Eco-visualization technologies aim to trigger more environmental behaviors by providing feedback about the usage of key resources such as energy. However, the design of these technologies to encourage energy conservation has been mainly focused on individual behaviors in a household level. Addressing a different approach researchers at KTH have designed the housing cooperative app, a web application that provides feedback about the collective energy consumption of housing cooperatives in Stockholm, aiming to reduce the cooperative's collective energy use. By using a Research Through Design approach, this thesis explores how data visualization can support amateur energy work through the housing cooperative app. For this, I identified design problems in the data visualization elements of the app, which I aimed to solve by redesigning them; then, I conducted semi structured interviews with amateur energy workers, where they interacted with the application, to generate new insights about how data visualization can be used in an amateur work context. Through the interviews it was possible to obtain qualitative answers about the challenges of amateurs energy workers and the way data visualization could be used to address theses challenges and achieve their goals in an efficient way. The interviews was divided in Background, Amateur work, Comprehension and Usefulness of the data, and were supported by a walkthrough in the application presenting to users different scenarios and features in the application. Results showed the potential that data visualizations have to support amateur energy workers to overcome their main challenges and to identify the rewards of their work. In this thesis I discuss about this potential, and about design aspects that are important to consider when designing eco-visualization technologies in amateur energy context. / I detta examensarbete undersöktes hur datavisualisering kan stödja icke-professionellt energiarbete vid användning av appen utvecklad för bostadsrättsföreningar. För att göra detta användes metoden research through design. Under arbetet identifierade jag problem i appens tidigare design och förbättrade visualiseringselementen. Efter detta utfördes en intervjustudie av semistrukturerad form med icke-professionella energiarbetare som informanter. Under dessa intervjuer interagerade informanterna med appen i ett försök att finna nya insikter om hur datavisualisering kan användas i en icke-professionel kontext.   Intervjuerna var uppdelade i de tre kategorierna: bakgrund om informanten, icke-professionellt arbete samt förståelse och användbarhet av informationen i appen. Under intervjuerna utförde jag en demonstration av appen för att presentera de olika funktioner och scenarier jag ville utvärdera. Intervjuerna gav mig ett kvalitativt resultat med insikter om de hinder som upplevs av användargruppen, och hur datavisualisering kan användas för att åtgärda dessa.   Resultaten visade att datavisualisering har potentialen att hjälpa utövare av icke-professionellt energiarbete. Detta görs genom att underlätta deras uppgifter, samt en ökad förståelse för de positiva konsekvenser det för med sig. Slutligen diskuterar jag potentialen av ekovisualisering, samt de designaspekter jag anser viktiga för utveckling i en icke-professionell kontext relaterat till energi.

In 2012 library and museum professionals from 24 different countries met in Salzburg, Austria for the Salzburg Global Seminar. The seminar was entitled Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture. Shortly summarised their views of participatory culture includes low barriers for engagement, strong support for creating, sharing and feeling a social connection with each other. During the seminar it was mentioned that participatory culture usually exists online and that their challenge was in creating experiences that work both online and offline and allow for meaningful participation.Contemporary examples of museums working with participatory culture to engage their visitors is presented. Inspired by these examples and working with research through design as main method technology experiments and prototypes are conducted to develop a concept. Findings from this iterative process leads to a final concept that has the potential to engage museum visitors both online and offline. In one part of this concept museum visitors explores a narrative in a physical interactive exhibition. Visitors proxemic relations to objects and other people is used to trigger media and unfold the full story in a room. In the end of the prototype visitors are asked to write a physical postcard that is also published on a web page.The final concept presented can be scaled and customised to suit many different scenarios and context. When structuring the narratives clear instructions guiding visitors through the experience should be included. The people who were invited to try this prototype all created content and were curios to know what other people had written.

This thesis introduces the exploration of making wearables as a collaborative expression between a performer and a participant in a performative participatory installation. With a phenomenological view on our embodied experience with technology, the methodological approach is program/experiment dialectics, mixing experiments in the lab with exploration in the field. The thesis introduces the full process, the program and experiments where the perception (the embodied interaction with the materials and the context) of the designer/researcher and participants has been a great resource of the iterative process of creating the prototype from sketching in digital material, to prototyping and testing. From the making of the final prototype it is concluded that, the participant and performer express shared movement as the performance is constituted by both technology and human agency - both wearable and body acts - in the interaction between interpretation, body, and experience on the one side, and concept, werable, and technology on the other. As a methodological knowledge contribution it is stated that program/experiment dialectics is a generous space, allowing elements from several other methods, non linearity, and intuition, to be part of the process, where researcher (and participants) are phenomenologists. Phenomenology in interaction design is an attribution to research through design as a method that allows room for active participation of the lived body in different stages of the design process - a development of the notion of embodiment beyond situatedness - acknowledging the interplay between bodies and technology, that users, artifacts, and contexts influence, touch, and touch back each other.

Driven by an envisioned potential of merging theories and practices of play with studies of fashion sustainability, this research went through a play-centric design process to explore the question of How can play and games help reduce fashion waste? Seven design experiments investigated different game impact goals that could have a positive effect on the pursuit of fashion sustainability. The main research findings show that games can create a safe space for players to challenge their own conceptions of fashion. The results also show that games have great potential to assign meaning to garments through shared memories, secrets, stories and meaningful words. Furthermore, the study shows that modular clothes designed as games have the potential to playfully engage their wearers for long, sparking social interaction and inspiring new playful ways to engage with fashion. Additionally, beyond the design process results and actionable insights, this research considers the exposure of its framing to be a crucial contribution. Fashion sustainability is, therefore, a pressuring topic that needs people to be engaged in what they do and know best, in order for transformation to happen. Can games save fashion? The answer is probably no, but this research has proven that play and games offer a fruitful path to start trying.

In this paper, I explore the emerging field of voluntary implants as seen in the DIY biohacking scene. My work on such implants focuses specifically on implantable Radio frequency Identification capsules. With the approach of research through design, I have undergone an iterative process, combining research and prototyping methods to externalize insights and knowledge generated along the way, in an effort to bring shed light on the new ideas and design considerations that arise when we embed computer technology in our bodies. By challenging the status quo, and setting aside my preconceptions through speculative design, my work has resulted in a working prototype, inspired by the ideology of slow technology. Elmer, the memory machine, is a device that enables the implantee to capture memories in point of time via their implants. Here user are can record and review moments of everyday life, merely through a timestamp — a design decision that contributes to the debate on topics like convenience, privacy, and the right to be human.

This work explores the design of domestic Media Spaces by introducing and studying FamilySong (FS), a system that allows the synchronous playback of music between two remote households. FS does not share live audio or video, yet our studies show that FS provides a context for increasing serendipity as families integrate it into their ecology of communication practices and devices. Through three design iterations involving Autobiographical Design, Research-Through-Design, and qualitative research methods, we study six Latin American migrant families (with parents and children in the United States, and grandparents in Ecuador and Mexico), and one from the U.S., interact with FamilySong. We have found that, individually, family members have differing motivations and reactions to using the system. However, participants felt that the shared experience was meaningful to them and that they could use FamilySong to communicate important intentions, values and emotions as well as musical experiences. In the most recent iteration, the main interactions empowered very young children's participation in music selection. This has been met with joy and excitement by all but also with occasional behavioral dilemmas.This work explores and expands the design space of Media Spaces to include a set of artifacts that forgo its central definition yet provide similar emergent qualities including enhanced mutual awareness, connection, and communication. FS design explores the intersection of family practices and values---of togetherness and longing, parent-child dynamics at all ages, kinship, identity and culture---, and divided versus focused attention in the home. It also enriches our understanding of designing technology for meaningful interaction that supports loved ones and their values. / Doctor of Philosophy / Telecommunication technologies have improved the lives of migrants by allowing them to maintain connections with far-away loved ones. Although the opportunities to have a conversation have increased drastically with inexpensive video-chat systems, the quality of these connections leave families wanting for more meaningful experiences. FamilySong was designed to help far-away loved ones sustain significant interactions over time by playing music at the same time between two connected homes. The music acts as a medium for a shared-experience between parent and children's homes, and their grandparents' home. As participants went about their daily lives, music would begin playing making them feel together. Music also allows for a range of interactions that our participant families have come to describe as communication. People choose to play songs in the system that could be interpreted as "I love you," "I am thinking of you," "good morning," "this is my/your favorite song," "we are home," "are you available to talk," "we are dancing," "happy birthday!" These messages have the potential for being more influential to a developing relationship than merely asking for a "hi" or a "smile" on a video-call. Such calls are typical when interacting with very young, pre-verbal children. Other researchers have promoted focused activities that would capture a young child's attention, in order to provide a moment of connection at a distance with them. Some of these approaches include playing games and reading books. Our proposed method of sharing music is aimed at a similar objective, developing participants shared interests, but also facilitating an opportunity for a long sustained experience through the day with music as the background for everyday home activities. FamilySong is a design for the home and for the family, we build upon the family's communication and cultural practices in order to augment their experience through the day, and the video-calls they typically hold where they might now have found new reasons to connect (talk about music or sing together). In this dissertation we have used design to extend our understanding of what constitutes a significant interaction between family. Three large steps were taken, culminating in the design and creation of a high-fidelity prototype for a system to facilitate synchronous-playback of music between homes. A total of twelve copies of the final prototype were created and deployed at the homes of participants, for a total of six families using the system for over six months at the time of publishing. An additional three devices were created to begin exploring future work opportunities. In exploring these interactions between people we have found that family members have differing motivations and approaches to enjoying the system communicating. However, the opportunities for increased connection was received with joy by most of our participants who expressed to us deep feelings of longing for togetherness, identity, and culture. These significant aspects of enduring human and family values provide meaningful motivations for designing for the home.

Enterprise software has traditionally focused on functionalities over experiences. When enterprise software is becoming a core part of work, knowledge about the experiences can result in an enhanced working situation for employees and become a useful tool for them. Bridging together the knowledge generated, in both academia and the industry, under the topic of enterprise UX will allow for easier knowledge sharing where theory and practice can build on each other. This paper has investigated through research through design the visualization and interaction opportunities for an enhanced enterprise UX in a tool aimed for an advertising campaign planning process, while also has addressed under-constrained problems the enterprise UX most likely will encounter. Results show that there is great potential to support the process of planning a campaign with a tool but that there are also challenges with building the tool for the right user, creating value for the users and not underestimating skilled expertise. / Mjukvara ämnad för företag har traditionellt sett fokuserat på funktionaliteter framför upplevelser. När denna mjukvara nu blir en central del av arbetet kan kunskap om upplevelsen resultera i en förbättrad arbetssituation för de anställda och bli ett användbart verktyg för dem. Att överbrygga den kunskap som genereras, i både det akademiska och i industrin, under ämnet företags-UX kommer att möjliggöra enklare kunskapsdelning där teori och praktik kan bygga på varandra. Den här artikeln har genom en forskning genom design metodik undersökt visualiserings- och interaktionsmöjligheter för ett förbättrat företags-UX i ett verktyg som används i en planeringsprocess av mediekampanjer, samtidigt som underbegränsade problem som företagets-UX troligen kommer att stöta på tas upp. Resultatet visar att det finns stor potential för att stödja planeringsprocessen av kampanjer med ett verktyg men visar också på utmaningar med att bygga verktyget för rätt användare, skapa värde för användarna och inte underskatta skicklig expertis.

This constructive design research dissertation aims to understand how design can be used as part of a composite research approach to generate knowledge about how complex phenomena are composed through their interactions and relationships with various actors, both human and non-human. It has done this by investigating a single phenomenon, the patient experience of radiotherapy. Through the purposeful selection and application of methods, theories, and existing research from design, nursing, and STS, this thesis utilizes a mixed-method approach comprised of qualitative, quantitative methods, and design experimentation, across multiple research sites and patient populations, in three research projects – PERT, DUMBO, and POIS – to generate rich and layered knowledge of the patient experience. Experience prototypes are used to challenge, through intervention or provocation, the relationships between the various radiotherapy actors identified through the empirical methods. Together, the research generated in PERT, DUMBO, and POIS construct a map of the networked, interdependent actors which shape the patient’s emotional experience of radiotherapy: the staff, technology, information, environment, and institutions. It also calls attention to the problematic relationship between radiotherapy patients and the technologies used to treat them, which can lead to anxiety, worry, and fear. This thesis offers contributions related to both improving patient experience and designing for complex social issues. First, this research suggests that individuals, other than primary users, need to be acknowledged in the design of medical technologies. It proposes calling attention to patients by naming them as interactors in their relationships with the aforementioned technologies, removing them from the role of implicated actor. Second, this thesis problematizes treating the actors within a network as independent entities, which medical research and user-centered design often does, and calls for a new type of design practice which attends to these networked relationships. Third, this thesis suggests two ways in which design research practice should be shifted methodologically if it wants to engage with and design for complex social issues like patient experience; widening the researcher’s perspective on the issue through the use of a composite methodology, and having the researcher maintain this scope by remaining closely connected to their research context. The implications of this work concern how design research, design education, and design practice might shift their approaches to fully acknowledge and attend to the complexity of systems like healthcare.

This thesis describes my artistic practice as essentially project-based, site-responsive and hypermediating. Hypermediacy—i.e. the tendency of certain media or objects to keep their various constituents separate from their structure—is to be understood as opaque, juxtaposed and after a recurring contiguity with different kinds of interfaces. Accordingly, and within the context of the various projects that constitute this thesis, it is demonstrated how, in response to the particular places I work and to the various people I collaborate with, different kinds of materials and methodologies are incorporated in broader hybrids that are mediated (interfaced) in miscellaneous ways to this way result in original works of art. Materials and methodologies are shown to be intertwined and interdependent with each other as well as with the different ways in which they are interfaced, which accounts for an explicitly projectbased, rather than artwork-based, approach which, on its turn, de-emphasises the finished artefact in favour of process, performance, research and exploration. Projects are, then, shown to be explicitly site- or situation- responsive, as they are not implementations of preexistent ideas, but rather emerge as my original response to the particular sites, materials, people and the various other constituents that are involved in their very production. Interfaces to such hybrids as well as their very material and methodological elements are also shown to be hyper-mediated. It is finally argued that such an approach essentially accelerates multi-perspectivalism in that a project may spawn a number of diverse, typically medium-specific and/or site-specific, artworks that all exemplify different qualities which are congenital to the particular nature of each project.

Creating and encouraging longer-lasting relationship between designed products and its users is one of the goals that researchers in Sustainable HCI trying to achieve. The attachment framework is proposed by previous study that aims to provide knowledge and insight for designers to create longer-lasting relationship between products and users. As arguments have been made that there is a gap between Sustainable HCI theory and design practice. The attachment framework is one of the well established theoretical frameworks that need effective knowledge transformation from theory to practice. The aim of the study is to design, develop and evaluate a web-based interactive tool -- StickyDesignSpace, which helps product designers to embed the attachment framework into their design background research process. The study employs a research through design approach which focuses on the creation of innovative artifacts to solve practical problems. A web-based tool was designed and developed through the grounding, ideation and iteration process. And a high-fidelity prototype was evaluated by four design participants. The results indicated that the web tool StickyDesignSpace fostered the participated designers' attachment-related thinking by providing attachment design principles and generic design properties in a two dimensional space for organizing design background research data. Furthermore, the tool promoted the participated designers' attachment design knowledge transformation from background research process to design ideation process. According to participants' design objectives and background research goals, the tool also showed flexibility to be applied in other design process such as design idea formation and design evaluation process. The study shed light on the possibility of creating interactive tools to communicate sustainable HCI design frameworks to design practitioners, and offer the insights of how design practitioners integrate the attachment framework into their design thinking and process.