This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences (TXs) — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience (TUX). The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience.

For many, design is the production of useful artefacts. Designing can however also provide a basis for exploration, speculation or critique. This thesis develops this conception further by providing a theoretical framework for conceiving designing and design objects as a mode of and media for philosophical inquiry. Design is regarded as a material philosophy that explores and reflects philosophical issues by situating them in the concrete and particular reality of human life rather than in a generalised and abstract realm. Design objects are equipment and media that can be understood in terms of their contextual references and consequences as well as the way in which they mediate human action, thinking and existence, and thus in terms of the worlds that they open up. As media for reflection they allow one to gain an experiential understanding of these contexts and worlds. Design thus relates to philosophy in terms of ethics and concepts; that is, in terms of exploring possibilities of existence and new forms of thinking. Since design objects can cre-ate new experiences and interactions they can lead to new values and concepts. These objects can be used to reflect on philosopical issues and to thus see the world from a new perspective. These new perspectives may be brought about through three approaches: First, through fictions that render possible worlds experienceable or show the existing world in a new way. Second, through models that serve as tools for understanding and mediation between the general and abstract and the concrete and particular. Third, through situations, simulations and re-enactments that facilitate a direct and bodily experience of a new per-spective. These approaches can make abstract ideas experienceable, as they materialise these issues in concrete situations and thereby allow one to judge them in a real world context, including possible consequences. The activity of designing is accordingly considered an exploration of philosophical questions that uses design objects both as media for conducting an inquiry and communicating its outcome.

This thesis describes a sociocultural study which addresses the question of how New Product Development (NPD) practices in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) are influenced by obscure practices, deployed to meet emerging challenges that enable SMEs to remain relevant to their markets. Prior research in this area has assumed that a company’s innovation potential can be objectively explained by looking at critical factors such as peoples’ skills (e.g. leadership), company resources, capabilities, and its external orientation. However important, these variance-based approaches are generally discussed in isolation from the dynamic and idiosyncratic contexts where they emerge (such as the NPD process). As a result they fail to provide a holistic view of the phenomena that promote agility and innovation. This study’s purpose was to develop a methodological approach to explicate obscurity in SMEs’ innovation practices. To achieve this, the study employed a design-led qualitative research strategy to bring to the forefront the underlying contextual, situational and relational phenomena impacting a common core practice in manufacturing SMEs, their NPD process. The aim was to increase our knowledge of the notion of obscure practices in their effort to meet their emerging challenges. The research began by developing a theoretical model to consolidate ideas derived from: 1.Strategic management variance literature, which led to a multi-level theoretical framework (people, firm, and external levels). 2. Models of NPD processes, which led to the adoption of a generic process-model (Initiation, Development and Implementation) used as periods to study organisational practices. 3. Sociocultural literature, which led to the adoption of Activity Theory (AT) to guide analysis of NPD activities. The study approached its methodology in order to meet two key requirements. With regards to the sensitivities of the SME context (such as the disruption to participants’ day to day practices), the study developed a design-led process-mapping tool for data collection that provided rich insights in an engaging and fast way, whilst it allowed the triangulation and visualisation of the data, which was collected from staff members across different expertise and positions. In addition, an Activity Theory framework was adopted as a means to analyse the data and make sense of its complexity in line with the need to capture multi-level phenomena across different periods of the NPD process. The thesis provides a number of contributions to contemporary design research and beyond. First, it demonstrates the value of integrating variance and process-based research approaches and the richness of insights gained by applying them to organisational settings. Second, it argues for the usefulness of ‘obscurity’ as a term to describe the not-well-articulated practices that take place in the day-to-day business, as opposed to terms such as hidden, invisible, silent, and/or tacit. Third, it shows the value of the adopted research method (i.e. the Pytheas tool), to surface obscurity in innovation practices in a non-prescriptive, fast and engaging way by enabling participants to self-reflect on their own practices and by visualising organisational contexts in such a way that the richness and the depth of the practices can be captured and better appreciated. Consequently, the contributions of the study primarily concern design practitioners and strategists who need to find ways to better construe the organisational settings to which they are called to offer their expertise. Businesses may also benefit by this method as it provides a platform through which members can develop a greater awareness of their respective strengths and weaknesses and, through the visualised outcomes, it offers a legacy that businesses can use, revisit and refer to during their efforts to achieve agility and increase their innovation potential.

This thesis is an investigation into woven textile structures and weave construction methodologies. The main question at the heart of this research is what are smart textiles and what role/s can weaving play in the creation of such textiles in the future? A critical review of the literature led to a grammatical investigation and interpretation of the term smart textiles, and as a result a key differentiator between superficial and deep responsivity in textiles is made: the latter is henceforth used to describe the uniqueness of smart textiles (chapter 3). The thesis proceeds to explore the fundamental engineering of textiles as material systems, and by doing so, provide clues as to how fabrics could themselves be considered smart. Through this exploration, an original ‘textile anatomy’ mapping tool is presented with the aim to enhance and deepen current understanding of textiles and represent them as material systems instead (chapters 4 and 5). The hybrid research methodology that governed this investigation is unique. It relies on the creative tools of Design while also inherently applies the investigative methods of Science, Technology and Engineering (chapter 2). Weaving is explored through processes of making as an approach to develop smart textiles following an extensive historical review revealing that although methods of weave production have much evolved, the weave structures themselves have not changed at all for thousands of years (chapter 5). A series of experimental case studies are presented, which therefore seek to explore and challenge current limitations of weaving for the creation of a new generation of material systems (chapter 6). As part of this practical work the alternative fabrication technology of additive manufacturing was considered, but its role as substitute manufacturing technique for textiles was accordingly rejected. This research finds that since weaving has become solely dependent on its machines, the structures produced through these processes of manufacturing are governed by such same specifications and limitations. As a result, in order to step away from current constraints, new assembly methodologies need to be revised. This is particularly applicable within the context of future (smart) material systems, and micro and nano fabrication techniques (chapters 7, 8 and 9).

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 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.

Mobile HCI’s (Human Computer Interaction) understanding of mobility can benefit from novel theoretical perspectives that have been largely underexploited. This thesis develops and applies a novel middle range theory for mobile interaction design called mobile interaction trajectories, demonstrating the theory’s use and value in practical design settings. Mobile interaction trajectories offer a new theoretical perspective for mobile interaction design, considering people’s everyday trajectories as a baseline for mediated communication, with foci on practices and experiences of changing states of connectedness, chronologies of mediated communication, and mobile communication routines. Following a research through design methodology, probing was used as a creative research method. Two probing experiments informed the theory’s development. A new Probe resource was designed and applied, called the Hankie Probe. It was used to collect instances of mobile interaction trajectories and informed a range of design workshops. The Hankie Probe is based on a fabric-based format and expresses everyday trajectories, and mobile communication practice and experience via stitched and drawn handmade space-time diaries. Research about design analysed the design processes with the completed Probes revealing the middle range theory’s value. The theory’s distinctive characteristics have shown to inform generative design processes. The trajectory-based perspective inspired design concepts for contextually adaptive services that enable new communication experiences and alter the chronology of social interaction. The thesis contributes to knowledge by underpinning generative design work with novel mobility theories via a new Probe format for mobile interaction design research. The following additional discoveries were made: There are three basic probing functions in generative design workshops; designer’s experiences and subjective interpretation augment insights about users and contexts in design workshops, the fabric-based handmade Probes influenced design work offering a captivating authentic format that requires subjective interpretation.