprecedented political, economic, and cultural changes. These changes, however, were displayed differently at home and abroad. This thesis, thus, is concerned with the cleavages in the national representation from the Empire to the Republic and questions what sort of nation was being repre-sented abroad, and why. This thesis reveals that the Brazilian exhibitionary efforts during this period largely excluded representations of its population, especially of those who did not conform to the modern and civi-lised images attributed to the nation by the state. It also sustains that, despite their commercial and economic imperatives, exhibitions were used by the Brazilian state, during Empire and Republic, for the affirmation and conservation of political power. This thesis is tested in five chapters. The first discusses previous attempts at studying exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, and defines the con-cepts considered in this thesis. The second chapter addresses issues of agency and representation by examining the imperial representation sent to the Centennial International Exhibition in Phila-delphia in 1876. The third chapter focuses on two exhibitions, one Imperial and one Republican, to enquire about ruptures and continuities in the Brazilian representation abroad. This chapter centres on the displays of Brazilian raw materials mounted at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris, and at the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in St Louis in 1904. The fourth chapter examines objects that communicated Brazilian ‘civilisation and progress’ at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. These objects were used by the newly instated republi-can government to manipulate national historical symbols that legitimised their ascension to power and promoted them as the future. The final chapter investigates the Rio exhibition in 1922 as a place where modernisation and modernity were made visible for a Brazilian audience.

The Application of Traditional Chinese Aesthetic Principles to Contemporary International Design. This is a submission by publication consisting of 13 major design projects and an accompanying research report. China is undergoing phenomenal economic growth that is having a major impact on the social and cultural development of the Republic. Accompanying the growth is an unprecedented urbanisation of the population and expansion of the cities. This has meant an explosion in the building industries. At the same time China is moving towards the central position in the global economy that also has huge cultural implications. This is the context in which I have pursued my professional practice as an interior and architectural designer. Some of the questions I have been attempting to address through my practice arise directly out of this context. In the fast expansion of the field of interior design that has accompanied this growth it is vital that Chinese designers are aware of the cultural context of their work. Is it possible for Chinese designers working in the developing international context of contemporary design projects in China to make a unique contribution to the field that is specifically Chinese? This presentation of my practice will provide a cohesive argument for an approach to design in the international arena that remains specific to the cultural and temporal context of its origins. I will specifically demonstrate solutions I have found to the application of ancient Chinese aesthetic principles to contemporary international design problems. As practice-based research I have given much thought to the methodologies I have employed. I will provide a detailed outline of these 'action' research methodologies and definitions of the types of knowledge employed in the following report. The visual evidence is also accompanied by descriptions of the projects including the briefs, design solutions and specific Chinese characteristics. The presentation of my practice in this form provides evidence of the ways in which cultural specificity can be maintained within the international design arena and makes a meaningful contribution to debates and knowledge in the area of cultural diversity and design.

The thesis investigates the methods used in the contemporary crowdsourcing of creative crowdwork and in particular the succession of conflicting ideas and concepts that led to the development of dedi- cated, profit-oriented, online platforms after 2005 for the outsourcing of cognitive tasks and creative labour to a large and unspecified group of people via open calls on the internet. It traces the historic trajectory of the notion of the crowd as well as the development of tech- nologies for online collaboration, with a focus on the accompanying narratives in the form of a dis- course analysis. One focus of the thesis is the clash between the narrative of the empowerment of the individual user through digital tools and the reinvention of the concept of the crowd as a way to refer to users of online platforms in their aggregate form. The thesis argues that the revivification of the notion of the crowd is indicative of a power shift that has diminished the agency of the individual user and empowered the commercial platform providers who, in turn, take unfair advantage of the crowdworker. The thesis examines the workings and the rhetoric of these platforms by comparing the way they address the masses today with historic notions of the crowd, formed by authors like Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud and Elias Canetti. Today’s practice of crowdwork is also juxtaposed with older, arguably more humanist, visions of distributed online collaboration, collective intelligence, free soft- ware and commons-based peer production. The study is a history of ideas, taking some of the utopian concepts of early online history as a vantage point from which to view current and, at times, dystopian applications of crowdsourced creative labour online. The goal is to better understand the social mech- anisms employed by the platforms to motivate and control the crowds they gather, and to uncover the parameters that define their structure as well as the scope for their potential redesign. At its core, the thesis offers a comparison of Amazon Mechanical Turk (2005), the most prominent and infamous example for so-called microtasking or cognitive piecework, with the design of platforms for contest-based creative crowdwork, in particular with Jovoto (2007) and 99designs (2008). The crowdsourcing of design work is organised in decidedly differently ways to other forms of digital labour and the question is why should that be so? What does this tell us about changes in the practice and commissioning of design and what are its effects on design as a profession? However, the thesis is not just about the crowdsourcing of design work: it is also about the design of crowdsourcing as a system. It is about the ethics of these human-made, contingent social systems that are promoted as the future of work. The question underlying the entire thesis is: can crowdsourcing be designed in a way that is fair and sustainable to all stakeholders? The analysis is based on an extensive study of literature from Design Studies, Media and Cul- ture Studies, Business Studies and Human-Computer Interaction, combined with participant observa- tion within several crowdsourcing platforms for design and a series of interviews with different stake- holders.

Autistic adults with limited speech and additional learning disabilities are people whose perceptions and interactions with their environment are unique, but whose experiences are under-explored in design research. This PhD by Practice investigates how people with autism experience their home environment through a collaboration with the autism charity Kingwood Trust, which gave the designer extensive access to a community of autistic adults that it supports. The PhD reflects upon a neurotypical designer’s approach to working with autistic adults to investigate their relationship with the environment. It identifies and develops collaborative design tools for autistic adults, their support staff and family members to be involved. The PhD presents three design studies that explore a person’s interaction with three environmental contexts of the home i.e. garden, everyday objects and interiors. A strengths-based rather than a deficit-based approach is adopted which draws upon an autistic person’s sensory preferences, special interests and action capabilities, to unravel what discomfort and delight might mean for an autistic person; this approach is translated into three design solutions to enhance their experience at home. By working beyond the boundaries of a neurotypical culture, the PhD bridges the autistic and neurotypical worlds of experience and draws upon what the mainstream design field can learn from designing with autistic people with additional learning disabilities. It also provides insights into the subjective experiences of people who have very different ways of seeing, doing and being in the environment.

This research focuses on designing with indigenous communities. The use of design raises concerns in this context. Because of the aim to ‘improve’ lives and the emphasis on innovation, design approaches have the probability to colonise. As designers, we have to find ways to deal with such concerns. Approaches that do this within the context of indigenous communities are Sheehan’s respectful design and Tunstall’s culture-based innovation. Both approaches acknowledge that the community should benefit from projects. In this, the role of the designer becomes to spark the resourcefulness of the community members to find such benefit. However, neither approach states in pragmatic terms how such a space can be reached. Therefore, this research aims to: explore the dynamics of a respectful design space in co-creative and co-reflective encounters with indigenous communities; and to provide recommendations to reach such a space. The explorations were performed by introducing co-creative design methods during a case study with three indigenous communities. Some co-creative processes led to respectful design spaces, others did not. All processes were analytically studied by combining annotated portfolios and content analysis in timelines. The aim was to find patterns of dynamics essential for respectful design. The dynamics that arose were: 1) ownership through the type of design participation, 2) indicators of ownership, 3) the type of novel expressions made and 4) the type of material culture introduced. This led to contributions of this research being, firstly, a framework of a respectful design space and recommendations of how to reach such a space. Secondly, the concept of constellations of design initiatives, to understand respectful design in situ. Thirdly, the importance of inclusion of the community’s own material culture to facilitate dialogical spaces, and, finally, the analytical approach used to find the dynamics.